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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“As I understand it—I hope the Minister will tell us a bit more about this—applications bypass the Attorney General’s office. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer) has pointed out, the basis on which they are approved or denied is not transparent. I certainly do not know—I would be grateful if the Minister could shed some light on this—what the criteria are for allocating the funding. I know the system was renegotiated by Mr Green in 2012.”
“Yes, I do share concerns about that, and I will come to it in a moment. I hope the Minister might tell us a bit more about how the process works and how decisions are made about whether blockbuster funding is provided. I noticed that in the exchange between my hon. Friend and the head of the Serious Fraud Office in the Select Committee on Justice, he made the point: “I would like to move to less dependence on blockbuster funding and more core funding”. I think he is on to something and I want to explain why, in my view, that shift would be worth making. Blockbuster funding is additional funding allocated on a case-by-case basis where individual, high-profile cases are likely to cost more than 5% of the SFO’s core budget—those costing more than around £1.5 million. To access that funding, the SFO has to apply directly to the Treasury.”
“That level of instability and impermanence would damage any major organisation.”
“In its 2016 report, it stated: “The blockbuster funding model is not representing value for money and it prevents the SFO building future capability and capacity. Temporary and contract staff are often more expensive than permanent staff and managing surge capacity is a constant drain on Human Resources (HR) and other staff. Increasing core funding would provide the SFO with the ability to build capacity and capability in-house and lead to less reliance on blockbuster funding.” That is the case that I want to press upon the Minister this morning. The evidence is on the inspectorate’s side. At the time of the inspection, 21% of SFO staff were temporary. As of March 2016, 106 of the 510 staff were there on an agency basis and another 35 were there on a fixed-term basis.”
“The SFO’s total expenditure has been as much—perhaps rather more—in recent years as it was in 2008, before core funding started to be reduced as part of the Government’s efforts to cut public spending, but a big slice of the funding today is in the form of this one-off, exceptional Treasury grant. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing attention to the fact that, as a result of that, a large proportion of those working at the SFO are temporary staff brought in for a particular case and then laid off when it is concluded. I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on whether that is an effective way to run an organisation as important as the SFO. Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate certainly thinks that it is not. In its view, the current model is not satisfactory, and I think it has an important point.”
“Yes, it inevitably does. We have seen a big shift over time away from core funding towards blockbuster funding. That inevitably means fewer permanent staff at the SFO and more temporary staff. That raises a serious concern about how the SFO is able to function. In 2008, core funding was £52 million. In 2015-16, the total budget was about the same, but core funding was only £34 million. For each of the last three complete financial years, the blockbuster funding element was large: £24 million in 2013-14, £24.5 million in the following year and £28 million in 2015-16. In 2015-16, the blockbuster funding was more than 80% on top of the core funding.”
“That is an important achievement, which we all want to maintain, and I commend the director of the SFO for his progress in focusing the organisation on its core purpose. The recent inspectorate report, however, was right to point out that over-reliance on blockbuster funding makes the SFO less effective than it should be. Will the Minister therefore commit this morning to looking again at the proportion of the SFO’s funding that comes from the blockbuster mechanism? Will he also look again at whether the SFO could do a better job, building up and maintaining better expertise more effectively in the long term, with more permanent staff, if a larger proportion of its funding was in its core budget?”
“I do not want to make too much of that point, but being seen to be independent is important. Making the SFO dependent, case by case, on a Treasury sign-off does not provide that all-important assurance. That problem could be greatly reduced by making core funding a bigger proportion of the overall SFO budget. Another risk presented by the level of blockbuster funding—other Members have raised this matter in the House—is that justice may be delayed if an unnecessary layer of bureaucratic delay is added to the office’s work by its having to apply for blockbuster funding. The model under which the SFO operates has established the UK as a global leader in tackling corruption, fraud and bribery.”
“I entirely accept that such a mechanism can enable the department to cope with fluctuations and ensure that it does not have to turn down a case on the basis of cost, but we have funded getting on for half the SFO’s budget for the last three or four financial years in that way. As a result, it has not been possible to build the expert, permanent workforce that I think we all want to see, so the balance must surely be wrong. Judging from the director’s comments to the Justice Committee, that appears to be his view as well. There is another important issue. In requiring the SFO to ask the Treasury for additional funding on a case-by-case basis through a pretty opaque process, it is impossible to demonstrate independence about decisions on which cases are prosecuted.”
