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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“Friend pointed out—and in the new year to go forward with only 12 staff, outsourced warehousing and a focus on the grocery business. I am pleased to say that Traidcraft has had a good autumn of sales. There has been tremendous support from the community in my hon. Friend’s constituency and in the north-east more generally, which has helped to buoy it as well. Fairtrade continues to do well in the UK. I have referred to the fact that its sales volumes rose by 7% last year. It is important to recognise that, notwithstanding the difficulties that Traidcraft has been through, fair trade continues to enjoy strong consumer support. Traidcraft has a remarkable story. Its pioneering role helped to create fair trade as an enduring segment of the retail market.”
“Friend the Member for Blaydon pointed out, Traidcraft has struggled to make a profit for the reasons that she set out: the wider challenges in the UK market, Brexit and the fall in the value of the pound. Traidcraft had quite a specific role as a pioneer in fair trade and, with fair trade being taken up widely by retailers—supermarkets have lots of their own-brand fair trade products these days—the position of Traidcraft in establishing its own niche and commercially viable market has been a difficult one. It struggled to make profits. Last summer, Traidcraft under its then recently appointed chief executive, Robin Roth, after some disappointing sales figures, took the view that things could not carry on. It was decided to rethink the business model, to downsize radically—losing more than 60 jobs, as my hon.”
“For example, a few years ago it played a key role in the campaign to establish the Groceries Code Adjudicator to secure fairer access to the retail market. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) in her intervention mentioned the “Who picked my tea?” campaign that it led, drawing the attention of consumers to questions about the working conditions and circumstances of those who pick the tea that we all enjoy. Traidcraft played a key role in the establishment of the Fairtrade Foundation in 1992. It also developed the Geobar, which proved to be a phenomenally successful product, I am pleased to say. The Geobar generated substantial commercial success for the company and underpinned its activities for a long time. In recent years, however, as my hon.”
“Friend pointed out, it has 4,500 individual shareholders, buys groceries and craft items from more than 70 producer groups in some 30 countries, and sells them through community fair traders online, dedicated fair trade shops and mainstream retailers. To secure Traidcraft’s focus on its core mission, as a Christian response to poverty, it established the Traidcraft Foundation, which I chair. It has a golden share in the plc to ensure that the initial focus is maintained. Traidcraft Exchange, the sister charity which does a lot of the producer support work that the hon. Member for Stafford rightly highlighted in his intervention, was established in 1986. It continues to thrive, to support low-income producers in Africa and Asia to grow their business, and to campaign in the UK.”
“You might be forgiven, Mr Hollobone, for thinking that a few bookstalls in draughty church halls around the country were never going to change anything much but, ultimately, they brought about that change of fortune for the banana farmers of St Lucia, even though neither they nor Traidcraft ever sold any bananas. Voluntary, community-based support, initially in churches and then increasingly elsewhere—for example, Fairtrade schools—enabled the fair trade movement to get a toehold to start with, to survive and to go on to flourish. Today, fair trade has a large niche in the UK retail market—Fairtrade sales volumes rose 7% last year. Traidcraft established itself as a plc. As my hon.”
“It described itself as a “Christian response to poverty”. It started with hand-crafted items from Bangladesh, and still sells those. Together with the chair of Traidcraft, Ram Gidoomal, my wife and I visited some of those producers in Bangladesh in 2012. Traidcraft has always had a focus on support for women producers as the most effective way to raise family incomes. Traidcraft started with those craft products. In the 1980s, the idea of fair trade was pioneered in the Netherlands with coffee, and Traidcraft brought the idea to the UK. What happened, in effect, was that people who ran church bookstalls were persuaded to offer some crafts and fair trade items for sale on the edge of their collections of books.”
“Money is going into run-down schools, the banana sheds are being repaired and the farmers can scarcely believe the turn round in their fortunes.” A remarkable change had taken place. The article went on: “In a reversal of the situation nine years ago where only the Co-op was prepared to stock fair trade products”— I join the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) in paying tribute to its role— “the big supermarkets now openly compete with each other to be socially conscious.” How did that turnabout occur? What was it that changed the retail market in the UK to deliver such huge benefits to struggling farmers in the developing world growing bananas, coffee, tea, cocoa and other products? In a word, it was Traidcraft. Traidcraft, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon said, was established 40 years ago.”
