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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“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If people are forced to depend on an advance right at the beginning of their claim, they are by definition plunged into debt right at the start. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has I think told us today, in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), that she will look at the repayment periods and, hopefully, offer a less demanding repayment schedule than is the case at the moment. However, just plunging people into debt at the beginning of a claim is a very serious problem. The Trussell Trust, which I have referred to, said that we should pause the roll-out of universal credit to fix the problems. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) made that plea from the Opposition Front Bench, as she has done repeatedly and rightly.”
“The Prime Minister has opted, finally, for a high degree of alignment with the European Union—she is right to have done so. The Government and the EU intend that the UK will stay in the large number of international agreements with countries outside the EU covering trade and other areas, but that will require agreement from those non-EU countries. What progress has there been so far in securing agreement from those countries?”
“For eight years Parliament’s only reliable information about the status of universal credit has come from the National Audit Office. Ministers have consistently responded with denials and cover-up statements that, as the Secretary of State has acknowledged this week, were simply untrue. Might her apology herald a new openness about the very real problems with the universal credit project?”
“One of the concerns raised by the National Audit Office is that the Department does not really know who the vulnerable claimants are, and particular problems are being caused by the very long delay before people are entitled to their benefit. The right hon. Lady’s predecessor took an important step by reducing the minimum wait from six weeks to five. Will she commit to taking that further and reducing the period further still?”
“A Minister suggested earlier that the policies of the Labour Government had not reduced poverty. Are Ministers not aware that child poverty was reduced by 800,000 over 13 years thanks to the policy of the Labour Government? Are they also aware that it is now rocketing?”
“The Prime Minister has recognised that, in the national interest, we will need to continue to recognise the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in a number of areas after the end of the implementation period at the end of 2020. Does she agree that data privacy regulation is one of those areas—she has acknowledged the importance of that—and that Europol is another? Will she set out some of the other areas in which we will need to continue to recognise that jurisdiction?”
“May I ask my right hon. Friend about the section of the report dealing with the financial settlement, from paragraph 58 onwards? The House and the country have been given the impression that we are going to make a very large payment of up to €40 billion to the European Union on condition that we secure a favourable agreement about our future trading relationship. How likely is it that next March we will find ourselves obligated under the terms of the withdrawal agreement, which will be legally binding, to make the payment, yet at that point have no legal certainty at all about our future trading relationship?”
“The Secretary of State has explained that clause 1 bans the sale of corrosive products to under-18s. I support that, but some of us think the age limit should be at 21 rather than 18. Would he be open to an amendment along those lines? What is the reason for setting the limit at 18, rather than a higher age?”
“I welcome the establishment of the centre in London to deal with the county lines issue around the country. I welcome the Bill and congratulate the Minister, but I think that, alongside the Bill, an enormous amount more needs to be done.”
“As Jabed Hussain points out, the scale of police cuts in London has made the problem significantly worse. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner herself has acknowledged that the cuts to police numbers have undoubtedly contributed to the surge in violent crime, and those cuts need to be reversed. Jabed Hussain also makes the point that we are nowhere near addressing the scale of the physical and psychological damage suffered by acid attack victims and their families, and that the children of victims need help, too, yet there is nothing available for them at the moment. There is a correlation between gang membership and the use of acid as a weapon, as others have suggested. The Government’s efforts to step up their response to gangs will be crucial.”
“In April, the Department asked the National Police Chiefs’ Council to undertake a data-collection exercise on acid attacks. Will the Minister tell us what came out of that exercise and whether she will consider adding these figures to those routinely collected by her Department? We should have a more systematic way of knowing the scale of this crime. I pay tribute to Jabed Hussain, whom I believe the Minister has met. He is a moped delivery driver in London who was the victim of an acid attack and subsequently organised other drivers into what he calls the Workers Union London. He argues, correctly I think, that changes to the law, while very welcome—and I certainly welcome what is proposed in the Bill—will not solve the problem on their own. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley made this point powerfully.”
