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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“Lessons need to be learned from Rasharn’s death, and we need the Government, schools and education authorities to take them on board. The first lesson is the importance of clear and accurate record keeping in respect of medical conditions, so that everybody in a school—the teachers, the support staff; indeed, where appropriate, other pupils—understand the actions that need to be taken in different circumstances for different children, so that all staff are aware of that information. They cannot all be aware in the moment, so there need to be proper records; that way, staff can access the records on an individual child at the moment a crisis strikes. It seems there is not always clear guidance to schools on how individual healthcare plans should be formatted so that it is easy to find the right information at the right moment.”
“Rasharn had a heart condition that the school knew about, but when he fell ill after dancing at the school disco, an ambulance was not called immediately, and he died later that evening in hospital. I pay huge credit to Lorna and her family. Despite suffering the most unimaginable loss, Lorna still wants to campaign to ensure that no other mother goes through what she has had to live through. She has had to go through the many inquiries and processes that surround a death of this nature, and in the middle of it was her lovely little boy Rasharn. While those inquiries progress, it feels like a long time before any answers come. In many cases, there are more questions than answers, as was indeed the case for Rasharn.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that this important opportunity to raise issues is taking place in this Chamber today. I have two particularly very personal issues, and then a couple of others that affect a wider group of constituents. I would ordinarily have liked to raise them in an individual Adjournment debate, which is another reason why I am grateful to raise these important matters. [Martin Vickers in the Chair ] The first is a very tragic case, and the wider issue is about how schools support pupils with medical conditions. The issue arises because my constituent Lorna Williams lost her nine-year-old son, Rasharn, who died at a school in my constituency in October 2014.”
“The hon. Gentleman prompts me to raise a concern. What he highlights is something that we often raise on the Committee. There can be a Whitehall decision on what a policy looks like, but once it hits real people’s lives, the picture can be very different. He and I would probably agree that we need to see much more understanding of real people’s lives when policy is being made. Whitehall can seem very distant from our constituencies, and this is a case in point.”
“The hon. Member raises a very important issue. The Public Accounts Committee has looked at sanctions, which do not do what Government Ministers often think they do. They are actually ineffective. There are other ways to encourage people into work, but sanctions are a blunt instrument that does not work.”
“I point the hon. Gentleman to the National Audit Office, which has access to a lot of data that often the Government do not necessarily wish to put in the public domain. It has complete access rights. I am shocked that the Government will not release information on sanctions. It is actually a vital piece of management information that we should have.”
“The Minister raises the issue of Home Office responses. Many of us deal with the Home Office—I am one of the top six customers on behalf of my constituents. One reason why there has been a degree of improvement is that our constituents get the opportunity to meet caseworkers one to one, face to face. Although that is a welcome temporary stopgap, it is not a sustainable way for the Government to operate, so does the Minister acknowledge that there still needs to be a lot of work done to improve the process? I have constituents who have been waiting years for responses.”
“One of the key ways to promote economic activity is to make sure that people have a stable, affordable roof over their head. Only last week a constituent visited me who cannot earn enough to be able to afford to rent privately in London, so he is restricted in how much he can work. Surely, if the Chancellor believes in growth, he must see the common sense in investing in social housing?”
“The Home Secretary is primarily responsible for the funding, which has seesawed, the vetting, which she just touched on, and, critically, the structure of the Metropolitan police. On the latter point, she has talked about the need for reform. Can she tell the House whether she has had any discussions about, or whether she is even considering, breaking up the Metropolitan police to take out counter-terrorism and leave a London police force for Londoners?”
“The Minister says that the Government are providing a good service, but that is not my experience, either of asylum cases or across the piece. There are so many cases of work visas, visitor visas and so on being delayed for longer than I have seen in the 18 years I have served as an MP, which have included serving in the Minister’s role. When will he get a grip? It is all very well saying that he is dealing with asylum, but it is like whack-a-mole: he puts effort into one area, and another area goes badly wrong. When is he going to get a grip?”
“They can work as hard as they want, but they will never be able to pay the rent. The measures are slim pickings for people who face systemic lifestyle challenges every day. The Chancellor has not delivered for them.”
