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 congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I am listening with interest to the point she is making. The coalition Government set up an advisory group on freedom of religion and belief in the Foreign Office, which was a welcome initiative. Does she share my disappointment that that group has not been re-established since the general election, and that it seems it is no longer a priority?”
“I want us to stay in the European Union, but the Prime Minister indicated that he would use the renegotiation to seek to address the unfairness in the European sugar market, which currently affects cane sugar refiners such as Tate & Lyle in my constituency. Has the right hon. Gentleman made any progress on that specific issue?”
“Of course, the diverted profits tax was referred to as the Google tax. My hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has alleged that under the terms of the deal Google will not pay a penny. Is he right about that?”
“That kicked off the process that I am delighted the Government are now swinging behind. But Labour in government started this off and Labour is entitled to the credit for that.”
“I welcome the Government’s seeming support for country-by-country reporting, but those close to the process find it difficult to recognise that the Government have led on it since 2010, as they have claimed. We certainly led on it prior to 2010. The original idea was devised, I think, by Richard Murphy, about whom we have heard a good deal more in the last couple of years, but it was first brought to me, when I occupied the Minister’s office, by Christian Aid. I pay tribute to its work on this. It came to see me in early 2009. We had a series of international meetings in Berlin, Paris and elsewhere in 2009, at which I put the issue on the agenda, and that culminated in the first joint meeting of the OECD tax and development committee in January 2010 in Paris.”
“The article stated: “Measures put in place by Labour during its 13 years in power to counter corporate tax avoidance are projected to raise ten times as much over the next four years as those introduced by the…coalition government.” Thirdly and importantly, the article stated that the coalition “eased laws aimed at stopping companies using tax havens, which had been repeatedly tightened under Labour.” That is the difference between the record of the Government when I was a Treasury Minister and the current Government. Labour in government did the heavy lifting on corporate tax avoidance. The new Government, when elected, had different priorities, as they were entitled to have, but they cannot claim to have maintained the progress Labour made, because they have not.”
“I am highly enamoured of the record of the last Labour Government, and particularly enamoured of their Treasury policies. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for drawing attention to an assessment by the Financial Times of the comparative records of the Labour Government between 1997 and 2010 and subsequent Governments. The article, written by Vanessa Houlder in February last year, made three very important points to set the record straight. First, it stated that the current Chancellor “has raised much less income than the last Labour government from reforms to tackle corporate tax avoidance”. The second point was referred to by my hon. Friend in his introductory remarks.”
“The Minister has underlined the advantages of apprenticeships for older people, but it is striking that the number of younger people taking them up was less last year than three years previously. What is he doing to draw young people’s attention to the attractions of apprenticeships?”
“On 1 November 2011, the Secretary of State issued a press release saying that “the Universal Credit IT programme is…progressing well with 30% of the new technology required to deliver it now complete”. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what proportion of universal credit IT has now been completed?”
“The result, as the Lord Chief Justice extraordinarily reported two weeks ago, is that: “Our system of justice has become unaffordable to most”. Two constituents were sacked unfairly. One went to tribunal but was unable to afford legal representation and therefore lost. The other immediately gave up. With justice now available to only the well-off, does the Minister have any serious proposals to open up access to justice to ordinary people?”
“The CBI said in its “Future possible” report 18 months ago that “the transfer of responsibility for careers guidance to schools has been a failure.” Will the Minister recognise that the CBI is correct?”
“Of course, it is right that the Government address the problem, but that is a very difficult thing to do. Sometimes, one gets the feeling that the Government are coming up with ideas in order to be seen to be doing something. There is a worry that a view is emerging that a person who is deeply religious should be regarded in consequence as suspect. In reality, there is no correlation between those two things; it is not true for Christians, Muslims or others. Islamist extremists, on the whole, are people who are outside of regular mosque attendance because mosque attendance involves socialisation, which helps to protect against extremism. Therefore, in reality, the connection is mistaken.”