“At the time, a press article described the impact of that decision, under the headline, “Saving St Lucia: UK supermarket sweeps up 100m bananas”: “Just seven years ago the banana farmers of the Caribbean island of St Lucia were hanging up their machetes and ready to turn their steep hillsides back to forest. UK subsidies for their fruit were doomed, they couldn’t compete with giant ‘dollar’ bananas from South American plantations, and a dying industry seemed to provide only back-breaking work for scant reward. Today, the island where bananas are not so much a crop but a way of life is celebrating. Just about every St Lucian banana sold for export now commands a premium price and European supermarkets are queuing for more.”
“I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on the initiative to secure this debate and on what she said. I also very much agree with what the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, where it is recorded that I am the unpaid chair of the Traidcraft Foundation trustees. I will say a little more about the work of that body later in my remarks. In 2007, Sainsbury’s announced that it would in future sell only Fairtrade bananas, a commitment that it has maintained to the present day, with 100 million a year of those bananas coming from St Lucia.”
“I am enjoying the points the Minister is making. Will he also pay tribute to the role of Traidcraft in establishing standards for corporate reporting? I think Traidcraft was the first plc to publish a proper social impact report, which was very influential across the entire plc sector.”
“I am grateful. The Minister may well have been about to answer this point, but the Government have confirmed that they will continue to provide the poorest and least developed countries with quota-free, duty-free access to the UK market, which I welcome. Can he give any reassurance to producers in other countries—not the least developed, but poorer countries— that EU-negotiated economic partnerships and free trade agreements will be rolled over so that after Brexit, producers in those countries will continue to have the access to the UK market that they currently enjoy?”
“Perhaps he can tell us a little more about the mechanics of what needs to be done to deliver on the aim he set out, which I very much welcome.”
“The Minister is being generous in giving way. May I press him a little further on the question of access to the UK market for developing countries other than the least developed? I think what he has said to us is that the Government’s aim is to make sure that after Brexit, access will be available to other developing countries at least at the level provided by EU-negotiated economic partnership and free trade agreements. Can he confirm that that is their intention? Will the Minister also tell us a little more about what the Government are doing to ensure that that aim can be delivered? For example, why can they not simply announce, “Yes, everyone is going to carry on with the access they have at the moment”?”
“I reported in my speech—my constituency has a lot in common with that of the—that at that time in East Ham, on High Street North we had 14 betting shops open from 7.30 am to 10 pm, each with just one member of staff. I quoted a former Paddy Power manager, who told me of families and businesses ruined while he was managing a shop, and of students who gambled away their student loans. He estimated that on a typical day in any Paddy Power shop with four fixed odds betting terminals, as they all have, one could meet half a dozen people whose lives had been destroyed by their addiction to these vile machines. A big use of the terminals has been to launder the proceeds of drug crime, giving criminals an apparently legitimate source for their cash. They are in those shops day in and day out.”
“I also pay tribute to Christian Action Research and Education, which has been a consistent supporter, with Newham Council, of the APPG. Unfortunately, the role of some others has been lamentable. Some in the House have lobbied for the continuation of this shameful racket, which has destroyed the wellbeing of so many families. The Chancellor of the Exchequer should be ashamed of himself for apparently caving in to the lobbying. The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport also behaved lamentably in failing to support his Minister, who was forced to resign,. Ministers missed the chance to act on the growing menace of FOBTs five years ago, in the 2013 triennial review. Five years ago next month, we had a debate in the Chamber, which made the scale of the menace crystal clear.”
“Friend the Member for Tooting pointed out, has played an exemplary and crucial part as well. Like others, I pay tribute to the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford, who was absolutely right to resign last month when the Government tried, shamefully, to delay this change, and to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green—with whom I disagree about virtually everything—who has played a positive role in this campaign. I also pay tribute to local authorities outside of the House. My local authority, Newham, has provided valuable support to the all-party parliamentary group on fixed odds betting terminals—the one local authority to do so. I pay tribute to the current Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz, and to her long-serving predecessor, Sir Robin Wales.”
“I am very pleased to be serving under your chairmanship this evening, Ms Ryan, I think for the first time. Rarely will a statutory instrument have elicited the joy that this one will. It represents success at last for a long, hard-fought campaign. We should have succeeded years ago, and would have done were it not for the fact that the Treasury were profiting from the shameful racket to which the statutory instrument will finally put an end. It is right, as others have said, that we give credit where it is due. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East has led the campaign as chair of the all-party parliamentary group with a unique blend of passion and warmth, and we are greatly in her debt. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East, as my hon.”
“I am absolutely delighted that we have finally got the chance to vote for this statutory instrument, but let us never forget the lessons that must be learned from this sorry and shameful saga.”