“It might stop some people in their tracks and make them think, but many will have already made their pension plans. Many have factored in the idea of a lower pension and—for doctors—locum work, or for others, a second job, and have decided that that is an option. That is built into people’s way of thinking after more than a decade of the lifetime allowance not being uprated. Meanwhile, in Hackney, nearly one in two children live in poverty, and of those, 61% are in working households. There are small measures in the Budget that might help them a little, but not enough to tackle the real issue of the working poor in my constituency, and there is no hope on housing for generation rent and families who need it. Without that housing base, there is nothing they can do to improve their lot.”
“On pensions, the problems with the lifetime allowance were first flagged by the Public Accounts Committee in 2012. Now, in 2023, it is being reversed. No Chancellor should ever be allowed near pensions: an announcement is made in the Budget about pensions, without an impact analysis over the decades that we need to consider, and without revisiting or uprating for many years. The change was out of kilter with other pension changes, which has caused ongoing problems. Abolishing the lifetime allowance helps the richest 1%, but it does nothing for poorer workers. They are in auto-enrolment, which is a good first step, but it is nowhere near enough to stop the ticking timebomb of poorer pensioners, which will cost the Exchequer in benefit payments in years to come. It will also do nothing to reverse the exodus from work.”
“The week before, I visited a woman with four daughters in a two-bedroom flat, a tiny kitchen, one living space, and the tiniest bathroom—I have seen cubicles in Parliament that would be bigger than their entire bathroom. That is a real challenge for people. Fundamentally, without a secure roof over their head, people cannot operate. That does not even cover the issues for “generation rent” in the private rented sector, but let us be clear: it is the Conservative party that ripped up the opportunity for people to have a safe and stable home. It is the party that has lived off the back of the right to buy—I will not go into that now—and has nothing to offer “generation rent” or people desperate for council housing who cannot afford to rent privately. It has done nothing on that, and I am very concerned.”
“On average, there is a nine-year wait for a three-bedroom property and a three-year wait for a one-bedroom property, but those are notional waits. Every week, I visit people on their doorsteps, go into their homes and see the overcrowding. On Monday, someone came to see me at my surgery; he is living in the private sector, renting a one-bedroom flat. He, his two children and his wife live there. He works hard, he wants to save up to buy his own home, but he cannot do that while he is renting privately. He cannot get a council property because he cannot qualify, even with that level of overcrowding, and that is not the worst overcrowding I have seen.”
“If we do not get that right and those payments are not uprated, we will see that ratio increase creep in as the norm, and that will be a deterrent for many working parents. I would not have been able to come to work and do the job I do if I had not been confident in the quality as well as the cost of childcare. Of course, I am a privileged Member of Parliament who can afford quality childcare, but we need to make sure that is available to everybody. The Budget does nothing to solve the fundamental problem in my constituency: housing. We have 8,500 people on the waiting list for council housing; there are many more who want it, but those are the ones who qualify under the rules, which are now quite stringent.”
“I speak here as a working mother of three, having had a baby while in the House; I knew that those child carers were fantastic, and it was the quality of the childcare that allowed me to come and do my job. They are often not recognised enough, so it is good that we are talking about them today. However, the Chancellor is borrowing here from the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), the former Prime Minister, who proposed this “pile them high and teach them cheap” approach to childcare, and I worry about the change in ratios. I am heartened that it is only voluntary, but those voluntary changes creep in, and the money proposed will take a long time to deliver the people and places and the certainty childcare businesses and individuals need to invest.”
“I can see where the Chancellor is coming from, trying to get the footfall into pubs, and I applaud the idea, but he needs to get into the real world and maybe meet some of the publicans in Hackney South and Shoreditch. I will buy him a pint if he will look them in the eye and tell them that this is a success. The childcare changes are something I have been campaigning on for a long time. I welcome them in principle, and it is heartening to see the Chancellor taking a leaf out of Hackney Labour’s playbook, since Hackney Council led a successful programme to give grants to childminders, encouraging them to take up the work so that places could be provided for working parents. However, quality is as vital as cost.”
“A mere rounding error on some of these large defence projects would build a new school or maybe one of those vaunted 40 new hospitals that we have yet to see. I represent many great pubs in Hackney South and Shoreditch, so it is great to see an 11p reduction in duty on pints, but even if we take that into account, business rates are going through the roof and pubs are often tied to energy bills that are very high and have ramped up in some cases by more than 200%—one of my pubs had a 700% rise in its energy bills. Add to that rent increases and other bills going up, and 11p a pint will not make the difference—some of my pubs say they would need to charge £15 or even £18 a pint to break even. Even in Shoreditch, that would be an extraordinary and unachievable amount for people to spend.”
