Sir Stephen Timms
MP for East Ham · Labour · United Kingdom
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If he would like to send me details of that particular case, I will happily look into it. On the subject of people with hearing impairments, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities and I will be meeting the British Sign Language Advisory Board this afternoon.”
“Better outcomes require early identification and support for girls and young women with special educational needs, including dyslexia. That is the aim of the SEND reforms and the development of national inclusion standards.”
“Autistic people and people with ADHD have been struggling to get the right support at the right time. Recommendations from Professor Karen Guldberg’s neurodivergence task and finish group directly informed the SEND reforms that were published earlier this year.”
“The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on public bodies to make reasonable adjustments, so that disabled people are not put at a disadvantage by accessibility challenges.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. This benefit is there to contribute to the additional costs of disability. Too often, what has happened—my hon.”
“I think we can take the hon. Member’s question as a tacit recognition that in 14 years the previous Government should have done something to fix these problems. The steering group is clear that the provision of cash to meet the additional costs of disability is vital.”
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“It is very hurtful that the Government simply cannot be bothered to keep the promise they made eight years ago to so many people in that community. Muslims make up around 10% of students. The number could and should be higher. Young people want to take part in higher education, and the prospects for our economy demand that they should be able to do so as well. In 2018, the Sutton Trust’s “Home and Away” report recommended what they called a “halal student loan” to give more Muslim students the chance of higher education, and to give those who do more choices by allowing them to choose to live away from home—to make that affordable for them without taking an interest-bearing loan. It argued for Muslim young people to have the same social mobility chances as non-Muslims, and surely we should all agree with that.”
“I do not have any alternative as I am not wealthy enough to pay the fees without taking out a loan.” “I am always thinking about how to pay back quickly to get rid of the interest.” “I’m going to have to work quite a lot to keep up with payments and living costs which may have an effect on my university experience.” Asha is organising a demonstration, led by school children and students, outside the Department tomorrow to highlight this long-standing injustice of Muslim students being unable to attend university, or suffering anguish if they do so. I hope the Minister will be able to get a message to those who join that demonstration. British Muslims make up nearly 5% of the UK population. In the borough that I represent, it is about a third of our population.”
“Asha’s younger sister, Amina, wanted to study physiotherapy. She was unconcerned because the course was Government funded. She took a year out for volunteering. Unfortunately, the following year’s intake was no longer funded, so she was forced to give up. She would have loved to have become a physiotherapist, but she has not done so. Asha has assembled on social media this week responses from others. The comments she has received include these: “I regret taking an interest-based loan, and wish I had chosen other options.” “Interest loans are forbidden in my religion (Islam).”
“She says now: “Many miracles later, I’m going into my final year studying medicine, but it shouldn't take miracles for a student to want to progress and use their lives to contribute to society.” And she is right. Her oldest sister, Zainab, finished college in the first year of the tuition-fee hike. She wanted to go to university. When it became so costly, and taking out an interest-bearing loan was the only way to pay for it, she decided that she could not and took a job instead. Asha’s other older sister, Sumaya, wanted to study education and become a primary school teacher. She wrestled with whether to take out a loan. She applied, and was offered a place. Her friends persuaded her instead to study nursing as it was funded, and so she signed up through clearing at the last minute.”
“She told the BBC in January that many Muslim students take out a student loan, but “with a very heavy heart, and that also affects their studies as well.” She managed to turn her A-level grades round at college in order to go to university, but then felt that she could not apply because of the interest problem. Fortunately, she had heard of the Government’s consultation in her first year after leaving college; she applied, and then deferred her entry in the hope that something would be available by 2016-17. It was only the promise of alternative student finance that meant that she managed to get that far. She kept going for years with the hope that, if she could just get through this year, alternative student finance would be available next year.”
“The government will need to consider carefully how the changes we are proposing...affect plans to introduce a system of alternative student finance for students who feel unable to access interest-bearing student loans for reasons of faith.” Despite not addressing it, Ministers ever since have used the forthcoming response to the report as a justification for still not doing anything. My constituent Fatima Khan contacted me. She wrote: “The current pandemic only serves to intensify these challenges for Muslim students; with part-time jobs being lost and the economic decline affecting the livelihood of many of our families.” Fatima did attend university, but has friends and family who were unable to do so. I have been speaking to the campaigner, Asha Hassan, who is in the final year of her medical studies at the University of Exeter.”
