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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“I welcome the right hon. Lady back to this Department. The Government, of course, are responsible for the regulatory framework for pensions. Will she respond to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) about defined contribution schemes? Are the Government looking at possible changes to the rules for those, as well as for defined benefit schemes, which the Minister has said the Government are looking at?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on her Bill. On the role of local authorities, does she welcome, as I do, the Government’s recent decision to reauthorise Newham Council’s selective licensing scheme? She has rightly pointed out that it is a small minority of landlords who are the problem. Does she believe that local authorities more generally should have those selective licensing powers?”
“Q12. Universal credit was meant to remove benefit traps, but the Department for Education wants to base eligibility for free school meals on an income threshold, so if a family earning just below the threshold gets a small pay rise or an increase in hours, they will immediately lose the benefit of the free school meals and end up much worse off. It is a far worse benefit trap than anything in the old benefits system. Surely one Department should not be torpedoing the Government’s aim of getting rid of benefit traps in that way.”
“T3. Together with the Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has a Late, Missing and Incorrect initiative to look into the problems with real-time pay-as-you-earn information—problems that may well explain many of the errors we see in universal credit awards. The Financial Secretary gave me a helpful answer on this topic in October. What progress has he made on quantifying those three problems—late, missing and incorrect—and what hopes does he have for the improvement of RTI quality?”
“T6. On the Minister’s current consultation on reducing the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals, will she place in the Library the Treasury’s estimate of the fiscal impact of each of the four options being consulted on?”
“Poorly designed numerical targets gave big incentives to managers, and in this case, as has perhaps occurred in others, they succumbed to temptation to bend the rules for their own advancement. As well as holding the managers to account, Ministers need to reflect on what went wrong and on the very high price paid by wholly blameless employees and large numbers of benefit claimants.”
“Naseema Noorani and Jannat Mirza were clearly scapegoats to cover up malpractice by more senior colleagues. Jannat Mirza, unable to afford representation, lost an unfair dismissal claim. The tribunal seems to have done a cut-and-paste job on the Department for Work and Pensions’ submission, and made no serious attempt to address what had really happened. Naseema Noorani did not even try to claim. Since 2014, nobody has been able to tell me any possible gain from the fraud to the staff who were sacked. Others, however, had a clear career incentive to boost benefit off-flow. I have pursued this for three and a half years. Unable to remedy the injustice—and one of the two women is still out of work after more than three years—I simply want to place on the public record an account of what really happened.”
“One of the people on the receiving end of this, whom I know, complained about it. As a result, Naseema Noorani and Jannat Mirza were sacked. The claimant who complained, and all the staff I have discussed this with, are quite clear that those two employees were not the guilty parties. Naseema Noorani was the adviser who initiated the flexible support fund payment, but she only saw that claimant that morning because a colleague was late. It was made clear by managers that this was what she should do; the FSF payment was specified in a post-it note already on the claimant’s file. Jannat Mirza had no involvement at all. She merely authorised the use of a form for a slightly different purpose from usual. No action was taken against other staff who specified how much should be paid and who authorised the claim; nor against the managers.”
“It was designed, in particular, to avoid people reaching 52 weeks in their jobseeker’s allowance claim, because at that point they would have had to be referred to the Work programme. There was immense pressure on staff to stop this happening and to stop referrals taking place. The procedure, which I am told was used repeatedly from mid- 2013, was that as people approached a deadline they would be taken off benefit and paid instead the same amount of cash from the flexible support fund for a couple of weeks, on a pretext—for example, to pay for a travelcard to get to a non-existent job—and then signed back on to JSA again a short time afterwards. Claimants got the same amount of cash and benefit off-flow went up by one. However, claimants’ housing benefit was affected.”