“We know that delivering diversity requires focused human resources effort, but with such high levels of turnover and agency staff at the SFO, HR attention is perhaps inevitably turned elsewhere. That weakens the organisation. I am sure that the Minister will argue in his response that the director of the SFO has spoken favourably about the blockbuster funding system in the past. To an extent, that is true. Last October, he told the Justice Committee in the evidence session that I referred to: “There are pros and cons to it.” The SFO’s submission to the Committee prior to the session stated: “It is a workable mechanism which allows the SFO to respond flexibly to a demand-led workload.” That may well be the case, but “workable” is not the same as “optimal”. I am not arguing that we should not have any blockbuster funding.”
“At a time when the Government are, for very good reason, pushing for the public sector to spend less on expensive agency staff in areas such as education, Ministers can surely see that the same considerations apply—I suggest even more powerfully—to the SFO. Managing the human resources implications of blockbuster funding makes it harder, as the inspectorate points out, for personnel staff to do the other things they ought to be doing. The SFO is the only one of the Law Officers’ departments with fewer than half of its staff positions held by women and it has less than half the proportion of disabled people working for it than the civil service does as a whole, at only 3.6% of employees.”
“However, as temporary staff they are more expensive than permanent staff and the additional expense does not make sense when the blockbuster funding is consistently high over an extended period—not permanently, but consistently over a long period. Temporary staff will build up skills and expertise during their work with the SFO, which will then be lost as soon as their contracts expire and they leave. That raises concerns about an inability to ensure consistency across the entire duration of a case and build institutional knowledge in the longer term, which was precisely the aim of setting up the Roskill model in the first place 30 years or so ago. Surely we want the SFO to build up its expertise, and having so many people on temporary contracts makes that a great deal harder.”
“It certainly has been sustained over a lengthy period, although I think I am right in saying that in the most recent year the funding sharply reduced. For me, that accentuates the problem, because once the funding is sharply reduced, a large number of people get sacked or their employment at the SFO ends and the expertise and experience they have built up is dissipated. It seems to me that we should aim to hang on to that expertise and build up the capacity and skills that the SFO can deploy for its future work. I am not saying that the 106 people who were there on an agency basis in March 2016 were second-rate or anything like that. I am sure that they were talented people, doing good work.”
“I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to the debate. Sadly, I do not think I have time to discuss glam rock. I want to ask the Solicitor General if he will reflect on the fact that everybody who spoke in the debate before him—I think I am right in saying that—agreed that the current heavy reliance on temporary blockbuster funding for the SFO is not the optimal arrangement. He accepted that it was not elegant, but it is not really the elegance that is the concern—it is the fact that it is an expensive way to pay for the SFO’s work and undermines its ability to build up a cadre of long-term, committed expertise. Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).”
“My hon. Friend rightly draws attention to the importance of having a target or targets for child poverty. I agree with him about the impact of the targets that Tony Blair set in 1999. Does he agree that one reason why we are going backwards now is that Governments since 2010 have abolished those targets?”
“I wonder whether my hon. Friend has seen the analysis from the End Child Poverty coalition showing that since 2010 the cost of living has gone up by 19%, the state pension by 22%, but child benefit by just 2%. Is that not a large part of the problem?”
“Of course, it was a Labour Government who presided over the reduction that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow drew attention to. Will the Minister tell us when was the last time that there was industrial action in the Border Force?”
“The Minister certainly has not convinced me that these regulations are necessary. I am not aware of industrial action in the Border Force, and I wonder whether there is a real problem here or whether these regulations are unnecessary.”
“That reticence has not been apparent in this instance: we have not been told that there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed here, yet the Government are rushing in with hobnailed boots to introduce legislation. From what we have heard so far, I do not think the Committee has any basis for believing that the legislation will tackle a serious problem, or make that problem less serious than it currently is. I find it difficult to see how Committee members from any party could support legislation in this area without a compelling case for introducing it. I hope that the natural Conservative tendency of reluctance to legislate that we often hear about will apply in this case as in so many others.”
“I hope, if that is the Minister’s view—if there is a current problem that needs to be addressed—that she can tell us when she winds up the extent of that problem, how many instances there have been over the past year, two years, three years or whatever information she has available, and how many of those instances would have been avoided if this legislation had been on the statute book. The great danger here—my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough made this point in opening for the Opposition—is that by legislating in this area one does not make industrial relations better, one makes them worse. We are often told that there is a natural Conservative reticence about legislation unless there is a very strong case for legislating.”
“I am certainly aware of occasions, although not many, when there has been industrial action in the fire service and in the national health service. We have not been told how many such instances in the fire service and the health service would have been avoided if this legislation was on the statute book at the time. The case that the Minister made to the Committee sounded to me like, “It would be a good idea to legislate to avoid a possible problem one day in the future.” We certainly have not been given any information to explain that this is a current problem that needs to be addressed.”