“I am particularly uncomfortable about the idea that religious instruction should be placed under the authority of some vaguely defined British values administered by Government officials. Surely, in reality, it is the other way around. Admirable British values have been formed as a result of the practice of religious faith over hundreds of years. We need the practice of faith to renew and reinvigorate those values, and there is a good deal of that around the country at the moment—for example, in the extraordinary network of food banks that has developed over the past few years, a great majority of which are faith-based. That is where good values come from. Making religious instruction subject to a state-controlled version of values is deeply problematic. There is a recurring theme in the Government’s efforts to address extremism.”
“I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) on securing the debate. I agree with a great deal of what he said, and I think there will be widespread agreement that the prospect of Government officials inspecting and supervising religious activity is not an attractive one. We all understand—the hon. Gentleman set this out clearly—why the Government want to introduce the measure, but the way in which they go about doing so is very important. The Christian organisation CARE, in its briefing for the debate, rightly asks the question that he raised: what became of the big society? The approach being taken here is very different. It is the big state approach, which, as we have been reminded, the Conservative party’s election manifesto explicitly repudiated.”
“They might be set up by the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Alliance or the Muslim Council of Britain. The bodies would be rigorously supervised and audited by Ofsted, but it would be their staff who did the inspecting, rather than Government inspectors. Of course, there would need to be a limit on the number of bodies, and there would be a case on the ground of openness for an inspector from a different body to accompany an inspecting team on its visits. Sunday schools or after-school Koranic classes do not object to outside visitors. The problem is with the idea that they are answerable to Government officials for the religious instruction that they deliver.”
“As one commentator has observed, the measure would, in effect, make Ofsted the state regulator of religion. It is quite surprising to see this idea from a Conservative Government. Ministers have rightly called for religious freedom overseas. We need to be vigilant that we do not undermine it at home. There are pragmatic considerations as well. Sensitivity and tact are not the hallmarks of Ofsted. Its job, on our behalf, includes a lot of heavy lifting. The task that the Government envisage here is a very different kind of task. I cannot see that it would be right to ask Ofsted to undertake it. Instead, what if the task of inspection— if it must be done—were given to one of a number of inspecting bodies, which could perhaps be set up for the purpose? Each setting could then choose the body by which it was inspected.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I very much agree with the way he has expressed that danger, which we are heading into at the moment. If the Government are determined to make some changes in this area, I wonder whether there might be a less problematic way of doing so than the one proposed in the recent consultation. As was mentioned earlier, there is not a good fit between the task proposed and the institution—Ofsted—proposed to undertake it. I am an admirer of Ofsted and, in particular, of its current chief inspector. I admired him when, years ago, he was a headteacher in the borough that I represent in the House of Commons. However, inspecting and holding to account publicly funded schools is a very different task from monitoring occasional problems in wholly voluntary settings.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was attempting to propose a different way of doing things that might get around at least some of the serious difficulties in the Government’s proposals. In conclusion, several of us received this morning an email from a man who writes: “I’m a British born Muslim living in East London. I have a beard and pray five times a day and I can no longer walk down my street without being looked at strangely as a threat.” In addressing the problem—a real problem, albeit one affecting only a tiny number of people—there is a danger of accidentally severely undermining the values that we are setting out to protect.”
“The decision will then be made jointly by the Secretary of States for Communities and Local Government and for Transport, although we do not know precisely when.”
“It also requires a further seven stands for aircraft, a new taxi lane parallel to the runway to increase the number of movements per hour on the runway, and expansion of the airport terminal. Altogether that represents a £200 million investment, which will deliver increased capacity for the benefit of the Anglian region and the wider UK economy by 2018. As the local planning authority, Newham Council gave the development permission last February. However, against the advice of his officials, the Mayor of London blocked the expansion. His letter of 26 March 2015 said that the application did “not adequately mitigate and manage its adverse noise impacts.” I am not entirely clear what the Mayor meant by that. The airport is appealing, and the appeal will be heard in March and April.”