“What we already do for knives should apply as well to acid. I would hope that that extension could be made. Acid Survivors Trust International has rightly made the case that more needs to be done to address the impact of acid attacks, which, as we all recognise, can be horrifying. The number of attacks in London nearly trebled between 2014 and 2017. I tabled a series of parliamentary questions last month to try to understand the economic impact of acid attacks—the cost to the police, the cost to the health service and the cost of imprisoning people who carry them out—and all received the answer: Ministers do not know what the impacts are. The Home Office does not collect national statistics on acid attacks. I think it should. We ought to make that addition to the statistics collected.”
“It seems a bit odd to have two different definitions of “corrosive substance” in two different parts of the Bill, one in schedule 1 and one defined as causing corrosive harm to human skin. Clause 5 does not refer to schedule 1. Does the Minister expect the police in practice to use schedule 1 to work out which products are covered by clause 5, or does she expect them to come up with a different list? It seems a little untidy to have two definitions. Like my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham and others, I think it would be better to ban sales to under-21s, rather than under-18s. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley rightly suggested that the current restrictions, which the Bills extends, on knives in schools and further education colleges ought to apply to corrosive substances.”
“This looks like the kind of thing we sometimes chide Ministers for wanting to put in regulations, but in this case I think there could be a good case for doing it through regulations so that it can be changed at a later date. It seems a bit odd that as things stand, any change to the list of substances or concentrations would require another Act of Parliament, so I wonder why it has been done in that way and whether it ought to be done in regulations instead. Clause 5 bans having corrosive substances—not corrosive products—in a public place and it tells us that a corrosive substance is a substance capable of harming human skin by corrosion. I presume that means that it covers substances not on the list in schedule 1.”
“I am also grateful to her for keeping me and other Members informed about the progress in working up the legislation. I have some detailed questions, however. Clause 1 bans the sale of corrosive products to persons under 18. As we have been told, the products are listed in schedule 1. Would it not be better to do that in regulations rather than having a schedule to the Bill, so that the list can be added to or amended? It is unlikely that that list and the particular concentrations that are set out in the schedule will be the last word. I am interested to know how the particular list of concentrations was come up with, for example. It looks a bit arbitrary. There may be some reason for choosing those concentrations, and if so I would like to know what it is.”
“Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), in opening this debate for the Opposition, argued that there should be a review of the list of substances in that category under the explosive precursor regulations that require a licence to be purchased. I agree with her and I am very pleased that sulphuric acid has been added to that list, but we need to look at what else should be there as well. The second change that we called for was that carrying acid should be an offence, just as carrying a knife is, and I am very pleased that that is included in clause 5. I thank the Minister for successfully delivering that change. She and I would probably both have been pleased had the legislation been introduced a bit faster, but I am very pleased that it is before the House today.”
“However, by the time we got to that debate, there had been the series of incidents on 13 July, when there were six acid attacks from the back of a moped in the space of 90 minutes across Hackney and Islington, and there was a lot of public interest in this whole issue. One of the two perpetrators involved in the attacks in Hackney and Islington was, we know now, aged 16 at the time, and he pleaded guilty to carrying them out. In that Adjournment debate, at which my hon. Friend was present, we called for two specific changes to the law. The first was that the purchase of sulphuric acid should require a licence, and, as she pointed out, that has been done through a statutory instrument that will take effect from Sunday. My hon.”
“I want to express rather more support for the Bill than the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) did, but I will comment just on the elements that deal with corrosive substances. I particularly welcome clause 5, as others have, which creates the new offence of having a corrosive substance in a public place. A year ago on 21 June, in our borough of Newham, Jameel Muhktar and his cousin, Resham Khan, were sprayed with acid while they were sitting in a car on the way to a party celebrating her 21st birthday. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) said in her excellent speech, after that event there was a wave of revulsion and fear across the borough. Mr Speaker was good enough to grant an Adjournment debate on 17 July, the intention of which was to bring forward proposals in response to that wave of fear.”