“The Association of British Bookmakers, with which I worked in that period at the Treasury, has behaved shamefully, and industry leaders, who comport themselves as respectable businessmen, should hang their heads in shame for the lives they have destroyed in their pursuit of profit. The Minister said that only those showing social responsibility would be able to take part in this industry. The industry has shown zero social responsibility; it has not even shown morality, let alone social responsibility. Let nobody try to pretend otherwise, because I am afraid that nobody involved in this vile trade knows anything of social responsibility. They have been completely blinded by the enormous sums they have been able to make.”
“With the reform package that we introduced, part of its aim was to make low-margin betting products viable. I did not know then about fixed odds betting terminals, but I remember asking industry representatives—I particularly recall a conversation with somebody from Ladbrokes—whether the industry would use this change and behave responsibly. Looking me in the eye, that individual assured me that it would. Rarely have I been so badly misled. The industry has been utterly irresponsible in the way that it has behaved with these terminals. The vast sums that it has raked in have completely blinded people to the ruin that it has caused.”
“So much money has been made by the betting companies that they have been able to employ armies of unscrupulous lobbyists and lawyers, and—let us be honest—sold-out former police officers, to give evidence for them from time to time. Of course, the Treasury has been among the principal beneficiaries of this vile trade. Having spread blame around the place, I want to recognise that—unwittingly, at the time—I bear some personal responsibility for what has happened. From 1999 to 2001, I was the Treasury Minister responsible for betting duty. I introduced a series of reforms to betting duty designed to recognise the fact that gambling was moving online. Indeed, there was a real worry, which to some extent has been fulfilled but not as far as it might have been, that the online betting companies were also going to move offshore.”
“These vile machines have been cynically fostered by shameless, irresponsible conglomerates in the poorest communities, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East has rightly pointed out, destroying hard-working families and, on occasions, lives—the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire is right about that. They are a magnet for crime. They launder the proceeds of crime. They are a tawdry and soulless presence on high streets such as the one I represent, driving decent shops away and repelling family shoppers. How can it have taken five years from the time of that debate, which made the extent of the damage so clear, to bring about this statutory instrument?”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. A fair number of people, I am afraid, literally have blood on their hands through what has happened. Often, punters losing huge sums would smash up terminals in the shop in anger, but the one member of staff there was instructed not to call the police, so that the incident would not feature in the crime statistics. Some of the shops act as honey pots for drunken louts intimidating decent shoppers who pass by. We were warned in the course of this campaign that if it succeeded in reducing the maximum stake to £2, the danger was that the number of betting shops could be halved. I must say, if the number of betting shops in East Ham falls by only 50%, I shall be very disappointed. I hope we will see a much larger reduction than that.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the generous tone in which he expresses his criticism, but can I ask him about a comment that a constituent of mine put to me—someone who does a lot of gambling on horses? He said to me that he found it impossible in a lot of those shops to get a bet on a horse because the businesses are so completely taken over by these appalling machines. Horse betting is not going on there at all.”
“I agree with the Chancellor that there will inevitably be an economic penalty from leaving the EU. Does he agree that having to comply with lots of rules set by the EU, over which we will no longer have any say—that will be the position under the withdrawal agreement—is part of the economic penalty that we will suffer?”
“I readily acknowledge that she has worked very hard over nearly two years to bring that about. She recognises just how damaging leaving the EU without a deal would be. Some people in this debate have denied that, so I was pleased to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer robustly argue that case in this remarks earlier. In my view, given that a referendum kicked all this off, we now have to ask the people what the right way forward should be. The Prime Minister has negotiated a deal designed to minimise the economic damage. The question now is: should we leave the EU on the basis she has negotiated, or should we stay? That question has to be answered by the people who took part in the initial referendum, either through a general election, at which the parties could set out their stools, or, if that is not possible, through a people’s vote.”
“The problem is particularly clear in that case, but there will be a lot of examples of that kind right across the board. When I asked the Prime Minister about this issue on Tuesday, she made the point, correctly, that we will continue to have our place in global standards bodies. That is true, but on data protection, with the GDPR, on chemicals regulation and in a whole host of other areas, it is the EU that is setting the pace on global regulation. Under this agreement, we will lose the influence that we have been able to wield in the past through our influence over those EU rules. It is absolutely right that balancing national autonomy on the one hand with prosperity on the other is the nub of this debate. The Prime Minister has tried to reconcile those two conflicting objectives.”
