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.”
The complete record
Every one of 3,378 lines we hold for Clive Efford, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 17 of 68.
“The Institute for Fiscal Studies has described the increase in education funding over the past decade as the worst for 40 years. The Secretary of State says he is increasing funding for schools, but by next April, 12 years on, we are only about to achieve the same level of funding that existed in 2010. That is a damning indictment of the Conservative Government over the past decade. Why have young people in our schools been forced to pay the price of Tory austerity?”
“Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), the taper on that was at 75%. When we take into consideration income tax—income tax relief has been frozen, so that is an increase—and the increase in national insurance, with the marginal rate of tax for people on the national living wage, the change will be minimal. They will be lucky if they end up with £7 a week—not the large figures read out by the Chancellor. Getting funding back to the levels of 11 years ago is not progress. It is an indictment of the Tories’ record and underlines the fact that we have had 11 wasted years of Tory austerity. Sadly, following this Budget, I think that that will continue.”
“Most people in poverty live in a family with someone in work—a dramatic change from 20 years ago according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Will we see those people levelled up as a result of this Budget? I think not. Then there is the cut to universal credit. In my constituency, 8,690 households containing 5,383 children will lose a combined £9 million. That is £9 million they will not have available to survive from day to day. That is £9 million that will not be spent in my local community. They will be facing the costs of inflation, fuel bills and food prices that they cannot avoid. The living wage increase does not touch families living on universal credit. It only affects the 2 million people on the national living wage. As we heard earlier from my right hon.”
“Will they fund those pay rises no matter what is recommended, or will the Government insist the increases are found from within existing budgets, as they did with nurses’ pay this year? What does levelling up mean when it comes to poverty? In 2010, 49,000 people received three days’ worth of emergency food from Trussell Trust food banks; in 2019, that number was 1.9 million; and in the last financial year, it was 2.5 million. Is reducing reliance on food banks a measure of levelling-up success? Since 2010, the number of pensioners in poverty has risen from 1.6 million to 2.1 million. The TUC found that the number of children growing up in poverty in working households has risen since 2010 by 800,000 to 2.9 million. Working households comprised 37% of those below the official poverty level in 1994-95. By 2017-18, that had risen to 58%.”
“Since 2010, as part of austerity, the Tories’ strategy has been intentionally to impose a cut on public sector pay. As a result, average public sector pay is £900 lower today in real terms than it was in 2010. For many, the loss in pay was more than £900 a year. For example, nurses and community nurses at NHS band 5 are more than £3,000 worse off today in real terms than they were in 2010. Residential care workers employed by local government are nearly £1,900 worse off in real terms. Ambulance drivers are £1,600 worse off in real terms. Now we are told that the Government believe that public sector workers deserve a pay rise. Will it be funded? Do they intend to restore public sector pay to 2010 levels in real terms?”
“Now we are going back to 2010 levels, the Chancellor claims in the Budget. Overall, the most deprived secondary schools have received a 14% real-terms cut per pupil between 2010 and 2020, compared with just 9% in the least deprived areas. Go tell that to the red wall seats! The IFS says that represents the largest cut in over 40 years. The increase in spending in previous years under the Labour Government was 60%. Cuts to our children’s education just highlight the reality of Tory austerity Britain. Under austerity, our children’s education was expendable. Funding had consistently been cut since 2010. Small wonder that the Tories failed to fund the catch-up that our children need following covid and refuse to feed our children during the school holidays.”
“The Government wanted to give them a 1% pay increase. That is not the way to deal with the recruitment crisis in the NHS. There was precious little about that in the Budget. A Nursing Times survey indicated that 80% of nurses feel that patient safety is compromised due to the severe staff shortage. Health Education England is saying that we need £900,000 per year for training to plug the gaps in nurse numbers in our NHS. In 2015, the Government promised 5,000 doctors, but we are 1,300 down on that figure. In education, it is a similar situation. According to the IFS annual review of education funding, teachers’ pay has fallen by 9% since 2010. Total spending per pupil in England was just over £6,400 in 2020. Compare that with the high point of £7,200 in 2010, under the last Labour Government.”