“I alerted the Department, and a senior official visited the jobcentre in October. I was grateful for that, but I understand that staff were banned from expressing concerns to him. He reported that everything was fine. I was told that it was common to ask people to sign on for their benefit claim at irregular dates, in the hope they would forget to do so one week and their claim would then be closed; and that advisers were told to sanction a claimant if they called them on their mobile twice and they did not answer. In June 2014, I met for the first time my constituent Nasima Noorani, a personal adviser at Plaistow jobcentre, and Jannat Mirza, a team leader. They had been sacked from Plaistow the month before. A number of former staff there, not those I have mentioned, told me of a practice introduced by the new management.”
“I commend the perseverance of my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) in pursuing this contaminated blood scandal. Like others, Mr Speaker, I wish you and everyone a very happy Christmas, but the topic I wish to raise is a bit less merry. Jobcentres are evaluated on the basis of benefit off-flow. Plaistow jobcentre, which was, until its closure in October, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who is in her place, had a poor record. A new manager, Tony Sutton, appointed in May 2013, and a new deputy, Nazia Goci, were determined to raise benefit off-flow. A very troubled employee at the jobcentre, a constituent of mine, came to see me in September 2013. She described “awful working conditions”, and “unfair benefit sanctions” harassing people off benefits.”
“I hope we see that initiative taken forward in response to the worrying and troubling increase in attacks that we have seen over the past two or three years.”
“Would the Minister consider such an arrangement being introduced nationally in line with the Newham scheme, which is proving a useful mechanism for starting to tackle the problems we are considering in this debate? I have one final point to make. In opening the debate, my hon. Friend referred to Diphoterine. I have certainly seen evidence in recent months that if we can treat an acid wound with Diphoterine within literally a few minutes—a very small number of minutes—we can potentially completely eradicate the damage. If someone can get treatment with that substance within 24 hours, it can significantly reduce the damage. As my hon. Friend said, it is a costly chemical, but the benefits of its being available perhaps in police cars and certainly in hospitals would be considerable.”
“They are eager to take part in a scheme such as Newham’s or in other arrangements to limit the damage from the acid products that they sell. Under the Newham scheme, shopkeepers are asked to sign up to an agreement to challenge any customer who is under 25 and to refuse to sell to anyone under 21. I think the Home Secretary suggested that people could not be sold acid if they were under 18, but I think there is a strong case for making that 21. Might the Minister consider that in taking that proposal forward? The Newham scheme involves retailers committing to challenge people under 25. It is not a ban on sales to under-25s, but a Challenge 25.”
“I was under the impression that we were expecting a criminal justice Bill at some point quite soon. If there is a Bill, I hope this measure will be in it. Any information the Minister can give us about when we will get that much-needed change in the law would be of great interest to the House. In responding to the previous debate in July, the Minister’s predecessor said she would “seek the earliest possible legislative opportunity.” —[ Official Report , 17 July 2017; Vol. 627, c. 688.] I am keen to know when that will be. In her speech, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham referred to our local borough’s acid sales scheme. As she said, 126 Newham retailers have participated in the scheme, which underlines the fact that retailers are very concerned about what might be done with the acid products that they sell.”
“As far as I have been able to tell, we have not heard anything on that front since the Government made their commitment before our summer break. Will the Minister tell us when new sentencing guidelines will be issued, hopefully to enable more consistent and indeed tougher sentences for these offences when people are convicted of carrying them out? On the other two measures, as my hon. Friend has said, reclassifying sulphuric acid would be a fairly straightforward thing to do with a statutory instrument in secondary legislation. I hope we can look forward to that coming forward quickly. Can the Minister indicate when that will happen? A new offence that made possession of acid an offence would, I think, require primary legislation. I do not know when a vehicle for that is likely to become available.”
“At the Conservative party conference in October, the Home Secretary committed to act on the other two measures and to take some other actions as well. I welcome those responses but, like others in this debate, I am starting to get a little anxious about when these things are actually going to happen. Perhaps the Minister can reassure us about that when she winds up the debate. On the review of sentencing guidelines—my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham referred to this—we have had new guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecutors, but not, as far as I know, any new guidance on sentencing. As my hon. Friend said, it is sentencing guidelines that determine or influence the decisions that judges make about sentencing.”