“We all know about the general data protection regulation. The Prime Minister made it clear, I think in her speech in Munich, that she wanted the UK Information Commissioner to keep her place on the European Data Protection Board—quite rightly—so that we can continue to influence, as we have done, the development of GDPR policy and the rules that we will certainly have to continue to apply so that data exchange between the UK and the EU can continue. That was the Prime Minister’s objective, but the agreement but does not provide for that continuing place on the board. Under the agreement, the UK Information Commissioner will lose her seat on the board at the end of March, when we are due to leave the EU, and we will lose our say and influence on rules that we are certainly going to have to continue to apply.”
“I welcome the constructive tone set by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris). I wish to pick up a telling point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) when he opened the debate for the Opposition. It is the case that an inevitable consequence of trying to leave the European Union in a way that minimises the economic damage—that is what the Prime Minister has been trying to define—is that we will end up complying, across the board, with large quantities of rules over which we will no longer have any say at all. It is particularly ironic that that is the outcome of an initiative that was designed to take back control. The situation is very well illustrated by the arrangements on data protection, about which I asked the Prime Minister in the House on Tuesday.”
“On 30 March, under the agreement, the UK will lose its place on the European Data Protection Board, even though Ministers have said they wanted to hang on to that place. It is a place where the UK has wielded considerable influence on the development of European policy. Is not the reality of the agreement that we will continue to have to obey these rules, but we will have lost the ability to influence what those rules are?”
“On enforcement, the report makes the point that half of the prosecutions in the country happen in my borough, Newham. In the Committee’s view, what problems are there with the enforcement arrangements that seemingly make it so difficult for the vast majority of local authorities to carry out such prosecutions?”
“I wonder whether my hon. Friend has seen, as I think would be the case under the Bill, that people like her constituent would not be able to post those products to somebody’s home, whereas somebody selling identical products from overseas would freely be able to carry on sending them by post to the purchaser.”
“There is a defence available, because these are simply platforms.” My argument is that selling a weapon on a UK website that it is illegal to purchase in the UK should be illegal. That is the aim of my new clause 23.”
“Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) pointed out, are being bought online, a lot of them from eBay. I should say that since I raised these points in Committee, disguised knives have been removed from eBay, although they can still be freely found on other websites. Mr Butt tells me that it is on those sites that those who are killing young people are getting their weapons. However, is it illegal for a website with a UK domain name to advertise weapons that are illegal to buy in the UK? Surely the answer ought to be yes, yet there is some uncertainty about that. If I understood her correctly, the Minister advised us in Committee that she thought that it was unlawful for an illegal weapon to be sold in that way, but then she wrote to us and said, “Actually, no.”
“The background is that the Criminal Justice Act 1988 introduced a list of weapons that are illegal to sell in the UK, which was expanded in 2002 to include disguised knives. A disguised knife is “any knife which has a concealed blade or concealed sharp point and is designed to appear to be an everyday object of a kind commonly carried on the person”. It is now illegal to sell that kind of weapon in the UK. I have been speaking to Mr Raheel Butt, who runs an organisation in the borough of Newham called Community and Rehabilitation Solutions. He is from a gang background and has served a prison term, but since he left prison in 2012, he has made it his mission to stop others making the mistakes that he made. He has pointed out to me that a lot of the weapons being used to kill young people on the streets of our cities, as my hon.”
“Given the constraints on time, I will speak only to new clause 23, from among the six new clauses that I have tabled, which deals with a particularly important subject. It might come as a surprise to the House, as it did to me, to learn that weapons that cannot lawfully be purchased in the UK can be purchased online without anyone committing an offence. That cannot be right. The aim of new clause 23 is to plug that gap. It differs from the proposal that we debated in Committee as it allows for a defence if the website removes the offending advertisement for an illegal weapon within 24 hours of being informed of it. That reflects some recent helpful discussions that I have had with eBay about the practicalities of implementing the change that I propose.”
“On financial services, the Prime Minister said that equivalence would not be withdrawn on a whim. Will she tell the House what she meant by that? At the moment, equivalence for a third country can be withdrawn by the European Union at 30 days’ notice, as Switzerland is now experiencing. Will it be different for the UK?”
“T4. Eighty-two per cent. of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, many with immense potential, say that they find business to be inaccessible. I tabled early-day motion 1807 in support of the Movement to Work charity for young people. How will Ministers help to unleash the entrepreneurial potential of young people from all backgrounds?”