“My local Tories are now campaigning about closures of police stations—the brass neck! The Tories were warned that cutting 21,000 police officers would lead to rising crime, as it did, and now they are panicking and trying to put 20,000 officers back, as was confirmed in this Budget. Like burglars wanting to be thanked for returning stolen goods, they want to be thanked for reversing the cuts that they made in the first place. It is the same in the NHS. Capital spending is back to 2010 levels—so we cannot not welcome that. We have 80,000 vacancies in the NHS. The Tories cut nursing bursaries. They were warned that that would lead to a lack of recruitment among nurses. We now have 38,000 nursing vacancies—nearly half the vacancies in the NHS. What was the Government’s response after covid—after everything nurses had done?”
“That is nowhere near to getting us back to where we were with Sure Start. We have had all the guff about wraparound services, but these could easily have been provided through Sure Start—why was it cut? We heard from the Chancellor about youth spending, with another 300 youth clubs. Youth service spending was £1.4 billion in 2010. By 2019 it had been cut to £429 million, and 700 youth clubs went, as well as 4,500 youth workers. Then we have the 21,000 police officers that were cut. The Conservatives came here and told us that they were going to cut 21,000 police officers but that it was going to result in more police officers being on the street. They closed nearly 600 police stations. In London, they took £1 billion away from policing; when the Prime Minister was Mayor, we lost our safer neighbourhood teams.”
“The Tory austerity years from 2010 saw the lowest annual increases in NHS spending—lower even than under Margaret Thatcher, so she would be very proud of the Government. There have been cuts to police funding; central Government grants for policing fell by 30% in real terms between 2010 and 2019. There have also been cuts to education funding. According to the IFS, education funding from 2010 to 2019 was the worst since the 1970s. Government funding for local authorities has fallen by an estimated 49% in real terms from 2010 to 2018. Our public services were already stretched before covid came along. In 2010, funding for Sure Start—we have heard a lot about that today—was £1.8 billion. It was cut by a third by 2018, with over 500 centres closing between 2011 and 2017. We now have today’s announcement of £300 million.”
“I have often found myself wondering what levelling up means and how we know that we have got there. I have discovered the answer in the Budget today. It means that the Tories’ ambition is to get back to Labour’s level of public funding in 2010. Eleven wasted years—the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are trying to create the impression that this Government have only been in power for the last two years, and that they were not part of austerity and the years that followed. We cannot return to a system of austerity that kicks the stuffing out of our public services to the point that they do not have the resilience to respond to something such as the covid pandemic. Covid taught us that we need resilient public services—services that we are not only entitled to, but that we so desperately need to have in place.”
“I have been here for many years and have seen many Budgets. I have seen the Order Papers being waved on the day, and then the Budgets fall apart over the following hours and the following days, but this is the first Budget that I have seen fall apart before Budget day. We have heard the announcement about public sector pay, but we have not heard whether, if it is increased, that increase will be funded, or whether it will have to come from within existing budgets. When the Government were forced to increase the pay rise for nurses from 1% to 3%, they did not fund it; they forced it to be funded from within NHS resources. Since we are into leaks, will the Minister tell us whether the Government intend to fund a public sector pay increase?”
“I have listened carefully to the hon. Lady, and I am very respectful of her knowledge of this particular issue, but nothing she has said today suggests to me that her arguments could not be better deployed in Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) asked Conservative Members to work with him to improve the Bill in Committee. I wonder why the hon. Lady is not taking that approach.”
“If we refused to send legislation into Committee because of how lawyers might or might not interpret it in future, we would not pass a single Bill. The hon. Gentleman is going into minute detail on the wording of clauses, and that debate belongs in Committee. It demonstrates that Government Members have lost the argument. This Bill should go into Committee.”
“I would just like to say to his family that I send them my deepest sympathies. They have lost a wonderful person and an extremely talented politician, and my heart goes out to them.”
“I rise to underline what has been said about how James was liked across the House. He was my parliamentary neighbour across the borough boundary between Bexley and my constituency next door in Greenwich, and we got to know each other when he moved to Old Bexley and Sidcup from Hornchurch in the middle part of his career in this House, if I can put it that way. I also faced him across the Committee floor when he was a Home Office Minister and I was a shadow Home Office Minister, and I got to know him a bit better then. One thing that I learned about James was that if you were going to face him across the Dispatch Box in the Chamber or in Committee, you had to be well-informed, because he certainly was. He did his job diligently, he was extraordinarily talented, and he was a convivial and decent opponent.”