“Secondly, I called for sulphuric acid—others have made this point already in this debate—to be reclassified under the Control of Explosives Precursors Regulations 2015, which amended the Poisons Act 1972, so that it would be a regulated rather than a reportable substance in the two lists that those regulations identify. That would mean that people who wanted to buy sulphuric acid would have to have a licence for that purpose. Thirdly, the possession of acid should in itself be an offence in exactly the same way that possession of a knife is an offence. I was pleased by the Minister’s response in the previous debate on this subject. In fact, by the time we got to that debate the Government had already committed to a review of sentencing for acid attack convictions.”
“That highlights the need for a rapid and effective response to this growing problem. I have had a number of discussions with representatives of moped delivery drivers. They say that there are now parts of London where their drivers are not willing to go, because of the danger of attacks. I think that we would all regard it as unacceptable that there are no-go areas in parts of London and the UK. Significant action will be required to deal with the problem, as others have said. On 17 July, we had an Adjournment debate on this subject. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham contributed to that debate, as did the Minister’s predecessor—I welcome the new Minister to her post. I called for three specific actions: first, a review of sentencing for tougher, more consistent sentences when people are convicted of acid attacks.”
“I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), on securing this debate and I agree with every word of her informative and wide-ranging speech. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald), who made the rather startling claim that we now have one of the highest per capita rates of corrosive substance attacks in the world. I think that he is right about that—I noticed that Rachel Kearton, the assistant chief constable of Suffolk police and the National Police Chiefs Council lead on corrosive attacks made exactly that point just a couple of weeks ago: “The UK now has one of the highest rates of recorded acid and corrosive substance attacks per capita in the world and this number appears to be rising”.”
“I have listened with great interest to what the Minister has said. Does she recognise that there is a case for making the cut-off age 21 rather than 18, which is the age the Government have referred to so far?”
“I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response. One issue I do not think she has touched on so far is the possible timing for the new offence of possession of acid. The Government made the welcome commitment to introduce that, but when can we look forward to it coming forward?”
“I want to take my hon. Friend back to what he was saying about the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. We had evidence this morning at the Brexit Committee on this. As he knows, in their recent agreement with Brussels, the Government committed to having no infrastructure at the border, and, if necessary, to our providing full regulatory alignment with the internal market and the customs union in order to achieve that. Is he encouraged by that commitment, even though the Government’s current policy is not to stay in the customs union, because if it stands, it looks very likely that we will have to, in effect, stay in the customs union?”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. There will be problems in Torbay and elsewhere if the universal credit calculation is wrong. The Minister told me in a written answer that there is no specific initiative called Late, Missing and Incorrect, but it turns out that there is, run jointly by his Department and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Will he confirm that if real-time PAYE—pay-as-you-earn—information is late, missing or incorrect, then the universal credit calculation will be wrong?”
“To avoid, rightly, a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, the Prime Minister has committed the UK, if necessary, to “maintain full alignment with those rules of the internal market and the customs union” that are necessary. Will such full alignment apply just to Northern Ireland, or to the UK as a whole?”
“Surely quantitative assessments of the impact of leaving the EU on sectors of the UK economy should have been basic spade work for the negotiations.”
“On financial services, how hopeful are Ministers that through the negotiations the UK will retain the passport for service providers to trade across the EU?”
“Q11. Assessing the impact of leaving the European Union on the different sectors of the UK economy is surely basic spadework for the negotiations, yet the Brexit Secretary told the Select Committee last week that none of it has been done. Why not?”
“The case of Monarch underlines that fact. No explanation has been provided, so we were unable to explain on our visit why the UK uniquely cannot lift its ban. I join the hon. Member for Woking and all those who have signed the early-day motion in urging the Minister to waste no time in lifting the ban.”
