Dame Diana Johnson
MP for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham · Labour · United Kingdom
“Longer-term funding is subject to future spending reviews. The Department and NHS England are committed to prioritising funding for sepsis in future spending bids. The framework is a 10-year plan. I do not pretend that we will deliver everything overnight, but it sets clear targets to reduce deaths by a quarter over the next 10 years.”
“It is not acceptable that when someone has been through the worst experience of their life, they are just left to get on with it. That is why we are committed to improving access to post-discharge support and rehabilitation, with priority actions set out in the framework.”
“I encourage everyone who has not yet come forward to do so, and to ensure that they obtain both doses of the vaccine for proper protection. The framework commits to improving vaccine access. The shadow Minister put a number of questions to me. I will respond in writing, as I am conscious of the time.”
“No one knows a child better than his or her parents or carers, which is why listening to patients, carers and families is vital to supporting sepsis recognition and escalation. Too many cases have shown the devastating consequences when deterioration concerns are not heard.”
“During Sepsis Awareness Month, I pay tribute to the charities, such as the UK Sepsis Trust and Sepsis Research FEAT, that do so much to support families, raise awareness and fund research.”
“That will include research calls that cover sepsis improvement priorities, whether it is vaccination and screening, faster and more accurate diagnosis or innovative treatments. It is true that the most recent data from the Office for National Statistics suggests that sepsis deaths went down in 2024.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,801 lines we hold for Dame Diana Johnson, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 43 of 97.
“The Minister has talked a lot about accountability today, and the Home Affairs Committee has an important role in scrutinising and questioning the Home Secretary on her policies. We have not been able to do that since 2 February. When it comes to accountability and making this place work properly, we need Home Secretaries and Ministers to come before the Home Affairs Committee. Can the Minister confirm that the Home Secretary, as she now is again, will appear before the Home Affairs Committee, as will all her Ministers? This morning we heard some very disturbing evidence about the current chaos within this country’s immigration system.”
“I am sure that the Secretary of State is as concerned as I am about the number of children attending school who are hungry. Has he made any representations to the Department for Work and Pensions about raising the £7,400 household income eligibility threshold for free school meals?”
“The Minister says he is getting on with the job, so can he please get on with the job for passengers facing daily misery in Hull? TransPennine Express cancels dozens of services every day, causing real problems for commuters. It is also responsible for the toilets at Hull station, but cannot even manage to keep those clean and maintained. Can he ensure that TransPennine honours its contractual obligations and, if it cannot, that he terminates its contract?”
“This is an issue not just for South Yorkshire but for my subregion of Hull and the Humber. Will the Minister reflect on the fact that emergency services are based at that airport, including as we have heard the National Police Air Service? If that is to be disrupted in any way, that might well meet the threshold of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, so will she look at the issue again?”
“I, too, pay tribute to all the victims and survivors who gave testimony to the inquiry, and to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) for establishing it in the first place. We can all agree that victims and survivors have waited far too long for this inquiry and for robust action to be taken against child sexual abuse. We must not waste any more time. Will the Home Secretary commit to bringing forward, in this Session, any legislative changes that are needed, particularly on mandatory reporting?”
“With the departure of Lord Harrington, who was a Minister in both the Home Office and this Department, will the Minister explain what discussions he has had with the Home Office about how to deal with the potential homelessness of many Ukrainians under the Homes for Ukraine scheme?”
“In the national interest, and also to offer reassurance to the markets, can the Leader of the House confirm that the Prime Minister will not be taking any decisions on economic policy in the future? [ Laughter. ]”
“Last month, the Prime Minister told the BBC in Hull that we would be included in Northern Powerhouse Rail despite not being included in the Government’s integrated rail plan. Was the Prime Minister wrong to say that?”
“I am very pleased to hear that the Chief Secretary has confidence in the Bank of England. The media are now reporting, for the seventh time, that the Bank of England has clearly linked the mini-Budget or UK-specific factors to the turmoil in the bond market. That includes, in the past hour, the Governor speaking to camera and to a room full of the world’s top banking chief executive officers in the US. Can the Chief Secretary explain to me why the Governor of the Bank of England is wrong and why he himself is right?”
“I congratulate the Minister on his new role. Further to the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves), may I ask whether there have been any discussions with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which is responsible for the Homes for Ukraine scheme? Many councils are worried that they will have to deal with homelessness among many of the Ukrainians who are here on that scheme.”