“In November 2015, a Green Paper said that “we are looking to develop the ‘Takaful’ product more fully.” A White Paper the following year said that there was a “real need for a new option for students who feel unable to use interest-bearing loans...we will introduce an alternative student finance product for the first time. This will...avoid the payment of interest”. That was six years ago. The Higher Education and Research Act received Royal Assent in 2017, which campaigners hoped would allow implementation of the takaful loan model. Then Ministers said that the May 2019 Augar review would cover it. It did not; it just restated that “students should be able to access finance support that is compatible with their religious beliefs.”
“A year after David Cameron’s speech, a Government consultation attracted 20,000 responses, a record number at the time. It showed that the loan system was deterring many Muslim students; 94% of the respondents believed that there would be demand for a sharia-compliant loan and 81% believed that the model proposed was acceptable. That model was a takaful system in which students would pay into the system to guarantee each other against loss, in a co-operative structure generally recognised as sharia-compliant. Repayments, debt levels and the cost to the Government would be the same as for conventional student loans. The Government’s response to the consultation said that because of technicalities, the solution would take at least two years to deliver. Unfortunately, progress over the seven years since then has been glacial.”
“Some Muslim young people defer university until they have saved to pay their fees outright; some, with a heavy heart, take out a loan and feel bad about it ever after; others do not attend at all. That is the reality for young British Muslims today. As Prime Minister, David Cameron promised to change that. In a speech at the World Islamic Economic Forum in London in 2013, he proposed alternative student finance, saying: “Never again should a Muslim in Britain feel unable to go to university because they cannot get a Student Loan—simply because of their religion.” The promise was clear. Eight years later, there is still not even a timetable for keeping it. It looks to young Muslims as if Ministers simply cannot be bothered.”
“I am grateful to have been granted this Adjournment debate today. Eight years ago, the Government pledged to introduce alternative student finance. That promise has still not been delivered, which has prevented large numbers of Muslims from entering higher education. The problem became serious in 2012, when tuition fees were drastically raised and it became impossible for most students to take a university course without a student loan. For a significant number of British Muslims, having to take an interest-bearing student loan meant that they could not go to university at all. Riba—interest—is prohibited in Islam, as it was in Christianity until the middle ages.”
“The cuts to UK aid put thousands of projects like those run by Compassion UK in Togo at risk. I really hope that Parliament will reject the motion.”
“Compassion UK’s work, supported by UK aid, is starting to change things: in the first year, the project reached more than 4,000 people in extreme poverty and the number of full-term healthy babies delivered was 24% above target. UK development aid helps to save lives among the world’s poorest people. We met somebody called Ama, who registered in the programme when she was seven months pregnant. She was struggling to feed her children. When she reached full term, her husband left suddenly. She also had malaria. Her baby and her own life were at risk. The child survival project provided food and hygiene support. Her expenses were paid, she gave birth to a son and she has since been able to set up a business of her own. Even a small amount of aid saves lives.”
“Those campaigns led to the historic 2005 Gleneagles deal in which $40 billion of debts owed by 18 highly indebted poor countries were written off. The idea of cancelling unpayable debts inspired people and drew them together. Rooted in teaching in the Bible, it had a dramatic impact on Government policy and on the lives of millions. Last month, I joined MPs on a virtual trip to Togo organised by the Christian charity Compassion UK. We “visited” its UK aid-funded child survival project. The situation in Togo is desperate. Under-five mortality is among the worst in the world, one in 25 babies do not reach the age of one, and women have a one-in-58 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth.”
“We had a 20-year cross-party consensus that we should meet the UN’s target of 0.7% of GNI on aid. I very much regret that that consensus has been lost. Of course, when GDP goes down, our aid budget will go down, but the pandemic is no justification for reducing the proportion of national income committed to international aid. In a fine speech, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) referred to the strength of Christian Aid in Chesham and Amersham. As a Treasury Minister in the late 1990s, I saw the Churches play the key role in securing that cross-party consensus. They were the instigators of Jubilee 2000 ahead of the millennium and the key supporters of Make Poverty History afterwards.”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) pointed out that there is a risk, as things stand, that children may have to isolate and stay at home when they should be taking part in the holiday activities and food programme over the summer. Can the Secretary of State give an assurance that, whatever happens, children who are entitled to access food support over the summer will still be able to do that?”
“The Government must now finally side with leaseholders and would-be homeowners, and take on not the building products industry, but the house builders.”
“NHBC, the privatised building control provider favoured by house builders because it is easier to satisfy than local authorities, signed off shoddy, defective buildings with minimal inspection, if any. It has been utterly discredited. Far from killing off the health and safety culture, Ministers have had to hand the Health and Safety Executive—the embodiment of that culture, which the Tories fortunately did not manage to “kill off”—the crucial new Building Safety Regulator role. The Spectator article finishes by pointing out: “Powerful vested interests benefit mightily from this high-price, low-build-quality gridlock” and calls for “a full Competition and Markets Authority inquiry into UK housebuilders”. Unlike other Members in this debate, I do not want to thank those house builders. Competition is absent from this market.”