“Any woman who rings the police seeking assistance when they are suffering domestic violence or any form of abuse has to have the confidence that the officers who turn up will treat the matter seriously. If those officers have themselves been accused of domestic violence or any form of abuse, are they likely to do so? Can women have confidence that those officers will treat their concerns seriously? Surely the police need to adopt and enforce a zero-tolerance policy so that women can have confidence in the police force.”
“I expected to hear more in the Minister’s statement about partnership with local government. Local authorities up and down the country are trying to innovate and to pilot schemes to decarbonise homes. My own local authority is investigating the possibility of using green open space to have a district ground source heat pump scheme that would engage with private homes in the area; that is engaging with the private sector as well. Without local government, the Minister’s strategy is not going to work, so what is he going to do further to engage local government?”
“Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking. This is line with current Government and House of Commons Commission guidance. Please give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room.”
“Before we begin, can I encourage Members to wear masks when not speaking? This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room.”
“On Friday evening, Sabina Nessa, a 28-year-old primary school teacher, was walking near her home in my constituency, in the Kidbrooke area, when she was attacked and murdered by a man who is yet to be identified. Our hearts go out to her family and friends. Sabina’s murder highlights yet again the growing problem of violence against women and girls. The Victims’ Commissioner, Vera Baird, has described it as an epidemic and has endorsed the recommendation of Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and fire and rescue services that violence against women and girls be given the same priority as counter-terrorism. Will the Government accept that recommendation, agree that the time has come to prioritise tackling violence against women and girls, and give it the resources it demands?”
“9. How many people have been assessed as being eligible for support under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy since 28 August 2021.”
“I thank the Minister for that answer, but I have cases of people who worked for the Afghan supreme court, the Afghan Government or the Afghan armed forces. Clearly, they assisted in our operations in Afghanistan. Surely the Minister accepts that these people are at severe risk and should qualify under category 1 of ARAP, yet they have been refused. In the figures he has just cited, how many people who clearly qualify for ARAP have been turned down?”
“The Secretary of State said we have to wait for his plan to find out what he will do to retrofit buildings and reduce dependence on carbon fuels, but local authorities across the country are way ahead of the Government. My local authority in Greenwich is experimenting with air-source and ground-source heat pumps. When he produces his report, does he think local authorities will be front and centre in creating local plans so that we can drill down into local communities to bring about the change we need to achieve zero carbon?”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer and I welcome her to her new post and congratulate her on the appointment. The interim report from the chair of the panel makes it clear that the panel intends to introduce a golden share for fans to have a veto over certain reserved powers such as club names and colours and similar powers to those under assets of community value legislation to protect stadiums and training grounds. This is a welcome recognition of the power of football fans, but what discussions has the Department had in preparation for the final report with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and local government to make sure we can move quickly on the recommendations that we know are coming in the autumn?”
“This behaviour by Ministers is a disgrace, so can we have a statement in the House on the ministerial code as we go through this reshuffle, so that we can ask questions from the Opposition Benches of the Government and ensure that people behave better in future and abide by that code?”
“We have had the priority lane, which is a list of companies bidding for billions of pounds-worth of covid contracts. We know not how they get on that list, although being a Tory donor or a friend of a Minister seems to assist. I have raised previously with the Leader of the House the matter of the Health Minister, Lord Bethell, who had 27 meetings in one week with companies wanting to bid for more than a billion pounds-worth of contracts, but sadly his office failed to record those meetings in his diary for that week. He seems a very unlucky chap, because he has conducted a negotiation for an £87 million contract over his personal mobile phone. When asked to produce it, he said he had lost it, then he said it was broken, and now he has said he has given it to one of his family members.”