“May I get the Minister to confirm that there are currently no legal or safe routes for any woman fleeing persecution in Iran to enter this country and claim asylum?”
“Can I take the Chancellor back to his party’s manifesto commitment on levelling up? What I want to know is: will the investment zones tackle the need for real infrastructure investment, for example, if he is really serious about growth, the need for electrification of the line to Hull, which was ruled out by the Conservative party’s integrated rail plan just last November for the next 30 years.? Will he look at that again, if he is serious about growth?”
“Because of the Government’s failure to act quickly on energy costs, Smithy’s fish and chip shop, which had been trading for 38 years on Beverley Road in Hull, had to close its doors. That was not just because of energy cost increases, but because the price of fish has gone up 120% and the price of beef dripping 150%. I would like to know what more the Secretary of State will do to reassure one of the institutions at the heart of our communities—fish and chip shops.”
“The Secretary of State has talked a lot about common sense and using our natural resources, so will he explain why the Government are not dropping the moratorium on onshore wind?”
“I also welcome the right hon. Lady to her new role. In the light of the leaks to the media over the last few days, could we have a debate to find out why this Government believe that to make the poor work harder or try harder we should cut their benefits, but that to get wealthy bankers to work harder we should increase their bonuses?”
“She looked entirely at ease and was taking this new technology completely in her stride—perhaps rather more so than the Lord President of the Council at that time, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). To conclude, like the vast majority of Britons alive today, I have known no other monarch; but sadly we now have reached the point where change has come. Alongside the condolences to the royal family, we look to the new King Charles III. One era is ending, and a new one is beginning. Queen Elizabeth II would want us to go forward as a great nation, in all our faiths and beliefs, proving that she was never mistaken in hers. God save the King.”
“I also express condolences on behalf of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, on which I sit. Although there is great sadness at this time, let us also remember a long life of service, so well lived and devoted to this nation—a life that should be celebrated. The Queen was a member of that greatest generation who herself, as we have heard, served in uniform in world war two, helping to secure our democracy’s survival against tyranny. This was also a Queen who embraced change throughout her life and saw us into the digital age. It was a special honour to be sworn in as a Privy Councillor over Zoom during the covid pandemic; I did not have any of the worries about falling over the footstool. The Queen was on a very large screen in front of me.”
“The late Queen’s first visit was actually to Hull Royal Infirmary in 1957; she came again 50 years later to open the Queen’s Centre for Oncology and Haematology at Castle Hill Hospital in 2009. The city will miss her. Although the sovereign’s passing is a historic moment for the United Kingdom, our Commonwealth and many others around the world, at this time we must remember above all else that a family has lost a beloved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. This loss to the nation resonates personally with the loss of one’s own parents or grandparents. In particular, I remember my auntie Betty—a staunch royalist who loved the Queen and was also born in 1926. On behalf of the people of Hull, my thoughts and prayers are with the royal family at this saddest of times.”
“I repeat them: “In times when nothing stood But worsened, or grew strange, There was one constant good: She did not change.” My city of Kingston upon Hull has a rebellious history when it comes to the monarchy, having slammed the city gates against the King in the civil war. But the city took Queen Elizabeth to our hearts, and we were very firmly in the royalist camp during this second Elizabethan age. Her Majesty visited the city many times and met its people. During her reign, she was in Hull on some of the most important days in the life of the city and the region. They include the opening of the iconic Humber bridge in 1981, celebrating the city’s 700th birthday in 1999, and visiting Hull in 2017 when we were the UK city of culture.”
“There have been some wonderful tributes to Her late Majesty the Queen; in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) talked about the importance of the Commonwealth and of faith to the late Queen. This is my opportunity to say a few words on behalf of my constituents in Kingston upon Hull North. I was pleased when my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition referred to some words of the adopted son of Kingston upon Hull, the poet Philip Larkin, who penned them 45 years ago for the silver jubilee celebrations. As with all great poems, the words resonate as much on this day as they did in 1977.”
“I agree with the Home Secretary that it takes multiple ways of looking at the problem of channel crossings. In July, the Home Affairs Committee produced our report on channel crossings. We were very keen to discuss the report with the Home Secretary but, sadly, she cancelled her appearance before the Committee. However, we hope that she will, in whatever capacity she holds in the coming weeks, attend the next Committee hearing in September to discuss her time at the Home Office. One of our key recommendations was to pilot providing UK asylum assessment facilities within France, enabling the juxtaposed consideration of claims in the same way that we already have juxtaposed immigration and passport controls in Dover and Calais. I wonder whether she might say what her solution to the problem would be.”