“I start by associating myself strongly with the case my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough made against the regulations and agreeing with many of the points that have just been made by the spokesman for the Scottish National party. It is absolutely right that it is unwise to legislate in this area, encroaching on rights at work. It is certainly not a good idea to be doing so in the absence of any compelling case for why such legislation is needed. That is the aspect of this debate that I want to open up a little in my brief remarks. The Minister, when I asked her, could not tell us whether there had ever been industrial action in the Border Agency. I hope that by the time she stands up again, she will be able to tell us whether there has or not.”
“I hope the hon. Gentleman also shares a passion that many in the House have for freedom and for being reluctant to legislate to curtail people’s freedoms and rights. As parliamentarians we are obliged to protect the rights of individuals and to be extremely reluctant to legislate to reduce and curtail those rights. Sadly, that is exactly what we are being encouraged to do this afternoon.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; that is the normal practice. When opening the debate for the Opposition, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough gave the example of the Royal College of Midwives. I think I heard her correctly when she said that it recently had its first strike since its creation in 1880-something. Why on earth are we legislating to make it harder for them to strike in future? Unless we believe a huge zeal for industrial action that we have not seen in the past is about to hit us, why on earth are we legislating? I am genuinely puzzled.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right; that is exactly the danger that we face here. If there is evidence of a serious problem, or of x incidents of industrial action over the past three or five years that would have been avoided if the legislation had been on the statute book, will the Minister tell us what it is? If there is no such evidence, I hope the Committee will echo the natural reluctance to legislate often urged by Government Members and vote the regulation down.”
“Does the hon. Gentleman recognise, however, that if we do not get a deal—the Prime Minister has said that that is a possibility —we could end up with a 10% tariff on cars being exported from the UK? That would be very damaging to the west midlands car industry.”
“I am pleased to be following the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), who set out an erudite constitutional perspective for our edification. Of course, there are wholly honourable reasons for wanting to leave the European Union. The problem, however, is that we will pay a heavy economic price for leaving. Too many jobs will be forced out of the UK, and for that reason I shall oppose the Bill at the vote on Second Reading tomorrow.”
“It is absolutely clear that there will be a heavy economic price. Within a couple of years, that will be absolutely clear. My view is that if we in this House believe that a measure is contrary to the national interest, we should vote against it. We have heard a couple of speeches from Conservative Members who have said in terms that they think that the Bill is contrary to the national interest. If that is the view of Members of this House, we should vote against the Bill.”
“I cannot share the view that we would be better off replacing annoying interference from Brussels with annoying interference from Washington, but that appears to be what some people believe we should head towards.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think we should pay attention to those who know what they are talking about. The reality is that our currency has fallen significantly in value following the referendum, and that means that we are poorer than we were before. But the real damage will be done when jobs start to be forced out of Britain, as they will be over the next few years. I know that some people argue that the loss of jobs in Britain will be a price worth paying in the short term for a better long-term future. I do not agree with that view. The fact is that we will always be dependent on close partnerships with other countries.”
“The failure of the British Government to achieve their objectives in negotiations in the EU is a reflection of the loss of UK influence. The most spectacular failure of all was, of course, David Cameron’s failure to secure a meaningful renegotiation in his last efforts as Prime Minister. My conclusion is that what we actually need is a much more engaged British Government who are able to win arguments in Brussels, as previous British Governments were able to do. The failure of David Cameron’s attempted renegotiation highlights spectacularly just how big a problem has developed, but we should not now be pulling out all together and I will be opposing the Second Reading of the Bill tomorrow night.”
“I think the problem was hard-wired in once David Cameron removed his MEPs from the main centre-right bloc in the European Parliament. From that moment on, British influence in the EU diminished. It was increasingly clear that, unlike under Conservative and Labour Governments in the past, the Conservative coalition Government in the UK were unable to get their way in debates in the EU because their influence was so diminished. An example that I am particularly aggrieved about was the failure of our Government to protect the viability of cane sugar refining in the EU, as practised at the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery in my constituency. Previous Governments—Labour and Conservative—were able to secure the future of cane sugar refining. This Government, tragically, have failed.”
“However, she seems to have set her face against such a concession on the immigration policy that is needed, and we will therefore pay the price. I must say that it is very strange that our future economic wellbeing is being relegated to the importance of focusing on reducing net migration to the tens of thousands. The Prime Minister was Home Secretary for six years. In that time, non-EU net migration, which was completely under our control, was nowhere near the tens of thousands—last year, it was 150,000—and of course all EU net migration comes on top of that. The only way the target of bringing down net migration to the tens of thousands could be delivered would be at an extraordinary economic cost to the UK. I do not believe that any Government would be willing to sign up to that. How have we got ourselves into such a mess?”