“Is it not the truth that Airbus has done a great public service by injecting much-needed frankness and realism into this debate, and will the Secretary of State commend it for being willing to do so?”
“Will the Secretary of State commit to build on that progress and reduce the waiting time significantly further?”
“When the former Secretary of State was assuring the House that universal credit implementation was going well, it was the National Audit Office that told us what was really happening. Its reports have never been shoddy and have never been scaremongering. They have embarrassed Ministers—that is true—but they have proved to be truthful. The Secretary of State will recognise many of the findings of this latest NAO report in warnings given by Opposition Members when she was in the Department four or five years ago. The central flaw, of course, is the very long wait that people have before they are entitled to receive cash. Her predecessor, who was in the job for only a short time, managed, greatly to his credit, to reduce the waiting time from six weeks to five.”
“That is not the way things are done in Britain, and the Home Office cannot be allowed to behave in that way. People’s lives are literally being destroyed because they made honest administrative mistakes that have long since been rectified. For far too many, the Home Office’s hostile environment has become an oppressive nightmare. This must end, and we need the Minister to take action today to start to put things right.”
“In the cases we are talking about, people have owned up to mistakes, tax has been paid and HMRC has been completely satisfied, but the Home Office has come back, sometimes years later, with recriminations—it has not just demanded more money but destroyed people’s livelihoods and, in a number of cases, broken up families—in a way that is wholly wrong and unfair. Like others, I have met many people in that situation. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) referred to the Health Secretary, who failed to do what he should have done. As she said, he made what he described as an “honest administrative mistake” and received no sanction. I do not complain about the fact that there was no sanction, but we cannot have one rule for Cabinet Ministers and affluent people, and a completely different rule for our constituents.”
“I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) on all her work on this issue and on her speech. A large group of my constituents are affected in exactly the same way as others, but let me first say this. I was a Minister with tax responsibilities on four separate occasions. It is an important principle of our tax system that, once a mistake has been identified and any additional tax due has been paid, the authorities do not come back with further recriminations unless new information subsequently comes to light. It has to be like that, otherwise there would not be an incentive for people to own up to mistakes and pay the additional tax due.”
“My right hon. and learned Friend has already reminded the House that the Cabinet has not made up its mind on what sort of customs arrangement it wants. Is it his understanding, as it is mine, that the maximum facilitation option would entail infrastructure on the border in Northern Ireland, so it would get us back to the hard border that everyone says we want to avoid?”
“The right hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful speech. He is right to draw attention to the scale of the problem in the developed world as well as the developing world. In my constituency, the incidence is now about the same as in Sudan, at just over 80 per 100,000. Does he agree that it is important that people realise that, notwithstanding drug resistance, this is a treatable and curable condition and that people need to get help when they are suffering from it?”
“I welcome the Secretary of State’s decision. He referred to local employment and apprenticeships in his statement. What is his Department’s assessment of the increase in employment at Heathrow, both during the construction phase and in the long term?”
“Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley, and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), asked and pressing the Minister on whether the British Government will contribute again to the Occupied Palestinian Territories humanitarian fund. I welcome the fact that we contributed to it last year, and the need for it seems as compelling as ever. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether, as I hope, the British Government will contribute again this year.”
“Faced with these shortages, the Hamas regime in Gaza consolidated power, handing out food and cash to the poor, hiring the unemployed as public servants, and opening a lucrative trading system via tunnels underneath the border with Egypt.” We all dearly want to see a two-state solution—a secure Israel alongside an autonomous and independent Palestinian state—but we can all see that time is running out for achieving that solution. I genuinely do not know what the Israeli Government think the long-term solution will be, but the viability of a two-state solution is being continually eroded by the establishment of settlements pepper-potting Palestine. It is increasingly difficult to see how what appears to be the only possible secure and peaceful outcome can be achieved. I will finish by underlining the question that my hon.”