“My question relates to today’s business. You will remember, Mr Speaker, that at the end of the summer term you granted an urgent question on the issue of infected blood compensation payments. The Government then announced, in August, that £100,000 would be awarded to some of those infected, but not to all. Today a written ministerial statement has been tabled, which offers no opportunity for us to question the Government about the groups who are not included in the scheme, which was announced in August, not to the House, but in my view could have been made in July. I wonder when the Leader of the House might arrange for a statement to be made to the House so that we can question the Government on the infected blood scandal.”
“I listened to Edwina Currie this morning telling people to put foil down the back of their radiators to improve energy efficiency. She seemed to miss the point that many of my constituents are not even thinking of switching their radiators on in the first place. I just wonder about those in the left-behind neighbourhoods—the very poorest. In my patch, in Orchard Park, 29% of households are in fuel poverty before we even start, against the national average of 13%. What will the Minister do for those people on Orchard Park who are not able to switch their radiators on this winter?”
“With the greatest of respect to the Minister, given the contrasts and contradictions in the Government’s approach around things such as the P&O ferry scandal and the recent events with the rail industry, can he tell us what guarantee he can provide to the House that the Government will not sail down the river the rights of working people in this country?”
“Orchard Park, in my constituency, has the highest percentage of households in fuel poverty in the whole UK—29.2% compared with 13.5% nationally. So I want to know: can we please have a debate about what the Government are going to do for left behind neighbourhoods—people who live there who are in work? What are the Government going to do to help them with the cost of living crisis?”
“The Leader of the House might like to know that, at our Home Affairs Committee meeting yesterday, which, very sadly the Home Secretary could not attend—she could not attend the one last week, which had been in the diary for a very long time as well—we heard that actually 55,000 passport applications were over 10 weeks. I say that just so that he knows. What I wanted to ask him about, however, was the fact that my cost of living survey in my constituency has been inundated by people who are genuinely frightened about the energy price hike that is coming down the road. Research from the all-party group on left behind neighbourhoods shows that people in the 225 left behind neighbourhoods in this country will be most vulnerable to the cost of living increases.”
“We are also very mindful of the unusual step of a ministerial direction having to be issued in this case—one of only two in 30 years in the Home Office—as the permanent secretary was not satisfied with the evidence of the deterrent effect of this policy being value for money. In conclusion, our report is the result of more than two years of evidence gathering in which the numbers crossing the channel irregularly rose from around 2,000 in 2019 towards, as I said, an estimated 60,000 this year. Urgent action is needed to stem this dangerous tide, and I commend the report to the House.”
“Last week, according to figures very helpfully published on the Ministry of Defence website, a total of 1,474 people in 39 boats came to the United Kingdom, and the trend is up over the past three weeks. There is also no clear idea about how much this policy will cost, or how many people could be relocated to Rwanda under it. Should it survive its ongoing legal challenges, we will return to it, but it is a very good example of why a fully worked out policy might work better than one that is announced before detailed planning has been done to work out how a policy will work and succeed. That is why the Committee recommends that the Home Office undertakes detailed policy work ahead of announcing such policies and plans.”
“We recommend that the Government confirm urgently who is responsible for safeguarding these children and tell us what they are doing to prevent children, alone and potentially vulnerable, simply vanishing from sight into unknown hands and unknown futures. We also make recommendations about the need to review the experience and the process that children go through when claiming asylum. Key recommendations include: concerns around age assessments; the right to legal advice; an adult to support a child through the process; and the rules around family reunion to be expanded. Finally, I turn to Rwanda. We have not yet come to a firm conclusion on that policy. We expect to return to it as and when anyone is relocated to Rwanda. There is, though, yet no evidence that the Rwanda policy is deterring crossings.”
“Clearly, provision of safe and legal routes for refugees, a realistic recognition that the UK is neither the least nor the most generous host in Europe or in the wider world, and a willingness to co-operate fully with our nearest neighbours by sharing intelligence and equipment to identify and undermine people smuggling criminal organisations may not offer the eye-catching headlines, but they are most likely to work. I wish to say something about unaccompanied children. The practice of placing unaccompanied children in hotels has resulted in an unknown number of children disappearing either temporarily or, in some cases, permanently.”