“It was of course a Russian passenger jet that was shot down. My understanding is that Russia is the only other country with a continuing ban. If that ban is lifted, only ours will remain in place. That is a puzzling position for us in the UK to get ourselves into. Stability and prosperity in Egypt are key to stability in the region, and therefore greatly in the interests of the world as a whole. As the hon. Gentleman explained, UK tourism is starting to increase a bit now, but it is still less than half what it was before the ban was introduced. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly pointed out that British citizens love taking their holidays Sharm El Sheikh, and we are denying that opportunity to large numbers of UK citizens. The Egyptian economy is being damaged by this, as is the UK economy.”
“They acknowledge that, yes, a terrible terrorist atrocity occurred—there is no question about that—and there is no doubt that there were serious weaknesses in security that enabled it to happen, but the fact that our ban is still in place is, to Egyptian eyes, a case of the UK caving in. They believe that the UK, above all countries, should not be caving in. It is hard to understand why the ban is being kept. As the hon. Gentleman has set out, Egypt has invested heavily to implement all the recommendations on improving security that were made by international experts, most of whom were from the UK, and almost every other country has lifted its ban in response to that. Indeed, I noticed news reports this week that President Putin announced in Cairo on Monday that Russia would resume civilian flights to Egypt.”
“I associate myself with everything the hon. Member for Woking (Mr Lord) has said and congratulate him on securing the debate. We are co-chairs of the APPG on Egypt and were in that country last month, thanks to funding support primarily from the Egyptian Parliament, and I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which refers to that visit. As the hon. Gentleman has rightly underlined, the No. 1 thing that almost everybody we met in Egypt wanted to talk to us about was the continuing ban on flights from the UK to Sharm El Sheikh, which has had such a devastating effect on the economy of Sharm El Sheikh and further afield. It is characterised by many in Egypt as the UK giving in to terrorism. That is how they think about it.”
“The Minister is absolutely right that being vigilant about the wellbeing of UK citizens is the both his first duty and that of the Government. Is he able to shed any light on why the assessment being made by the UK Government is different from the ones being made by other Governments including, it now seems, the Russian Government?”
“I understand that Russia announced this week that it is lifting its ban on civilian flights. Is there any other airport in the world to which the UK uniquely bans flights? That appears to be the position with Sharm El Sheikh.”
“The TUC reports that 3.2 million people are now in insecure work—an increase of more than a quarter over the past five years. Will the Minister accept Matthew Taylor’s recommendation, endorsed by the Select Committee, that a longer break in service—a month rather than a week, as at present—should be allowed before there is any loss of employment rights?”
“The European Union says that we will stay in the single market and the customs union during the implementation phase. The Prime Minister is saying, I presume, that we will leave at the start of the implementation phase, but will she confirm that the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice will continue throughout the two years or so of the implementation phase?”
“The sub-paragraph explicitly allows Ministers to introduce regulations on those three things, but its first line also reads: “Regulations under this paragraph may (among other things)”. Apart from the three specific things, which, frankly, sound rather alarming, it seems that there are some other, non-specified things that the schedule would empower Ministers to do. Amendment 152 simply proposes the deletion of the words “among other things”, so that at least Ministers can do only three things to demand money from taxpayers or charge payers.”
“I hope that the Minister, in winding up the debate, will be able to give assurances to the Committee that these powers will not be used in ways that none of us would want. I hope that by probing the Minister’s intentions through my amendments I will receive the assurances I seek. Amendment 152 would amend line 35 of schedule 4, on page 32. The schedule is slightly alarmingly worded, and the amendment is to part 1, which deals with the power to provide for fees or charges. Paragraph 1(3) lists various things that Ministers can introduce regulations to do: to prescribe fees or charges; to provide for recovery of any sums payable; and to confer power on public authorities to do rather similar things.”
“She pointed out that while it was a good thing that Ministers could assure us that no new taxes would be introduced as a result of the sweeping powers that the Bill gives to Ministers—I am glad that new taxes are not going to be imposed on us through the use of these powers—nevertheless the Bill gives them the powers to impose charges. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make the point, which was also made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, that there is frankly precious little difference between taxes and charges. There are wide powers in the Bill to impose new charges, so my amendments 152 and 153 are intended to constrain the power of Ministers to impose charges, which could be almost limitless in scope.”
