Clive Efford
MP for Eltham and Chislehurst · Labour · United Kingdom
“Thank you for allowing me to take part in this statement, Madam Deputy Speaker, given that I was not here at the beginning—I was carrying out my duties elsewhere in the House. I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. What is she likely to do in my part of south-east London for technical and vocational places?”
“I rise to speak to amendment 97 in my name, which would remove clause 10 from the Bill. Clause 10 gives powers to the Secretary of State to vary the proportion of public and private provision of health services if they consider that to do so is in the interests of the health service.”
“Labour’s 2024 plan to make work pay set out a welcome desire to bring more essential services back into public control—something that is welcomed by health workers across the country, because so far the “biggest wave of insourcing in a generation”, as was promised, has felt more like a trickle when it comes to the NHS.”
“The explanatory notes for the Bill say that this new flexibility is necessary “where there may otherwise be a breakdown in provision of a health service.” Can we imagine a situation where the Secretary of State has concerns about a health service and that an approach to assist a local provider would be rebuffed?”
“There are ample powers to enable the Secretary of State to intervene and resolve breakdowns in the provision of a health service. On clause 10, we must balance what it adds in those situations against its potential misuse by an ideologically driven Government that are determined to privatise our NHS.”
“It was a pleasure to join my right hon. Friend at Greenwich council’s development of 435 council properties in my constituency for the launch of the social and affordable housing programme. Some 70,000 homes are planned, and that is welcome and overdue.”
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“I have a Galliard development in my constituency, and my constituents will be concerned that Galliard has not signed. They would like to hear from the Secretary of State what that means for them. They have life-critical safety defects in the building, which is shocking, because that building construction was paused as a consequence of the tragedy at Grenfell, yet Galliard went on to develop a building that has those defects. What does today’s statement from the Secretary of State mean for my constituents who are waiting to hear from Galliard about the state of their buildings?”
“Beyond that, a serious criminal, harbouring in Europe, could claim legitimately that their human rights are at risk if they are extradited to the UK. Imagine that argument in a case made by a serious criminal who we want to extradite back here to face justice. They might say that their human rights are at risk and that would be a legitimate claim for them not to face justice in this country. The Bill is not the solution to the problem we have. We need to create safer routes for people who are legitimate asylum seekers to come to this country. We need to deal with the backlog and we need to create an organisation that will deal with the criminals who are trafficking people across in small boats. That is the way forward, not this piece of legislation that is just dog-whistle politics.”
“Friends pointed out, they are not respecting what the European convention on human rights means to this country. For instance, if we want to arrange for the safe return of failed refugee claimants from this country, we will need to have an agreement with countries in Europe that are signatories to the European convention on human rights. If we are not seen to be inside that convention, they will not be able to enter into those agreements, so they will be defeating the very object that they seek to achieve in the legislation. Moreover, if we are to fall foul of the European convention on human rights, we will not be able to reach legal agreements on issues such as extradition, fingerprints, DNA on biometric data or the essential exchange of that data when dealing with serious crime.”
“We need to tone down the debate. Let us be clear: no one on the Opposition Benches wants the small boat crossings to continue or to see people forced into those boats. We want to see legal routes for those people and for them to find alternatives rather than having to go to those traffickers. Nor does anyone on the Opposition Benches want anyone to stay in the UK who has committed a crime and has no right to remain. It is time that Conservatives MPs stopped standing up and making claims such as that. The overriding problem with the Bill, as has already been said, is that many Government Members know it is not going to work. The danger is that, beyond that, they think that the solution to the problem is for us to leave the European convention on human rights. As one of my hon.”
“I remind Members that it helps the Chair determine who wants to speak if they bob in their places. I do not intend to impose a time limit; we have plenty of time for Back-Bench speeches. If my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) has more of his intervention that he wants to use, perhaps he will make a speech when we reach the end of the list of speakers. I call Mary Glindon.”
“I intend to move to Front-Bench speeches at 2.28 pm. We have two speakers left. That should give you some idea of how long you have to speak, in order to allow 10 minutes for each of the Front-Bench speakers and two minutes for Bob Blackman to sum up. I now call Rachael Maskell.”