“In the assessment I referred to earlier about what is going on in Gaza, Human Rights Watch said: “Until 2010, Israel counted the number of calories that Gaza residents would be allowed to consume, sorted by age and gender, and then used mathematical formulas to restrict the amount of food entering Gaza to no more than what…officials deemed necessary.” That was defended as “‘economic warfare’ aimed at weakening Hamas by restricting supplies to residents of Gaza and halting production and trade. It had the opposite effect.”
“The proportion of those who applied who actually got a permit was 54%, the lowest since the World Health Organisation started to keep the figures in 2008. The WHO made the point: “There has been a continuous decline in approval rates since 2012,” when 93% were successful. It also reported that in 2017, 54 Palestinians died following the denial of a permit or a delay in issuing a permit. Of those, 46 had cancer. It is very difficult to understand why people who need urgent cancer treatment are being denied permits to leave Gaza to obtain it. Another problem that people in Gaza have to contend with is a basic lack of calories.”
“It has been in place for more than 10 years. According to the UN’s July report, in that period GDP has fallen by half; unemployment has reached an extraordinarily high level, with youth unemployment at about 60%, as we have heard; and access to safe drinking water through the public water network has plummeted from 98.3% in 2000 to 10.5% in 2014. Other hon. Members have referred to the daily blackouts in the electricity supply and the strain on the health service. I will say a bit about that latter point, because I vividly remember meeting families who could not get access to basic healthcare. The World Health Organisation reports that in 2017, the number of permits issued by Israel for Palestinians to leave Gaza to access healthcare reached a record low.”
“We have already been reminded that in 2012, the United Nations forecast that Gaza would be unliveable by 2020. In July, it published an update to that view. In his foreword, Robert Piper, the UN co-ordinator for humanitarian aid and development activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said that “life for the average Palestinian in Gaza is getting more and more wretched.” The report continued: “Reviewing the indicators which in 2012 led the UN to question whether Gaza would become ‘unliveable’ by 2020, it is clear that very little progress has been made” in the intervening five years, and said: “Despite the warnings issued by the UN in 2012, Gaza has continued on its trajectory of de-development”. When I visited 13 years ago the position was grim, but a couple of years later the blockade began.”
“I visited Gaza a long time ago—13 years ago—with Christian Aid to look at the situation. At that time, it was very, very grim. I remember meeting families who could not get basic healthcare for their children, farmers whose everyday livelihood was being interfered with by petty restrictions and difficulties of one sort or another, and other people, such as a student on holiday from university who was stuck at the border crossing for a week and unable to go home, where she had hoped to spend her vacation. There were endless indignities and problems. That was 13 years ago, and the position today is vastly worse. Under international law, Israel, as the occupying power in Gaza, has primary responsibility for meeting the humanitarian needs of Palestinians, but the position is dire.”
“Criticism of Hamas rule can be punishable by arrest and torture, as Human Rights Watch has documented. Hamas reviews the sermons at Gaza’s mosques, and those sermons now tell worshipers to join the demonstrations at the Gaza border. On ordinary days, Hamas police officers prevent demonstrators from coming within 1,000 feet of the border fence inside Gaza, the distance that Israel has declared to be a ‘no go zone.’ Since March 30, Hamas has allowed protesters through and hired buses to transport people to the demonstrations.” Like my hon. Friend and other hon. Members, I affirm Hamas’s culpability in what is happening, but those observations underline the strength of Human Rights Watch’s conclusion that what happened on the part of the Israeli army was nevertheless disproportionate and illegal.”
“There are a variety of views about the rights and wrongs of what happened in Gaza on Monday last week. I want to quote Human Rights Watch, whose judgments are broadly accepted as fair. It summarises: “Israel has a right to defend its borders, but shooting unarmed protesters who haven’t breached its frontier is disproportionate and illegal.” I think that most of us would share that conclusion on the rights and wrongs of what happened. My hon. Friend referred to the culpability of Hamas in all of this, and was absolutely right to do so. To pursue that point further, I will again quote Human Rights Watch on the contribution of Hamas to events last week. It said: “Certainly Hamas has supported the protests in Gaza, where its control is palpable.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. I welcome this debate and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) on securing it. It gives us the opportunity to discuss what has been happening in Gaza. I have been contacted by more than 800 constituents since Monday of last week, when, as we have been reminded, 60 people died in protests in Gaza and 2,771 were injured, 1,359 of them by live ammunition. The protests, which had been building up over a period of weeks, were provoked in part by the reckless decision of the United States to move its embassy to Jerusalem. I regret that that decision was taken and has been put into effect. It was predicted what would happen if that decision was taken, and that is precisely what has happened.”