“Some 52% travelled on business, but quite a large group now travel on leisure flights. Ten airlines fly to and from the airport, mainly serving European destinations, although British Airways also flies to New York from London City. Some 2,000 people work at the airport, and its development will create 1,500 additional jobs by 2023. The proposed expansion at London City does not require any increase in the movements allowed under the existing permission or any change to the runway. However, it does require larger aircraft parking stands to accommodate quieter and more fuel-efficient aircraft, such as those in the Bombardier C series, whose wings are manufactured in Belfast.”
“However, the expansion proposals for London City airport, which will be considered on appeal in a couple of months, can help to meet rising demand while we await the decision on Heathrow versus Gatwick. I have a long association with London City airport. I was at its opening 29 years ago, as chair of Newham Council’s planning committee. I particularly welcome the imaginative and committed way in which the airport, with its “Take Off Into Work” initiative, is ensuring that local residents have access to the expanding employment opportunities it offers. Partly on the strength of that, it won last year’s all-party group on corporate responsibility award for national responsible business champion. London City airport catered for 4.32 million passengers in 2015.”
“We have a bright and youthful population in east London, with many people looking for rewarding careers. Having a good rail service from Stratford to Stansted will be important for many of those people, as well as giving the airport access to key future talent, which will be very much in its interests. I want, however, to focus on the potential contribution of another airport on the east side of London—London City airport, which is in my constituency. It is disappointing that the major capacity increase needed at London airports has been delayed yet again, this time to avoid embarrassing the Conservative party in the London mayoral elections.”
“I was going to say that I was pleased to see the Minister in his place, but he is not there—I am sure he soon will be. I am, however, delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) is in his place to respond on behalf of the Opposition, and I congratulate him on his promotion. This is the first time he has done so in a debate I have taken part in, and that is particularly appropriate today, given that he represents a constituency in the Anglian region. I agree with much that the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) said in opening the debate. I particularly want to pick up his point about rail access to Stansted from Stratford. Well over 20,000 people in the borough I represent in east London work at Stansted airport.”
“Of course, expansion at London City is a bit of a sticking plaster for the needs of the Anglian region and the wider UK economy, but it will be an extremely valuable step. Its delivery will have substantial economic benefits for east London, which is increasingly the focus for investment from outside and inside the UK, the home to more and more people, and an economic centre. The expansion of London City airport can only help and support it.”
“The plan includes £25 million for an enhanced sound insulation scheme, and the whole purpose of the plan is to allow the use of newer aircraft that are quieter than those that use the airport at the moment. It includes the introduction of a fixed noise contour enforced by the local authority, which will limit noise impact and incentivise airport operators to use quieter aircraft. I am disappointed that development at London City airport has been delayed. Everyone recognises that additional airport capacity serving the Anglian region, London and the south-east is needed. Development at London City can provide extra capacity quickly, with the potential for nearly an additional 2 million passengers a year by 2023, while we await the longer-term decision on Heathrow versus Gatwick—I presume that is where the decision will land.”
“That is possible. I think it might be more to do with his objection to expansion at Heathrow, and a feeling that to be consistent he needed to object to expansion at London City as well, but that is speculation on my part. London City airport is the only London airport that does not operate night flights. It shuts from 10.30 pm to 6.30 am. It also closes for a full 24 hours from 12.30 pm on Saturday to 12.30 pm on Sunday. Of course, there are people who are concerned about noise from the airport, as is the case with any airport, but quite what the Mayor meant when, against the advice of his officials, he said there was not adequate mitigation and management of noise impacts, I am not sure.”
“I think I am right in saying that London City airport has more flights to Edinburgh than any other London airport. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in celebrating its contribution?”
“Given the Minister’s remarks, does he recognise the potential benefit of the expansion that is proposed at London City airport? Of course, that expansion is now subject to a planning appeal procedure, but it is a potentially worthwhile and significant addition to airport capacity for London, the south-east and the Anglian region, which could be delivered quite quickly.”
“At that time, the Secretary of State said in debate said he would consider transitional protection. Has my hon. Friend seen any evidence of that consideration being given?”