“Again, the Public Accounts Committee has repeatedly highlighted concerns about how LEPs spent money locally with no accountability; I am all for involving businesses and others in an area in decisions for the future, but for those to be led without accountability was unforgivable, so it is great to see that change finally coming through after much pressure. It is necessary to see an increase in money for defence, partly because of the challenges thrown up by the war in Ukraine, but it is vital that that money comes with real rigour on spending and project management at every step of the way. The Public Accounts Committee has repeatedly highlighted the defence equipment plan, the efficiencies that never materialise and the overruns on cost.”
“It was this Conservative Government, a Conversative Prime Minister and Chancellor, who crashed the economy last autumn and have left havoc in many people’s lives. Every time someone goes grocery shopping, every time the mortgage bill and statement arrives, and every time a rent statement arrives, people are reminded that it is the Conservative Government who have crashed this country, and it is Labour who will deliver a better solution. I should say, in generosity to the Chancellor, that I do welcome a couple of points. The support for leisure centres and swimming pools is much needed and the prepayment meter changes are long overdue, so they are good to see. Scrapping local enterprise partnerships and giving local authorities the opportunity to lead in their area is also long overdue.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, you would think from the noises on the Government Benches that this Budget was a triumph, but let us not forget who is responsible for the state of the economy today. Wages are lower in real terms now than they were in 2010 and we are growing slower than most members of the G7. Obviously covid and the war in Ukraine have knocked the economy, but it was this Government who allowed fraud and error under covid schemes to hit the billions of pounds, much of which, as the Public Accounts Committee has repeatedly highlighted, will never be recovered—billions that could have been invested in public services and many of the measures that the Chancellor announced today.”
“We are not necessarily talking about great numbers of people—sadly, with so many deaths, there will be very few people in this position —but at the very least we must reach out to those vulnerable lone children and other vulnerable people. I look forward hopefully to the creation of a wider scheme to support people, but could we please get moving on supporting vulnerable lone children and vulnerable family members of those currently in the UK as a starting point?”
“We have groups such as the Alevis and very many Turkish community groups and organisations that would be very welcoming. My own mosque, Suleymaniye mosque, is a Turkish foundation mosque as well. We know it takes time to get these schemes right, so there is no time for delay. It is important that we have child protection and other protection routes in place, so that we are not just accepting people for wrong reasons. Those such as the 15-year-old orphan girl my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East described need to come somewhere safe, and there is no safe place for them in the region at the moment because of the challenges. I urge the Minister to give us an answer today on the Government thinking on this. I have already written to the Home Secretary, and I will continue to work with colleagues to press this issue.”
“There are families here who have jobs and housing, who could quickly scoop up family members caught up in the devastation. Many years ago, when I was the Minister responsible for dealing with issues such as resettlement, we would take a number of people from United Nations camps, but we now know that there are aid agencies there who can identify families or individuals who are very vulnerable, such as lone children, and who could be quickly routed through the existing compassionate route that we operate and support as the United Kingdom. The communities here—not just the individuals, with their housing, jobs and money that could support those people, but the communities in Hackney and around north-east London—could do a great deal to support people.”
“In addition, there is the example of Ukraine. There were rocky moments, but the family reunion and Homes for Ukraine schemes are worked-up schemes that are there to pick up anew. There was also Hong Kong, and back in 1996, when I was a young councillor, we welcomed people from Montserrat. Although that was from an overseas territory, we nevertheless had the capability, the capacity and the mechanisms to ensure that we could get people into this country. I represent, as I say, around 7,000 Turkish and Kurdish people—well, I do not represent them all; I share that with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). There are many thousands of others across north-east London, and, as we have heard, in Newport and across the country.”