“I appreciate the thoughtful way in which the Minister is answering the debate. I do not think he has yet addressed the question I asked about the United Nations Occupied Palestinian Territories humanitarian fund, which was supported by the British Government last year. Will he give us some hope that the Government will support that fund this year as well?”
“The modest changes in the Budget were welcome, but I wonder whether the Secretary of State has seen the recent research showing that food bank demand is growing much faster in areas where universal credit has been fully rolled out than it is elsewhere. Does she have substantial proposals to solve the very serious problems with this new benefit?”
“Does the Minister accept, though, that his argument is fatally undermined by the fact that members of the Cabinet are discussing these matters in public, in the newspapers?”
“My constituent Tofla Ndele, a British citizen, was arrested when visiting family members in Congo last September. There has been no explanation for his arrest, and no charges have been levelled against him. I was grateful to the Secretary of State for raising the subject with the Congolese Foreign Minister in March. What progress has been made since then in securing Mr Ndele’s release?”
“Will the Secretary of State set out for the House the characteristics of the customs partnership that he is discussing with his right hon. Friends, and given that according to reports that is the Prime Minister’s preferred way forward, what are the reasons for holding back on it?”
“The European Union set out a very clear negotiating position at the beginning of this exercise. The Government are still being undermined by their inability to make up their mind, and the Secretary of State has told us that it is going to take a bit longer to decide about customs. The whole negotiation is supposed to be concluded by October. How many weeks longer will it be before our Government have a clear position on customs?”
“Unlike the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), I welcome the Home Secretary’s rejection of the “hostile environment” policy. It has affected many alongside the Windrush generation. More than 30,000 students, mostly from the Indian subcontinent, had their visas cancelled midway through their studies because of allegations, which I believe are largely untrue, of cheating in the test of English for international communication. I will write to him about their plight. Will he undertake to look carefully at the case of TOEIC students?”
“T3. The European Commission has hinted that the UK may be given access to the European financial services market, but only on the basis of equivalence. Does the Chancellor support the preferable basis of mutual recognition for that future arrangement, and what prospect does he see of securing it?”
“Does the Minister recognise that if there is no trade deal with the European Union, it will be a breach of World Trade Organisation rules to apply checks and tariffs to non-EU goods but not to EU goods?”
“I echo the Minister’s tribute to the people and Government of Bangladesh for the generosity that has been shown to the Rohingya refugees. What realistic prospect does he see of any significant numbers of returns to Rakhine state in, say, the next 12 months? He was right to highlight the pernicious effects of the 1982 citizenship law. Does he see any realistic prospect of that being reformed, as he rightly proposed in his statement?”
“The number of apprenticeship starts plummeted after the botched introduction of the apprenticeship levy last year. I welcome the additional support for apprenticeships in small businesses that the Chancellor has announced today, but does he recognise that to get anywhere near the 3 million target by 2020 will require much more radical action, and will he return to that at the time of the Budget?”
“On problems with universal credit, the Secretary of State will, I think, recognise that the last thing that families earning a bit less than £7,400 a year will want is a pay rise, because if they get it, they will immediately lose their free school meals and be much worse off as a result. That is a very serious problem for work incentives, which used to be a big priority for her Department. Does she recognise that major problem?”
“I am glad that my hon. Friend has picked out that point. She will have heard the Secretary of State saying that jobcentres would advise people not to take extra work or to get a pay rise because they would end up worse off. Is that not absolutely contrary to the whole principle of universal credit that she has just read out?”