“Given the background that the Minister has set out, he will well understand why it would have been a mistake to go ahead with the tax credit cuts that were U-turned before Christmas. Why then are the Government going ahead with precisely those cuts for people whose only mistake is to have the misfortune of receiving universal credit instead of tax credits?”
“The Minister said in response to my earlier intervention that there were to be transitional arrangements, but the trouble is that people receiving universal credit will get the full cut in April this year. They are going to be clobbered.”
“I think we have now got to the appropriate point in the Minister’s speech. Does he acknowledge that the 50,000-plus working people who are today receiving universal credit will see their benefits sharply cut in April?”
“How anybody persuaded themselves that replacing the entire benefits system was not going to constitute a major IT project is beyond me, but that was the naivety that underpinned the leadership of the project at the outset. Warnings from Labour Members and others were cheerily waived aside and it was not until September 2013, when the National Audit Office first reported on the issue, that some shafts of light were trained on what was really going on. The NAO said that “the programme suffered from weak management, ineffective control and poor governance”, and it was absolutely right.”
“I think that universal credit is a sensible idea. It has potential to make the system simpler and in particular to make it clearer to people what their financial position will be if they move from unemployment into work. We have always said that the idea is sensible. It is not a panacea—Ministers frequently tell us it is a solution to the problems, even though it is not—but it is a helpful step. The delivery of universal credit, however, has been a shambles. It went very badly wrong right at the start. Ministers accepted terrible advice about how long it was going to take. Page 34 of the July 2010 Green Paper, “21st Century Welfare”, stated: “The IT changes that would be necessary to deliver” universal credit “would not constitute a major IT project”.”
“Friend the Member for Pontypridd is right to say that all the way through the process of universal credit, we have been told that there would be transitional protection, yet this group of 50,000 working people, who are already receiving universal credit, will suffer enormous cuts in their incomes in April because of the changes to the universal credit work allowance. That cannot be right and the Government need to change their mind.”
“The whole House accepts that that would have been wrong, and yet the Government are going ahead with precisely those cuts for the relatively small number of people—there are, I think, 50,000 of them at the moment—who are in work and claiming universal credit. If we have all accepted that it is wrong to impose such draconian cuts on the incomes of working families who are claiming tax credits, why is it right to go ahead with precisely the same cuts, which will have a huge impact, to the incomes of working families in receipt of universal credit? I intervened to ask the Minister that question three times. Each time he told us that he would come to it later in his speech. Unfortunately, he never got there. If he is able to explain to us how that can be right, I hope that he will do so. My hon.”
“Friend in his opening speech about the way in which the changes to universal credit since it was first announced are undermining so fatally its objectives. In the early debates, the Secretary of State used to make a lot of the fact that universal credit was going to cost more than £2 billion more than the previous system, but that is not true anymore—it is now going to cost £3.7 billion a year less. That has been done by eroding the work incentives that were supposed to be the whole point of doing it in the first place. The whole House has accepted that it would have been wrong to go ahead with the tax credit cuts, which would have had a huge impact on and reduced the incomes of working families on modest incomes. There would have been a reduction of £1,000, £2,000 or £3,000 a year for those with a household income of £20,000 a year.”
“It will undoubtedly slip further and I am equally certain that the Secretary of State will continue to tell us that it is on track. The management has been a shambles and we have still not been told about key outstanding policy issues. Which recipients and claimants of universal credit will be entitled to free school meals for their children? We have been waiting for an answer to that question for more than five years, but we still have not been told. It makes an enormous difference, because the answer we expect the Government to give will introduce a huge new cliff edge to the social security system. It will be far worse than anything in the prior system, even though the whole point of universal credit was to get rid of such disincentives. I want to pick up on the points so well made by my hon.”