“Which is the greater evidence of political bias: Gary Lineker criticising the Government’s language from his private Twitter account, or the chairman of the BBC giving donations to the Conservative party?”
“Many Conservative Members want us to leave the European convention on human rights, but that would make it impossible for European countries to enter into return agreements for people who have failed their asylum applications in the UK and would undermine our ability to extradite people who have committed serious crimes, because they could simply claim that their human rights were at risk because we were no longer signatories to the ECHR. Can we have a debate in Government time to explain that to the fools on the Conservative Back Benches, who want to put the security of this country at risk?”
“I am grateful for the Minister’s answer and for his letter of the 28th of last month, but, as he will know, that very evening, there was yet another dangerous incident at London Bridge due to overcrowding. On 7 February, I was on a train which, due to delayed trains, was so overcrowded that someone fainted in my carriage. The system has been cut back to the point where there is no slack in it. Whenever there is a delay, there is dangerous overcrowding. The Minister has to address that before something serious happens to an individual. We were told that there would be no delays when the new system was brought in, because it would be so efficient that we would not have any of that congestion, but it has been worse. The Minister has to face up to that. He gave Southeastern permission to do that. We need to change the timetable.”
“Yes, Mr Speaker. In his answer to me, the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) mentioned that he was sending a letter to Members who were affected by the changes that he had announced. When I looked at my emails later, I noted that that communication had been sent at the exact moment I sat down after asking my question, which denied me the opportunity to quiz the Minister further about his announcement. While the off-peak services to Charing Cross are welcome, he has not dealt with the overcrowding at peak times. I do not know how I can obtain redress for this, Mr Speaker, but at least I have put it on the record.”
“If the Leader of the House was in the Chamber just before the start of business questions, she will have heard me raise a point of order on a letter I received from the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), relating to an issue that I raised in Transport questions. He was announcing that we would get extra train services off-peak on our local lines and said he had written to four MPs. I received that letter just after I asked my question. It has now emerged that Conservative MPs who received that letter were tweeting about it at 9 am this morning. Clearly, there has been favourable treatment of Conservative Members over Opposition Members. As Leader of the House, what does she have to say about that?”
“The emails and WhatsApp messages expose the fact that the scientific advice was that people leaving hospital should be swabbed before going into care homes, and the Government ignored that. That shows that the Government were not following scientific advice. The Minister has said that other priorities had to be considered before the Government could implement that policy, but no one would have been more aware of the competing priorities than Professor Whitty. What was it that the Government knew that Professor Whitty did not when they decided not to follow his advice?”
“I understand that the Secretary of State could not divulge the detail of today’s announcement to the families who had been campaigning, but does he believe they would recognise the independent advocate he has announced as what they have been campaigning for on behalf of the people they lost?”
“We know from leaked Government documents that there is a £13 billion backlog in school repairs. Some cases are deemed to pose a risk to life. Is the Schools Minister aware of any school buildings that are at risk of collapse?”
“I always knew that the Conservatives were a bunch of bean counters, but this is off the scale—our supermarkets have had to impose a form of food rationing, while the chief bean counter comes to the Dispatch Box and says, “Crisis? What crisis?” Does the Secretary of State agree with the president of the National Farmers’ Union, Minette Batters, who has accused the Government of a “dereliction of duty” for failing to ensure that we have a fit-for-purpose post-Brexit set of border checks on agricultural imports? That was not what we were promised before the Brexit vote?”
“I know that the Leader of the House is interested in the future of football governance, and her concern for the future of her local football team is well documented, so will she be popping along to the Q&A that the Sports Minister is holding tonight, where he is charging people a £500 donation to the Conservative party for a briefing on the White Paper that is about to be published? Will she be paying £500? Is that common with legislation? Can we have a price list of what is charged for a private briefing on other legislation to make money for the Conservative party?”
“We need urgent action, otherwise other clubs could disappear. What will the Government do to urgently address that issue?”