“I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman). I share her bemusement at where we have got to on the impact assessments, which we have now been told do not exist. Like her, I would have thought that that work would have been done—it certainly should be done. If it has not been done—we have been told that it has not been done—it urgently needs to be done so that the Government and the House can take an informed view about where we are heading. I wish to speak briefly to my amendments 152 and 153 to schedule 4, which touch on the matter raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman).”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The amendment simply constrains Ministers’ ability to introduce new charges—she calls them taxes, and she has every right to do so—under the secondary legislation envisaged in schedule 4. What I hope the Minister will do is assure us that by “among other things” he is not envisaging some great long list of new money-raising powers.”
“We of course recognise that a lot of charges are imposed at the moment by EU bodies of one sort or another—she mentioned a very important one—and that, in future, comparable fees or charges may well need to be levied by UK entities, but the aim of the first paragraph of amendment 153 is to make it clear that Ministers cannot impose new fees or charges for which there is not already a counterpart from the EU entity.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We come directly to that point in amendment 153, in which we propose to add to schedule 4 the words set out on the amendment paper, which I shall read out. We propose to constrain Ministers’ powers by saying, first, that regulations “may not be made for the purposes of…creating a fee or charge that does not replicate a fee or charge levied by an EU entity on exit day”. That is exactly the point my hon. Friend has just raised.”
“I accept that there may well in due course need to be some higher fees or charges than those currently levied by EU entities, because the process may well be less efficient when carried out at a UK-only level, but I do not think the secondary legislation powers should be used for that purpose. If Ministers want to bring forward a proposal to impose a higher fee or charge, they should do so through the proper parliamentary process, with scrutiny by this House, not through secondary legislation powers.”
“I am suggesting that the secondary legislation powers in schedule 4 should not be used to introduce a charge for the same function that is higher than the one currently charged by the European Medicines Agency. There may well be a loss of economies of scale in leaving the European Medicines Agency, and it may well be that undertaking that function purely for the UK will be a less efficient process than doing it EU-wide, as the European Medicines Agency does, but I do not think the secondary legislation powers in the schedule should be used to impose on industry or any charge payer a fee that is higher than the one currently charged by the EU entity.”
“I had not considered that, and the right hon. Gentleman may well have a point. I would be interested to know whether that is indeed the case. That interesting point is certainly worth pursuing, and I would welcome it if he expanded on that later. Secondly, amendment 153 states that Ministers cannot bring forward regulations for the purpose of “increasing a fee or charge to an amount larger than an amount charged by an EU entity for the performance of the relevant function on exit day.” Let me take the example my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) mentioned. The European Medicines Agency does very important work, and it charges the industry for that work.”
“Once again, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, my amendments arise specifically from the discussions I have had with those in the tech sector who are worried about the prospect of being hit by substantially larger fees and charges in the future, which is exactly what the powers in the schedule would allow Ministers to do. I very much hope that the Minister will give us an assurance that these powers will not be used in that way, and that we will not find that industry and charge payers of other kinds are hit by fees or charges that are not being charged at the moment or are higher than those currently being charged. I very much look forward to the Minister’s response.”
“Does the Minister accept that we should hope that those fees and charges will be lower than those that have been paid until now to EU institutions?”
“In future it may be necessary to do all sorts of things, but surely the powers in this Bill should not be used to impose new charges on businesses that are not being paid at the moment.”
“The customs union was not on the ballot paper in the referendum. The Prime Minister was right yesterday to be willing to sign up to regulatory alignment between Northern Ireland and the EU. From the Secretary of State’s answers today, I think he is suggesting that regulatory alignment should apply to the whole UK. Will he confirm that that is the point he is making, and will he explain how he sees that being delivered?”