“And then there is Help to Buy, which The Spectator says is “a government subsidy focused on new builds which has overwhelmingly gone to the big operators, juicing up both house prices and profits further, while making new homes even less affordable for the majority who are unable to access the scheme.” All this has been compounded by Tory failure on regulation. In January 2012, David Cameron made it his new year’s resolution—with a frankly chilling phrase, in hindsight—to “kill off the health and safety culture for good.” Tory Housing Ministers, seeing growing evidence of the need to tighten fire safety regulation, steadfastly refused to do so; it would have upset the house builders. The upshot was Grenfell Tower.”
“We learned this month of the anger in Chesham and Amersham over Government housing policy. My constituents who face massive bills for waking watch and to repair defects in their leasehold homes are angry as well. Their anger is well expressed by Liam Halligan in the current issue of The Spectator , which was once edited by the Prime Minister. Liam Halligan’s article explains how the big house builders—Barratt, Taylor Wimpey and Persimmon —have used their excessive profits from the broken housing market to buy off the Tory party with donations in order to successfully maintain the current rigged system. Those firms have built tens of thousands of shoddy, dangerous homes and are now passing the cost of fixing the problem to leaseholders, and the Government are refusing to stop them.”
“The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has told the Work and Pensions Committee that cutting £20 a week from universal credit in October will reduce unemployment support to the lowest level for over 30 years at exactly the point when unemployment is being increased by the ending of the furlough scheme, and that it will also pull 400,000 people, including many children, below the poverty line. What assessment will the Minister make of the impact of that cut on child poverty before the cut goes ahead?”
“There was widespread disappointment that the G7 did not commit to additional climate finance beyond what has already been agreed. What steps will the Prime Minister take between now and COP26 to ensure that that summit does deal effectively with the challenge of loss and damage in the countries most at risk?”
“In written evidence, the charity Magic Breakfast told us that food insecurity, worse physical and mental health outcomes and lower educational attainment are all impacts of child poverty. So the Government need to be very serious about this challenge and put their money where their mouth is. There is no sign of any willingness to do so as yet, as last week’s resignation of Sir Kevan Collins dramatically highlighted. We need a change of heart.”
“Joanne Ormond, head teacher of Maryport Church of England Primary School in Cumbria, told the Committee about “that next level of families up that are struggling—the ones who have low-paid jobs, so they don’t necessarily qualify for the free school meals”, and how difficult those families had found things during the pandemic. She singled out single parents as being very hard-hit. The Social Metrics Commission has found that 57% of children in families working just part time are today in poverty. The Resolution Foundation has shown that the poverty rate for families with three or more children has now risen to almost half—47% of those families are in poverty.”
“Problems, obviously, have greatly worsened during the pandemic, as we have been reminded in the debate. Research by Kellogg’s has shown that nearly a fifth of schools have started a food bank since the pandemic began. Ben Levinson is headteacher of Kensington Primary School in my constituency—I am delighted that the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston, plans to visit that school tomorrow. It is Primary School of the Year in the current Pearson National Teaching Awards. Ben Levinson told the Committee of a “sizeable population…of families who have no recourse to public funds who have really struggled through this period.” The school runs a food bank.”
“In evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee on 27 May, Anne Longfield, who was the Children’s Commissioner for England until February, told us: “Those that are living in poverty and at disadvantage are much less likely to achieve academically at various points we measure”. Pointing out that child poverty is now twice the level of pensioner poverty, she identified to the Committee a gap in the Government’s capacity because of the loss of joint Department for Work and Pensions/DFE working. She said: “There used to be a policy team, there used to be a policy around poverty. That was then able to look at how the impact of national policies needed to drive not only alleviation of poverty but a reduction of poverty.” I think Anne Longfield is right: those two Departments should be working together as they did in the past.”
“I want to start by applauding the ambitious plan set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who opened the debate. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), who is a member, with me, of the Work and Pensions Committee, because I want to talk about the Committee’s work. We are conducting an inquiry into children in poverty, because the number of children in poverty is climbing sharply. I am very grateful to the Education Committee for its support for our work; the Chair, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), spoke earlier in the debate.”
“The case won by the GMB trade union against Uber over the status of its drivers is immensely important, but why are the Government leaving it for these issues to be slugged out, employer by employer, worker group by worker group, in the courts? That is in nobody’s interests, so when will the Government finally bring forward the long-promised employment Bill, which is so urgently needed?”