“I welcome the White Paper and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), but I take issue with the paragraph that says: “Both the Premier League and EFL are in agreement that a greater quantum of cash needs to flow through the pyramid” That is absolutely not true. The position of the Premier League is that it should continue with the parachute payments, which is the impasse to our getting a fairer distribution of resources. Ministers can stand at the Dispatch Box and say they have pleaded with the two parties to come together to reach an agreement, but it will simply not happen because of the intransigence of the Premier League. We cannot wait for the independent regulator to go through all the processes set out in chapter 9 before coming to a decision about what side to come down on in that argument.”
“This Tory Government always lecture us about wanting to deregulate and not interfere in the freedoms and liberties of individuals as they go about their daily lives. All the independent research indicates that voter ID will disadvantage people who are least likely to vote Tory. What is it that attracted the Minister to this measure?”
“When the Government use language closely associated with the far right, it only provides encouragement. We know these far-right groups are trying to stoke local problems around the hotels in which asylum seekers are being housed. Has the incident in Knowsley inspired the Government to review how they assess the safety of these locations and the powers that the police and those investigating online activity need to deter the people who are trying to exploit this situation?”
“The Government commissioned the fan-led review of football governance, and it was the Government who published it. They did not make it clear at the time that they intended to prevaricate and then announce further consultation through a White Paper. One wonders what it is the Government think they will find out from the White Paper that they have not already found out from the fan-led review. Will the Minister commit to implementing all 10 recommendations of the fan-led review, or is the White Paper going to unpick them?”
“3. What assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the ninth report of the House of Lords Constitution Committee, “The roles of the Lord Chancellor and the Law Officers”, HL 118, published on 18 January 2023.”
“The Constitution Committee rightly says that we need Law Officers “with the independence of mind, autonomy and strength of character to deliver impartial legal advice to the Government, even where it is unwelcome.” I am sure that the Attorney General agrees, but can she give a single example of where her predecessor met that standard in the advice that she gave to the Government?”
“The fact that the Home Secretary did not think that it was a priority to be here to answer this urgent question is a complete disgrace, and yet another snub to the families of the Hillsborough 97. We know what will happen on Friday. The Bill being promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) is No. 10 on the Order Paper. The Whips will sit on the Government Benches and anonymously shout “Object” when the Bill is read out, unless the Government change their position. We need no further debate on this issue. We can get the Bill into Committee, debate it line by line and get the legislation through. There is a vehicle for doing it right here, right now in this House. It will be forever to the condemnation of this Government if they do not take that opportunity.”
“I wonder whether the Minister thinks that the sanctions against Russia are having the desired effect. If he thinks that they are, as I suspect he does, can he explain why the IMF predicts that Russia will fare much better than us?”
“There is no weaselling out of this: the Secretary of State needs to come here and answer for his decisions.”
“Sustainable ownership in the long term can only be achieved if we sort out football finance. There are negotiations going on at the moment between the English Football League and the Premier League around the issue of parachute payments, which create a financial imbalance, particularly in the championship. There are 14 clubs in the premier league that will not move on the issue of parachute payments, because they are the most likely to fall into the championship. Are the Government going to act on that, or will it take a Labour Government to do it?”
“We cannot wait till March to hear from the Secretary of State for Transport about the dangerous situation that occurred last night at London Bridge. The Leader of the House will be aware, because I have raised this here before, of the disastrous cuts to my local services, which are exacerbating the problem, with more people having to change at London Bridge. I have had people contact me about the dangerous situation with the crowding. I have seen photographs of the concourse, which is about the size of two football pitches, absolutely rammed with people, with escalators having to be switched off and people crowded on to platforms. It was an extremely dangerous situation, exacerbated by cuts that were agreed by the Department for Transport.”
“T3. A Citizens Advice report published in the past two weeks shows that 600,000 households were moved to prepayment meters. There are bound to be many vulnerable and disabled people who have been moved on to prepayment meters in that time. Can the Minister say what she has been doing to ensure that that practice ceases and to protect those people in future?”