“On 24 May 2012, the Secretary of State announced in another press release— I always used to read them avidly—that “all new claims to the current benefits and credits will be entirely phased out” by April 2014. Again, the Department has not been willing to announce when it now expects all new claims to the existing benefits and credits to be phased out, but in a very helpful note, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd referred in his opening speech, the House of Commons Library has worked out, by reading between the lines of opaque statements by Ministers, that new claims for legacy benefits are expected to be closed down by June 2018. That milestone is a bit more than four years late compared with what we were originally told. We can confidently say, therefore, that universal credit is at least four years late.”
“Therefore, exactly as in 2012, the Government in 2016 now expect the roll-out of universal credit to take another five years from that date. The completion date has gone back four years in the last four years. Is it unfair to allege, therefore, that universal credit is running four years late? Let us look at a couple of other milestones, not just the completion date. On 1 November 2011, the Secretary of State published a press release that said: “Over one million people will be claiming Universal Credit by April 2014 Work and Pensions Secretary…announced today”. April 2014 was nearly two years ago and 1 million people are not receiving universal credit; the latest figure is 155,000. The OBR now expects that the figure will be 1 million by April 2018, so that milestone is also four years late. Let us look at another example.”
“The Office for Budget Responsibility, however, pointed out at the time of the autumn statement that the project has been “substantively delayed on at least three separate occasions”, so just how far behind is it? When the project started, we were told that transition to universal credit would be complete by 2017—an absurd claim, but that is what was said. Back in 2012, the belief was that transition would take five years from that point. Having failed to deliver on that date, Ministers have refused to announce a revised date; it is a question, I think, of once bitten, twice shy. The autumn statement, however, indicated that the Government now expect—the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) was correct to make this point in her speech—the roll-out to be completed by 2021.”
“Unfortunately, we were told in 2010 that the lessons from all those problems had been learned and that things were going to be different, and that is true, because now we have not one, but two major IT projects for universal credit—the live service and the digital service—both under way in parallel. No one has yet told us when those two different systems will be brought together, and undoubtedly large sums of money are being wasted. I want to spend a couple of minutes addressing the question of just how far behind schedule universal credit is now. If the Secretary of State had spoken at the beginning of this debate—as he should have done, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) correctly pointed out—he would have told us that it was on track, because that is what he always says.”
“The Government are not going ahead with the tax credit cuts, so why is it right to go ahead with precisely the same cuts for the minority of people who have the misfortune to be claiming not tax credits but universal credit?”
“I think the Minister owes the House an explanation of why Saudi Arabia was omitted from the 2010-2015 strategy document. He has dismissed the question on the basis that there has since been another list published, but why was it not in the strategy document? Was it an oversight?”
“Surely the episode that gave rise to the report was simply an example of Parliament functioning as it is supposed to do. The Chancellor has since been trying to take the credit for the change. Will the Leader of the House accept, as I think the great majority of his hon. Friends now do, that the other place was right on tax credits?”
“My hon. Friend is making some important points. Is it the case—I have seen the suggestion that it may well be—that the small number of people who are currently receiving universal credit will see the enormous reductions in their income that were to have been imposed on tax credit recipients? There has been a U-turn on tax credits, but is it the case that those who are getting universal credit will be hit?”
“As the Minister will know, Ofsted has said that apprenticeships are not good enough at present, and many people in industry believe that the only way to hit the 3 million target is to water down quality further. What reassurance can the Minister provide?”
“One of the submissions that I and, no doubt, others received ahead of this debate asked us to draw attention to human rights violations being suffered by the people of Palestine. It listed articles that are being breached there, such as article 9, which states: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” I hope that we will see progress in that country as well.”
“In 2010, for example, seven Baha’i leaders were sentenced to 20 years in prison simply for exercising their faith. We also wrote about a number of Christian figures imprisoned in Iran. I particularly want to mention Maryam Nagash Zargaran, who is serving a four-year prison sentence in the notorious Evin prison. Her sentence began in 2013. She suffers from a serious heart condition, which has significantly worsened in the two years she has served so far. I understand that she was recently allowed a short period in hospital for treatment, but she needs more. I would like the Minister to ask his right hon. and hon. Friends in the Foreign Office to raise her case with the Iranian authorities, because her only crime has been to practise her faith.”