“The extension of free school meals at the start of the pandemic to families with no recourse to public funds was exactly the right thing to do. I hope that will be made permanent. I know that the Minister’s Department is looking at that, together with the Home Office. It would be very helpful if she could let us know today where that review has reached.”
“Dr Kitty Stewart from the London School of Economics recently told our Committee that “money itself makes a difference to children’s outcomes”, partly because poverty causes stress and anxiety among parents, making it harder for them “to focus on children’s needs, listen to them, help with homework and so on.” I support the Sutton Trust’s call for universities to have access to free school meals information, so that they can take account of these issues in admissions decisions. Anne Longfield, the former Children’s Commissioner, who is due to give evidence to the Committee again on Wednesday, has called for a return to better joined-up working between the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education. We need a clear Government focus on tackling the growing problem of child poverty.”
“The University of Liverpool health inequalities team told our inquiry that it has repeatedly found strong evidence of a causal relationship between child poverty and “mental health problems, cognitive disability, overweight and obesity, and longstanding illness.” In 2014, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission reported that poorer children were far less likely to achieve high levels of educational attainment.”
“Troubled by those developments, the Work and Pensions Committee set up an inquiry on children in poverty. Our next public evidence session will be on Wednesday. Last December, Ben Levinson, headteacher of Kensington Primary School in my constituency, told the Committee that the plight of families with no recourse to public funds and other pressures compelled the school to set up a trust to provide food packages and parcels for the needy. Kellogg’s has told us that 18% of schools have started a food bank since the pandemic began. These problems in childhood lead to attainment and health problems later.”
“I welcome this opportunity to highlight rising food insecurity among children. Relative child poverty has risen sharply. The Resolution Foundation found that nearly half of families with three or more children were in relative poverty after housing costs in 2019-20, and the family resources survey, which covered food security for the first time this March, shows that 43% of universal credit claimants have low or very low food security, so we have a big problem. In the year to last March, the Trussell Trust distributed 1 million emergency food parcels to children. The Independent Food Aid Network, with food banks outside the Trussell Trust, told the Work and Pensions Committee this month that demand last year was more than double that of the year before.”
“Large numbers of people gather at the al-Aqsa mosque to pray. Does the Minister agree that the attacks that we saw on people praying there, and the large number of civilian casualties that resulted, cannot be justified? Will he urge the authorities there to ensure that there is no repeat?”
“Hard-working, law-abiding families without indefinite leave to remain have not had as much support as others during the covid-19 outbreak because of the effect of the no recourse to public funds condition. Some of those families have been able to benefit from the job retention scheme, so how will they be supported after that scheme closes in September?”
“In September 2018 I moved an amendment to the Offensive Weapons Bill in Committee to ban the purchase online of weapons that cannot lawfully be bought in a shop in the UK. I am pleased that that at least is in the online safety Bill this time.”
“People think that if a site is on Google, it must have been vetted, but it will not have been. Google takes money from scammers and then also takes money from regulators to warn about the scammers we find on Google. It is not just my Select Committee saying this: industry is saying it, and the Governor of the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority are saying that this Bill must legislate to deal with this problem. Martin Lewis, the money saving expert, said that “the Government has stumbled at the first fence, by not including scams in the Online Safety Bill.” In letting crooks and scammers continue to ruin people’s lives, Ministers are being abjectly soft on this appalling crime. They could still do the right thing and legislate in this Bill, and I urge them to do so.”
“In our pension scams report of last month, the Work and Pensions Committee recommended legislating against online investment fraud, but it appears that the Bill will address only user-generated content. We understand that online scam adverts are to be dealt with in a separate initiative, which, so far as I can tell, has made no tangible progress at all since it was announced two years ago. It will take perhaps a further two or three years before it delivers anything. Campaigner Mark Taber gave evidence to the Select Committee. He found the compare-uk-bonds.co.uk fake comparison site on Google and reported it to Google in May. It stayed up until December. He has just heard from a recently bereaved woman who lost over £200,000 after finding that fake site on Google in September. Google should have acted in May, but did not.”
“I first want to deplore the loss of the employment Bill. It was announced in the December 2019 Queen’s Speech but entirely omitted this time. The Work and Pensions Committee report on the Department’s response to coronavirus recommended last June that the Government should bring forward the employment Bill as soon as possible to increase legal protection for people in low-paid work and the gig economy, so last Friday, with the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), I wrote to the Secretary of State asking whether the Government still plan to legislate in this area, and, if so, when. In opening the debate the Home Secretary spoke about the online safety Bill, but there is a gaping omission from that Bill.”