“Q7. In 2021, the Government enabled Yevgeny Prigozhin, the former chef to Putin and founder of the Wagner Group, to dodge UK sanctions to pursue a case in London against British journalist Eliot Higgins, who had exposed his link to the Wagner Group. Prigozhin believed that silencing Higgins would get his sanctions lifted. The overriding of UK sanctions was approved by the Treasury when the Prime Minister was Chancellor. Prigozhin’s English lawyers wrote that serving notice on Higgins “will require Treasury approval”. What values did the Prime Minister apply when he allowed a Putin warlord to use our courts to try to silence a British journalist and undermine UK sanctions?”
“The approach the Government are taking, case by case they will not deal with specifics, is just an excuse not to answer questions on specific examples that we raise in this House. I know that the bar is very high, but there can be few of Putin’s allies more notorious than Yevgeny Prigozhin. How can the Minister come to the Dispatch Box and say that the decisions were made by a civil servant? How can there be no red flag on the file of someone of such notoriety to say, “Speak to a Minister”? When are you going to get on and do the job you were put there for?”
“I commend my right hon. Friend for the work he has done consistently over a long period on this issue. It is important to highlight the scale of the problem in London. Is it not true that there are more SLAPP cases being taken in the London courts than there are in Europe and America put together? Does that not illustrate the scale of the problem and the urgency with which we need to deal with it?”
“I pay tribute to the Minister for the work he has done on this issue when he was one of us on the Back Benches. When the hon. Lady was speaking about the cross-party nature of the amendments, I could not help but think that if the situation were slightly different, the Minister’s name would be on those amendments.”
“The ministerial code seems now to be a set of guidelines. This is starting to sound like a script for “Pirates of the Caribbean”. If someone has disclosed that they are in dispute with the Inland Revenue about their taxes, is it appropriate to appoint that person as Chancellor of the Exchequer? Surely the matter should have been resolved before such an appointment took place.”
“The entire debate around fuel costs when prices were spiking was about the impact on vulnerable people and people who would have to make the choice between heating and eating, and sometimes not being able to make a choice about either. Why, then, did it take Citizens Advice to expose this scandal and the fact that the Government have been asleep at the wheel? The only way to sort this out, when forced entry warrants have been issued on an industrial scale by magistrates courts, is to impose a moratorium, so that we make sure that no one who has a prepayment imposed on them is forced into a situation where they cannot afford to pay fuel costs. That is surely the minimum that the Government should do.”
“I wonder what discussions the Secretary of State has had with the energy companies following the report last week from Citizens Advice showing that hundreds of thousands of customers are being forcibly moved on to prepayment meters. Has he had discussions with his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice? Forcible entry to make hundreds of these changes is being approved on an industrial scale in minutes flat in magistrates courts. It is a real scandal. What is he doing about it?”
“We cannot wait for another review, so will the Home Secretary commit to sitting down with Mark Rowley and give him the resources and support that he needs now?”
“The problems that Mark Rowley faces in the Metropolitan police run very deep indeed. I have been supporting a constituent of mine with her allegations of threatening and controlling behaviour against a senior police officer. In the two years that I have been supporting her, the police have completely failed to investigate the case properly. They have failed to consider the impact on children, failed to interview witnesses and failed to get essential medical records. It is senior officers who are standing in the way of this investigation, as was the case with Wayne Couzens and with David Carrick. Mark Rowley is making specific requests for him to be assisted in making the changes he needs to make in the Metropolitan police.”
“I remind Members that they should bob—be on their feet—if they wish to be called. I will not impose a fixed time limit at the moment, but roughly six minutes per speech should see us comfortably home and allow time for the Front-Bench spokespeople and Elliot Colburn to wind up.”
“Minister, there is plenty of time for you to respond, but I would be grateful if you can leave a couple of minutes for Mr Colburn to sum up.”