“The Minister knows that the five-week delay under universal credit forces people into debt right at the start of their claim, which too often leads to rent arrears and other hardships. I welcome the new Secretary of State to her post. Will the Minister encourage her to take a fresh look at this indefensible five-week delay in particular?”
“The Chancellor announced in the Budget a two-week run-on of legacy benefits for those being migrated to universal credit, but it takes five weeks for a universal credit payment to come through, so what does the Chief Secretary expect families to do in the three-week gap between those two?”
“My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) just mentioned Cambridge University research published last month showing that local authority spending cuts have been concentrated on the poorest areas, making disparities with better-off areas much worse. Phasing out central Government grants, as Ministers are proposing, will make that even worse. Are Ministers happy just to let the disparities between different areas rocket?”
“Everybody claiming universal credit has to wait at least five weeks before being entitled to payments, including those being moved across from previous benefits. The Secretary of State referred to the additional two weeks of previous benefits announced by the Chancellor in the Budget. How can Ministers justify stopping all benefits for a period of at least three weeks for people migrating from previous benefits on to universal credit?”
“I want to take the Secretary of State back to what he said about the position the Government found themselves in in 2010, when of course, his former right hon. Friend, George Osborne, promised to eradicate the deficit by 2015. They failed to do that, and now there is no target date at all in the Budget for eradicating the deficit. Why that dramatic change?”
“The Chancellor announced a two-week run-on for previous benefits. That will not apply to tax credits and, particularly for those on ESA, there will still be a three-week gap. What are people supposed to do in that time? The Government are saying to them, “We’re changing the system and, as a by-product, you will get no help at all for three weeks.” Where can that idea have come from? How can Conservative Members, who, I am sure, meet—as we all do—people struggling to make ends meet from one payment period to another, have come up with the idea that people get no help for three weeks? Ministers need to address that urgently.”
“The latest annual survey of hours and earnings shows that almost one in seven employee jobs are paid weekly. On top of that, there are fortnightly-paid jobs. What are those people supposed to do during the five weeks when they are waiting for their universal credit to be paid? I have asked Ministers that question repeatedly, but they simply do not have an answer. It is extraordinary that it has been proposed to apply the five-week gap to people who are being migrated from existing benefits to universal credit. They do not have a salary cheque in the bank, but have been dependent on benefits, perhaps out of work on ill health grounds, claiming employment and support allowance, for a long time. They will be migrated on to universal credit, and it has been proposed that they too will have a five-week gap when they get no support at all.”
“The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) touched on universal credit and I want to focus my remarks on that. There were significant changes in the Budget, which go some way to repairing the great damage of George Osborne’s 2015 cuts. Those changes will make a big difference particularly for families with children who rent their home. However, the Budget does not affect those features of universal credit that plunge people into debt, forcing them to get behind with their rent and compelling them to use food banks at the start of their universal credit claim. The biggest of those factors is still the five-week delay between applying for universal credit and being entitled to benefit. Ministers can defend that gap only in the case of people who have a month’s salary cheque in the bank just before they claim.”
“I am listening carefully to the Minister. Does she accept that college funding has not increased in cash terms since 2013, and that that has made the likelihood of insolvency, which the regulations address, much greater?”
“I welcome the fact that, as I understand it, by the end of this year we will again have a nationwide labour market support programme for unemployed young people, but we need to know how effective it is. At risk of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, I make the obvious point that that requires at least basic data to be recorded, collected centrally and published. At the moment, none of that is being done for this programme. I hope the Minister can provide some reassurance that it will soon start being done, for the Department’s benefit and the benefit of us all.”
“We need to know how many people have gone on to the youth obligation in the latest period and how many have left it, and how many were on the programme at the beginning of the period and at the end. It would also be helpful to know something about the age, geographic spread and gender of participants. For those who have left the programme, the crucial information we need is where they have gone: how many have gone on to an apprenticeship, in line with the policy intent; how many have gone on to a traineeship or work placement; how many have gone into education or training; how many have got a job; and how many have stopped claiming benefit but not started work or training. Finally, what is the sanction rate for those on the programme?”
“I recognise that providing evaluation data may well not be the top priority among the current difficulties with the universal credit IT system, which I have been following closely for the last eight years, but I am sure the Minister will agree that it needs to be fixed. I am encouraged that the Minister’s colleague told me in his written answer last month that the Department is considering what statistics could be produced on a regular basis, and so I want to finish by suggesting what some of the statistics ought to be. I would hope they could be produced at least on a half-yearly or perhaps on a quarterly basis—statistics on the Work programme were published quarterly.”