“Member said, the Government have the chance to tackle this enormous problem in the forthcoming online safety Bill, but it appears, extraordinarily, that financial harms are to be carved out of it. I hope that the Minister can encourage us that that might be reconsidered. We have heard a separate announcement of a consultation on online advertising, but that covers only part of the problem. A call for evidence on online advertising closed a year ago, but as yet nothing at all seems to have come out of that, and asking us to wait for yet further consultation before anything is done would be hopeless. The FSCS, the FCA and, I understand, the Governor of the Bank of England are urging that scams should be included in the online safety Bill, so I hope the Minister can encourage us on that.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) on securing the debate and on the powerful case she made. The Pensions Scams Industry Group estimates that 40,000 people, like Mr and Mrs Biggs, were scammed out of pension savings in the five years after the introduction of the pension freedoms and lost £10 billion between them. As she explained, losing pension savings after a lifetime of work is a devastating experience, and she is right that most of the problem is online. In September, Aviva told the Work and Pensions Committee that in the previous six months—since the start of lockdown—it had identified 27 fake websites purporting to be Aviva trying to defraud pension-age customers of their investments. As the hon.”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Ministers have repeatedly said that leaseholders should not bear the costs of the fire cladding scandal. Why is he insisting today that they should?”
“I agree with what my hon. Friend says. I wonder whether he has visited claddingscandalmap.co.uk, which maps 450 buildings with 60,000 homes affected by this scandal. It also shows the Members of this House who are voting to force leaseholders to pay towards the costs.”
“I hope that we will come back to them soon if the duty of care amendment is lost this afternoon. I warmly welcome the progress on the Bill in the past few days and would be grateful for any light the Minister can shed on what has been going on.”
“The noble Lord Robertson—I welcome the Minister’s tribute to him—introducing his amendment in the other place, said: “Maybe after a lifetime in politics I was affected by some uncharacteristic naivety in thinking that the Government, faced by almost universal and expert opposition on this aspect of the Bill, would by now have changed their mind.” [ Official Report, House of Lords, 13 April 2021; Vol. 811, c. 1190.] Yet they ploughed on until yesterday. Perhaps it was indeed the change of Minister that averted disaster, and with others I congratulate him on his achievement in a short time, but if he can, in winding up, shed some further light on what on earth has been going on, the House would be grateful. I strongly support what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) said on duty of care and investigations.”
“I also warmly welcome the further concession that the Minister has announced. The Bill will now exclude all the offences for which service personnel could be summoned before the International Criminal Court. That has now fixed the worst of the problems that many have been anxious about during debates on the Bill. It would be helpful to understand why it has proved so hard for the Government to realise how awful what they were proposing was. No Minister wants to give armed forces carte blanche to commit torture, genocide and war crimes, and yet it has required the most extraordinary struggle to stop the Government doing exactly that.”
“I thank the hon. Member for that answer. He announced a new commission earlier. I welcome very much the bold vision for addressing the housing crisis in the archbishops’ housing commission report published in February. How will the Church work with social housing providers to provide desperately needed affordable housing, including in east London?”
“I congratulate the Minister on his appointment. I very much welcome the concession he has just announced, but why are the Government retaining the presumption against prosecution in the case of war crimes, because that leaves open the risk of UK troops in future being summoned to the International Criminal Court? Surely nobody wants that.”
“By accepting that change is necessary in the case of torture, the Minister is surely accepting that there is a problem here and that war crimes need to be excluded in the same way, otherwise, we run exactly the risks that nobody wants to see.”
“Iain Porter of Joseph Rowntree told the Select Committee that the current benefit level without the £20 uplift is “at the lowest level since around 1990 in real terms”, and that as a proportion of average earnings, it is the lowest ever. Inflicting that just as unemployment is peaking is indefensible. The principal policy manager at Citizens Advice told the Select Committee: “At the very least, if the uplift is not made permanent, we think it needs to be in place for at least 12 months while we go through the tricky part of recovery from this crisis.” I hope Ministers will reflect and, having done so, decide after all not to make this cut in September.”
“A Northern Ireland woman told the Joseph Rowntree Foundation: “The £20 uplift to Universal Credit has meant I have just about managed to keep my head just above water. I’m living day to day trying to pay my bills and keep my house warm for my child. Taking this away now or in six months means I will be drowning in debt.” A London woman said: “We’ve relied heavily on food banks…That £20 is often the difference between light and heat or no light and heat. If you don’t have gas, you can’t cook.” A Leeds man said: “I am aware of the extra—if it wasn’t for that I don’t know how I would survive. Living on Universal Credit is hard; it’s extremely hard. It is literally living day to day and working out where my next food is coming from.” Twenty pounds a week should not be taken away from people like that just as unemployment peaks.”