“I agree with those who say that the various forms of so-called soft Brexit would not solve the problem. We would then end up having to apply all the rules that are devised in the EU without having any influence at all over what the rules are. That is not a viable position for the UK in the future. The one glimmer of a Brexit without the economic damage I am concerned about would be if we signed up not to the current version of the free movement of people, but to a form of free movement of labour in which EU citizens could come to the UK if they had a firm job offer in the UK. As I understand it, that is how things worked in the Common Market in the past. If we agreed to something along those lines, I believe that it would buy us a good proportion of the barrier-free access to the single market that the Prime Minister says she wants.”
“I am afraid that I cannot give way again. In any case, we must not dismiss short-term job losses during the next few years as unimportant. The Prime Minister rightly aims for barrier-free access to the single market. The problem is that without signing up to at least some version of free movement she stands no chance whatever of getting barrier-free access to the single market. In this House, we need to be frank with people about our prospects during the next few years. For example, many of my constituencies and those of my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) work in the financial sector in the City of London, and one study suggests that 70,000 jobs will be lost in that one sector alone. There will be such a scale of damage in other parts of the economy as well. In my view, that is much too high a price to pay.”
“I agree with the points that my right hon. Friend is making. The RCN has told us that the pay of a significant group of nurses has fallen in real terms by 14% over the period he refers to. Does he agree that that is a pretty startling statistic?”
“The UK has long played a leading role in EU missions, including Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean and Operation Atalanta off the horn of Africa. Given the renewed commitment expressed by the Prime Minister, to which the Secretary of State has drawn attention, does he intend us to continue participating in EU missions after we leave the EU?”
“Closure of the last jobcentre in my constituency will require those who sign on fortnightly to pay an extra £6 a month in bus fares to get to a more distant jobcentre. Can the Minister reassure me that Jobcentre Plus will reimburse claimants with those additional costs?”
“I agree with my hon. Friend on her support for the Bill. As I am sure she knows, last Sunday was Homelessness Sunday and I happened to be in her borough, although not her constituency. Attention was drawn to the large number of church-based night shelters of various kinds that operate all over the country to try to meet the rapidly growing need. Will she join me in commending those initiatives for their efforts?”
“The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders reported today that car production is at a high, but that investment in car manufacturing is falling because of uncertainty over Brexit. How long will the current uncertainty undermine investment in the British economy?”
“David Cameron promised that the funding per pupil would be protected but, as we have heard, that is not happening. In my constituency, funding per pupil is being reduced further as a result of the formula. Why is David Cameron’s promise being broken?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that if the proposal of the Chair of the Education Committee to remove the 3% protection were implemented, the position for schools in his constituency and many others would be a great deal worse?”
“Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming one element of the funding formula, which is the inclusion for the first time of a mobility factor to reflect the additional costs of high pupil turnover? However, does she agree that it ought to be larger than the 0.1% of the total that is being allocated on that basis at the moment?”
“The last thing we need is 10% tariffs imposed on autonomous vehicles. The Secretary of State is right to make the point that we have been the leading destination in Europe for overseas investment, but much of that was from companies outside Europe wanting to gain access to the single market, which the Prime Minister has now told us we are going to leave. Does he believe that the UK can remain Europe’s leading destination for inward investment outside the single market?”
“My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and I have been approached by constituents who want to provide help directly to Rohingya communities that need it, in both Burma and Bangladesh. The Minister has talked about access for NGOs; what routes are currently open for the delivery of help where it is needed, and what advice can he give to those who want to help people who are currently suffering such extreme problems?”
“EU banks use passport arrangements to operate in the UK, and so provide us with jobs and the Exchequer with revenue. Given what the Prime Minister is saying at this moment, those arrangements are clearly at risk. How hopeful is the Chancellor that passporting will survive the exit from the European Union?”
“On rethinking immigration policy, will Ministers consider allowing EU citizens to come to the UK if they have a firm job offer in the UK as part of the quid pro quo for barrier-free access to the single market, which the Secretary of State said is his goal?”
“After the big cut in employment and support allowance takes place in April and the new Work and Health programme is established, will the Department be spending more or less on employment support for ESA claimants than is currently the case under the Work programme and Work Choice?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for schools for listening to the case for adding mobility to the school funding formula and to the Secretary of State for her announcement; I will look carefully at the details. Should she not have secured the Chancellor’s support to make sure that no school sees a cut in its funding per pupil, given the cost pressures that she has referred to?”
“The hon. Gentleman rightly makes the point that the rate of employment among disabled people has risen, but the overall employment rate has risen as well, so the disability employment gap has not been reduced. Why has there not been any progress on that issue?”