“IDS, the parent company, says it is making losses, but apparently boasts to potential investors—this was reported in T he Telegraph— that it has a £1.7 million investment war chest to put into the company. How can it be saying one thing to one audience and another to the other? I know the Minister will sympathise with my final point. Apparently, Mr Daniel Křetínský has links to the gas operator Gazprom. What assurances do we have that we are not supporting Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine by the back door? Is there a national security risk from his involvement with Royal Mail?”
“Within six months of International Distributions Services becoming Royal Mail’s parent company, it announced it was losing £1 million a day and was going to cut 10,000 workers. What questions did the Government ask of IDS when it announced it was losing £1 million a day so soon after it had made record profits of £758 million? Given that the losses were within just six months, surely that should have raised some alarm bells within the Government. What attitude do the Government take to the dumbing down of the workforce, the introduction of the laws of the gig economy—rather than relying on the dedicated workforce that we have—and Royal Mail’s undermining of the workforce?”
“More importantly, the employers could not identify the workers they had employed to deliver those bags of mail. They had no identification—no way of following up who they were. Those people had rifled through the post, and what they did not have time to open they just dumped in the river—no come back, no follow-up. Is that the sort of casualisation that we want to see—people being hired to deliver the post for Royal Mail because they have a van? It is a service that people rely on and we should not be dumbing it down. I have one or two questions for the Minister. Royal Mail announced record profits last May of £758 million. It paid out £567 million to shareholders and buy-back schemes.”
“I recently led a debate in this Chamber regarding my local train service, because the Government are saying, “We are cutting the local train service because more people are working from home.” Well, if more people are working from home, it follows that more people will be reliant on their post; they will want those important documents that cannot be emailed, which other Members have described, to come through the post. If the Government’s argument for cutting trains applies to the postal service as well, it will be more important to defend the universal service obligation, not less. I have raised the issue of casualisation in the past. We had casual labour employed to deliver the local post a number of years ago, and we found undelivered bags of mail in the Quaggy river, which runs through my constituency.”
“That is true of the postal workers, when I talk to them about their industrial action and defending the universal service obligation. The situation we are in right now was predicted at the time of privatisation—incidentally, Royal Mail has been in private hands for 10 years, and here we are with this standard of service. What a disgrace! It was predicted that sooner or later, its management would want to cherry-pick the service. The more profitable bits would be hived off, and the universal service obligation would come under threat. Post covid, many more people are working from home.”
“Ms Ali, after 26 years of being in the House, it is a great pleasure to speak in a debate with you in the Chair for the first time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) on securing this important debate. I will start by doing something I did not expect to do, which is to agree with the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), who gave an excellent speech, including his complimentary comments about the people who work in the postal service. What I find sad about the Government is that whenever they talk about public sector workers, they always talk about them as if they are the enemy, but when I talk to public sector workers, I hear that they are concerned about their conditions making it difficult for them to be able to provide the service they are providing.”
“Further to the questions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), the report from Citizens Advice on prepayment meters is urgent. Since November 2021, the courts have allowed 370,000 forced entry warrants—that is 30,000 a month. These companies cannot possibly be doing the right checks on people before the warrants are being sought, and the courts certainly are not questioning them when issuing them—they are issued literally in seconds flat. Can we have a statement from the Government? Next week, the weather will turn freezing again, so this is very urgent indeed, because it is happening now. Some smart meters are switched off without people’s knowledge, and they only find out when their electricity goes off. We cannot allow this to happen.”
“This issue surely boils down to a moral argument. It is charitable status that gives independent schools their tax benefits, but what kind of charity requires a person to pay an average of £37,000 in order for it to benefit from tax breaks? Is that really a charity?”
“The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services surveyed English local authorities back in 2019, and it found that they had endured cuts of £6.3 billion in adult social care, resulting in a drop since 2014 of 425,000 beds. How much does the Secretary of State think that has contributed to today’s crisis?”
“I am grateful for that answer. The Prison Officers Association says that the lack of staff is exacerbating the crisis in prison places. The Police Federation says that Operation Safeguard puts its members and the public in danger. Napo says that there is a link between the lack of prison places and the workload crisis, which is leading to an increase in the number of recalls. If Operation Safeguard fails, where on earth will the Government go next?”