“We have a huge engagement with our Turkish-speaking and Kurdish-speaking communities, who contribute an awful lot to our society. I will talk a bit about family reunion. I appreciate that the Minister has to defer to the Home Office on these issues, but the point must be made very firmly that we have examples in very recent times of reunion schemes to bring people from areas of devastation into the UK. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, looked at the Syria scheme, which was actually well worked out. Obviously that mostly involved people without family here, but 20,000 of them were settled, so there is a precedent. There is also a precedent in the Afghan scheme, although that was not about family reunion, of course, but resettlement routes for people to whom the UK owes a duty of care.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) on her thorough introduction to this debate in which she highlighted the real challenges with some feeling. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who described so well, but so sadly, the reality of life for someone who has been through these devastating circumstances. I will pick up in particular her point about family reunion. I am very proud to represent a borough in Hackney where just over 3% of the population—about 7,000 people —have Turkish and Kurdish backgrounds. I and my north-east London colleagues, whom I am glad to see here, represent what we might describe as a little Turkey.”
“It is looking like the Minister may be running out of time to talk about family reunion, which I appreciate is another Minister’s portfolio. Will he undertake to ensure that the Home Office writes to all Members present in detail about what considerations are ongoing on that issue?”
“5. What steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help ensure that residents are adequately protected from increases in insurance premiums caused by remedial works.”
“I declare an interest: I live in a block with cladding. There are many real concerns, and I commend the Secretary of State for some of the progress he has begun to make, but there is still a big issue with insurance premiums that are way too high for the risk involved. Will he update the House on what progress he has made with the insurance industry to get premiums down?”
“More people rent privately in my constituency than own their own homes, and more people rent socially than both of those groups combined. When I visit those people, week in and week out, they are massively overcrowded with no prospect of renting in the private sector or buying. What is the Secretary of State doing to deliver properly affordable social rented housing?”
“The Minister speaks as though all of the issues were someone else’s problem. He has acknowledged some changes he is bringing into the asylum system. I am one of the top six customers of the Home Office for my constituents and it is the worst it has been in 18 years, but in truth what we are seeing here is the chickens coming home to roost in the impact on communities, the appalling situation that many asylum seekers are living in and the danger around these sites. When we will see a real change, a step change, as a result of the changes he is introducing? I cannot see it happening any time soon.”
“As the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said, some businesses have bought in energy at a very high rate because of when they sealed their contract. Many of my local pubs and hospitality businesses will go bust in the beginning of the next financial year because their bills are so out of kilter; they say they would have to charge £15 a pint to survive. Even in London—even in Shoreditch—that is just not feasible. What extra support is the Treasury even considering as we approach the financial statement next month?”
“As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) highlighted, the Office for Environmental Protection put out its report last week. It talked about the need for “better alignment and co-ordination at all levels of Government, local and national, with actions that extend beyond Defra”. Two years ago, the Public Accounts Committee published a report, which the Secretary of State’s Department agreed with, in which we described that simply as a lack of clout across Whitehall. Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), how will the Secretary of State ensure that these plans are actually delivered across Whitehall? Does she have the clout and the backing of the Treasury?”
“There is an inconsistency in how the public sector is required to report greenhouse gas emissions. That makes it difficult to keep a track on progress as we approach net zero, and difficult for citizens to hold the public sector to account on delivery. What is the Minister doing to rectify that so that we can keep a proper track on what is happening?”
“The Secretary of State says she wants to support teachers, particularly in the first five years, and that the £30,000 a year salary will kick in next year. In London, people often move after about five years because they simply cannot afford to rent privately or buy in the capital. What is she doing, both in the immediate and the long term, to make sure that we keep good teachers in London?”
“Like the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), I have seen extraordinary situations with cases of serious sexual assault where the court case has been listed three years after the attack, in one case, with the victim saying, “I just want to give up and get on with my life.” This is a real challenge. Will the Minister outline what he is doing to get more judges in place, which is one of the brakes on this? When the Public Accounts Committee looked at this, we concluded on the evidence that, even with the interventions he has outlined, the Ministry will only be back on target from where it was with the backlog before covid by about 2024-25.”
“One would think from the way the Minister is speaking that this was an urgent question on an article in The Guardian. This is an urgent question about a Home Office that, as the Home Affairs Committee and the Public Accounts Committee have both repeatedly pointed out, failed to recognise the pattern of behaviour despite many flags in the system, introduced a compensation scheme that then did not deliver, had to review the compensation scheme and is now goodness knows where. One of the recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee was that more work be done to identify people from Commonwealth countries other than from the Caribbean who were also impacted. Can she update the House on progress on that?”