“It could prevent people from feeling the need to cross the channel unsafely in unseaworthy boats, and it could save lives. The Committee also recommends seeking closer co-operation with the EU. Brexit meant an end to the Dublin arrangement for returning people to other EU countries when their claims were unsuccessful here. It was not perfect, with fewer returns than successive Governments wanted under that arrangement, but there are now hardly any such returns. The Minister told us that only five people who had crossed in small boats last year between January and November were returned. The Government’s hope of bilateral deals with individual EU countries has clearly not been realised.”
“One of the Committee’s key recommendations is to seek a deal with France to process asylum claims to the UK on French soil in reception centres, possibly on a pilot basis, and with a guarantee that those not granted asylum here would remain in France. We already have juxtaposed passport control, so the French are at Dover and the UK authorities at Calais, so such an arrangement does have a precedent, but we accept that it is politically contentious. The Home Secretary has, in the past, suggested that such a plan might draw more migrants to France in search of asylum in the UK. However, we believe that it should be seriously considered as one of a suite of policies, which, together, could make an impact on the current dire situation.”
“The most cost-effective way to cut the cost would be to have fewer people in the asylum system, and the most effective way to do that is to get people out of it more quickly through faster decision making; 449 days for the average decision is far too long. No child should wait 550 days—the average time taken—to find out what their future is in the foreign country they have come to. International co-operation is also needed to tackle what is a worldwide problem. For us, that means better and more co-operation, especially with the French, stepping up joint working. However, we also recognise that the French themselves need to do more.”
“The UK spends £1.5 billion a year on its asylum system. We house asylum seekers and refugees in hotels at a cost of nearly £5 million a day. We agree with the Home Secretary that the asylum system is broken and unsustainable, but we do not agree that it was those who sought safety by crossing the channel who broke the system. The Home Office urgently needs to reduce the asylum backlog. The number of people coming to the UK each year is relatively stable—around 48,000 last year—but the time taken to grant asylum or make another determination has steadily risen. We recommend addressing the work in progress caseload of 125,000 as a priority. That means hard, invisible grind; having enough trained staff who remain in their posts long enough to make a difference; effective IT systems; and swifter and better decision making.”
“I also give a very big thank you to all those who contributed by providing evidence and personal testimony to the inquiry. In the report, we conclude that there is no single magic solution to the problems posed by irregular migration, in a world where millions of people have been displaced from their homes by war, famine, local terrorism and economic necessity. We are clear that detailed, evidence-driven, properly costed and fully tested policy initiatives are by far the most likely to achieve sustainable, incremental change, rather than headline-grabbing initiatives lacking in a rigorous evidence base and with unclear costings. We agree that safe and legal routes for those in search of secure homes are essential to breaking the business model of the criminals who prey on vulnerable people.”
“Stopping those dangerous journeys must be one of the highest priorities of a civilised society, and the Committee supports national and international action to stop the criminal gangs preying on vulnerable people. The Home Office has asked for ideas on how to do that, and our report seeks to provide some clear proposals for a way forward. Before I set out a few of our key recommendations, I want to thank the staff of the Home Affairs Committee for their sterling work, particularly our Clerks Elizabeth Hunt and David Weir. I also want to thank all the members of the Committee. Our membership has changed quite a few times over the course of the inquiry, including the previous Chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper).”
“At least 166 people have lost their lives in the channel since the Committee began its inquiry into channel crossings, with 27 of them drowning on a single awful day last November, yet despite the risk of dying, people still come. The day after those 27 people died, 40 more came. Witnesses we spoke to talked of making two, three or four failed journeys from the French coast, turned back by leaking boats or wind and waves, before finally reaching the British coast or being escorted to safety by British vessels, including the Navy and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Those journeys are fuelled by evil, criminal traffickers trading in human misery. Those who risk their lives, and sometimes those of their small children, are so desperate to come here that they are willing to take any risk.”
“I would like to start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement today. On Monday this week, as the Home Affairs Committee report, “Channel crossings, migration and asylum”, was published, the number of people who had made the dangerous journey across the English channel from France to the United Kingdom rose above 15,000 this year. Last year the figure was 28,500, and this year the Home Office predictions suggest that as many as 60,000 people could arrive on our shores on makeshift, leaky dinghies hardly worthy of the name of “boat”, wearing lifejackets more likely to drown them than save them. In Dover recently, members of my Committee and I saw the arrival of two such vessels crowded mainly with men, but also with women and small children on board these potential death traps.”