“From the way the Secretary of State is speaking, one might think he is the knight on a white charger coming to rescue the system. Let us be clear, however, that it was this Government who froze pay in the public sector and then increased it below inflation, and this Government who reduced recruitment in the national health service, particularly among nurses, where we have a recruitment gap of 40,000. What we are actually hearing is chickens coming home to roost, isn’t it? He ought to take responsibility as a Minister in this Government.”
“First-time home ownership is a pipe dream for most people in my constituency, where more people rent privately than own their homes and more people rent social housing than those combined, with more than 13,000 people on a pruned-back social housing waiting list. What will the Minister and her Department do to help councils build the right housing—affordable housing—in boroughs such as Hackney so that people can get their foot into any secure housing, whether rented or owned?”
“We have seen this year in, year out: money thrown into the NHS at a winter crisis point, too late to spend it sensibly, yet this Government have been in power for nearly 13 years. I could not identify anything new in the Secretary of State’s speech. We have talked about discharge before, and picking up on the point made by the Select Committee Chair the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), without proper funding for local councils for domiciliary care and for funding care homes, this will never work.”
“Clearly, we need to level up on housing. In my constituency, many people just cannot afford a private rented home or to own their own home, and we need more social housing, but that is not possible without Government subsidy. What is the Treasury considering to make sure that people who desperately need a permanent roof over their head can get it?”
“The Public Accounts Committee has issued two reports on this—one in 2016 and one in 2021—and there is also, of course, the excellent report by the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), which highlighted the same issues. Yet another contract was let earlier this year with the same problems. There is a rottenness at the core of the MOD’s ability to contract to deliver on this service, and worryingly, it also delivers on major warships, armoured vehicles and so on. What is the Minister going to do to make sure that there is a real difference? Financial penalties do not deliver better heating systems. Will he undertake a root-and-branch review of how the Ministry of Defence contracts for these services, and will he listen to some of the recommendations made in recent reports?”
“One way the Minister could help to support the Commonwealth is to support the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee in Montserrat who has been trying to investigate spending under the Deputy Governor’s Department, but has been told that, constitutionally, that is not allowed, even though a significant amount of taxpayers’ money in Montserrat goes into that budget. Perhaps we could have a conversation about that so that we can support proper financial scrutiny of Government spending wherever it happens in the Commonwealth.”
“In 17 years as a Member of this House, I have never known backlogs, in every avenue of Home Office processing, to be so great and so slow. The Prime Minister asked for suggestions. If he really wants to reprocess the Home Office’s procedures, he could take out the ridiculous rule that people have to renew their indefinite leave to remain every 30 months, putting the same people back through the system to come out with the same outcome. He could, in one fell swoop, reduce the backlog. Will he do it?”
“My constituent Jesse, who is 24, was diagnosed with grade 4 glioblastoma multiforme, a type of brain cancer. It has been devastating to her. She has had a very difficult year of treatment; crucially, after her initial round of treatment, there were delays in accessing a scan because of the backlogs in the NHS. There is a real need for a proper cancer care plan to make sure that she gets her scans as regularly as necessary. Other patients need them as well, but her scan was two months later than it should have been under the standard of care, leaving her in absolute terror that her cancer would come back. The fear is almost as bad as the disease itself. What plans does the Minister have to make sure that the 10-year cancer plan really gets to grips to the backlog, which is devastating people’s lives?”
“My right hon. Friend has highlighted one particular legal situation, but I am sure she is aware that the Department of Health and Social Care remains in dispute on 176 contracts for PPE worth £2.7 billion. I wonder whether she has any thoughts about that.”
“Very early on, the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office were looking into the issue. We know that it was a rush at the beginning, but we were warning about the problems early on, and still they persisted. There was poor record keeping—frankly, it was a lack of record keeping in many cases. This House gave the Government permission to act fast, but not to act fast and loose, and the Minister just needs to acknowledge that.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way again. I reassure him and the House that the Public Accounts Committee is responsible, not reckless. We have previously received papers from this House and we have a well-established protocol for receiving and dealing with such papers. The Committee is trusted—we never leak. If we decide to publish, that is a choice that we would make, but it is a responsible decision that we would take.”