“I think the main point we were making was really that the policymaking was poor in this regard. On the hon. Member’s second point, about pilots undertaken on French soil to determine asylum claims there, the Committee absolutely thinks that would be a good way forward; to test out that model, get the evidence and see whether it would work. Of course, that is dependent on the French agreeing to it. Like the hon. Member, we think that is a conversation that should be had with the French.”
“I welcome the comments from the hon. Member, who is of course the Committee’s longest standing member. He is absolutely right that the Rwanda policy came about towards the very end of our deliberations on the issue. He is also right, as I think I said in my speech, that we have not yet come to a conclusion on the Rwanda policy. What we are very clear about, however, is that the evidence for the Rwanda policy has not been forthcoming. We have asked the Home Office to provide modelling and cost estimates, but we have not had any of that. He is absolutely right that we need to wait and see. I quoted the figures to see what has been happening in the past few weeks and months, and at the moment—I understand what he is saying—it does not look as though the policy is having that deterrent effect. I am very willing to concede that.”
“He is absolutely right; unless the Home Office has a workforce that is of the right number and it retains that workforce, because it takes a while for people to be trained up to make good decisions, this problem will carry on, unfortunately.”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. I, too, have seen the chief inspector’s report, which actually we have been waiting for—it was delayed for some time. The Committee is very concerned about the backlog in the Home Office. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; the figures show that by the end of last year there were supposed to be up to 1,000 case workers, and it has not reached that. We are also aware that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had offered to help the Home Office to triage the backlog, by finding ways of speeding up the process. We think that it would be very useful for the Home Office to take up that good advice.”
“As I said, the issue is before the courts and no one has been removed yet, but we will want to follow very closely what happens in the weeks and months to come.”
“The documents that came out of the court case came to light only after our report had been published. We were very much hoping that the Home Secretary would be able to attend the Committee’s meeting yesterday. Unfortunately, she was not available. Sadly, she was not available the week before either, even though that was a very long-standing date in the diary. Therefore, we have not had the opportunity to talk to and ask questions of the Home Secretary or Home Office Ministers about what has happened in the last few days. However, members of the Committee are very alive to the issue of human rights and to the concerns of the UNHCR and others, which have been raised with the Committee, and we will return to this issue.”
“We have pencilled in a date in September when we hope the Home Secretary will be able to join us, and I am certain that we will ask about the process for engaging with communities, local authorities and MPs when the Home Office is making decisions that will be important for local areas. I very much hear what my hon. Friend says. I am pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), is on the Treasury Bench and will have heard that too, because we have had conversations about communications between the Home Office and key local stakeholders about decisions such as where to house asylum seekers.”
“Ministers are probably in a better position than I am to answer the final part of the hon. Gentleman’s question—I am not party to those discussions with the French—but he is absolutely right about the importance of co-operation between the UK and France. We recognise that there is already some work going on, but we think it could be stepped up. We are also mindful that the French, at times, have not done as much as they could to stop the launching of these boats. We think that needs to be addressed, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: without co-operation, this will not stop. It is not just the French any more; other countries, such as Belgium, need to be part of these conversations too.”
“It is obviously a cross-party report and so had to be agreed by Committee members from all parties. I think we were quite clear about the need for the Government to address and expand safe and legal routes. It is worth mentioning that we are somewhere in the middle of the table: we are not the most generous and we are not the least generous country in taking asylum seekers. That is worth remembering. As I say, the report has cross-party support, and I actually think it is fairly hard-hitting about the situation in the asylum system and in respect of small boat crossings in the channel. I hope we will get a positive response from the Home Office in due course.”
“This is an urgent matter, though, and the fact that other reports have come out this week will hopefully enable the Home Office, in crafting its response, to take a view about what is working, what is not working and what more it needs to do.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and questions. This statement is obviously about the report and the work that we undertook as a Select Committee over the past couple of years. It is fair to say that we were very disappointed that the Home Secretary was not able to come last week or this week to answer questions on a variety of issues. The Home Office will have to respond to our report: it has to do so within eight weeks—I think that is the normal timetable—although in the past that timeframe has been rather elastic and the Home Office has not always responded as quickly as we would have liked.”
“This might be a good time to reflect on that before submitting to the consultation, so if the deadline could be extended, that would be helpful.”