“My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful speech. We have been through a period when communities have come together, and he has just talked about volunteering and the way that communities have come together to deal with food poverty in particular. Children have been involved in that, and this is the Government who failed to feed our children during holiday time, so it is no surprise that they are bringing in this cut. Even in a constituency such as mine in London, over 5,000 children live in households that receive universal credit and are going to face a cut on top of what we have all been through over the last 18 months. It really is time that this Government started to think about the consequences of what they do to the poorest people in our communities.”
“We know that the ring of protection that the Government spoke of last year was non-existent and left many vulnerable adults in social care exposed to infection. Will the Secretary of State therefore say what specific resources will be made available for care homes this winter to ensure that they have the staffing levels they need and to prevent the devastating infection rates we saw last year?”
“It seems to me that we are spending this money twice, so can the Minister tell the House specifically how much will go into the NHS from this increase and how much will go into social care? What I am hearing from him is that we are going to deal with the backlog, which will take us back to pre-pandemic levels. That will leave us with a 2 million waiting list, so can he tell us specifically how much is going into the NHS and how much is going into social care?”
“I have heard what the former Secretary of State has said about the record on social care, but can he explain what he did to try to prevent the Conservative Government from taking £8 billion out of social care?”
“I heard the Minister’s earlier answer about assistance for schools with ventilators and air purification. The time to roll that out would have been during the summer holidays, in preparation for the return to school. Yet again, we seem to be way behind the pace of what is going on. May I urge the Minister to talk to his colleague the Minister for School Standards, who is sitting next to him, to get some urgency into the assistance for schools with this issue?”
“How are they going to explain to their constituents that they are being forced to pay this increase to pay for 10 years of Tory neglect?”
“If a person is property rich and cash poor, how are they going to be able to avoid having to sell their homes? The £86,000 is a Kensington cap. Outside London, in many areas the cap is far too high and will lead to people losing their homes. There is no plan for social care in what the Government have announced so far. The Tories have behaved here today as if these problems had just been created and had just emerged because of the pandemic, but nothing could be further from the truth. The waiting list was 2 million before the pandemic hit, and they took £8 billion out of social care. Where was all the hand-wringing and all the concern about social care and the NHS back then? They are using the pandemic as cover for 10 years of cutting public services and underfunding our national health service.”
“There is no levelling up in this tax the Tories are imposing, and there will be less money to circulate in those economies. It is not fair that those people we clapped during covid—care workers, delivery workers, shop workers, postmen and postwomen, and many more who kept our economy going during difficult circumstances—will be asked to pay a disproportionate amount through this tax increase. There is no going back for the Tories from this day forward. Whatever happened to the pledge the Prime Minister made in 2019 that no one would have to sell their home to pay for care and that he would co-operate across the House and discuss the way forward on how to deal with the issue of social care? That is yet another broken promise from this Prime Minister.”
“People who have to count every penny to survive on a daily basis—to buy food and to pay rent, travel costs and household bills—have to budget day by day to live and they will have to tighten their belts, but those of us on higher incomes who could pay more and whose lives will not be changed by this increase will not have to tighten our belts at all. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) pointed out one of the areas that will suffer most. It is those areas where the Tories talk about levelling up that will be the hardest hit by this tax increase. What of their local economies, with the tax the Government are taking out of those economies that will not be there to be spent in local businesses?”
“They have had their hands in people’s pockets for several years now and they have not taken them out. Let us be clear: the claim that the Tories are the party of low taxes and a small state is over. The argument in the future will be about how we invest in public services and how we value the workers who work in them. People earning as little £10,000 will pay the increase. People who can afford to pay more, such as hon. Members on these Benches, should not rely on them to pay increased taxes: they should be asked to pay their fair share.”
“This national insurance increase is a point of no return for the Tories. It is an unfair way to raise the money needed for our NHS and social care, with those who earn the least and the young paying for those who are already well off. It is the biggest single tax increase in 70 years, which will see the highest level of tax paid in the UK in peacetime, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) pointed out, the Government’s own document says there is more to come in council tax increases. We have already had increases and precepts imposed on council tax. When the Tories got caught out because they cut 20,000 police officers, they put a levy on council tax to pay for police officers and this year they put on a 3% levy—£600 million—to go into social care.”
“When I was first elected to this place in 1997, one of the first people who came to see me in my surgery was the wife of a man who had been waiting two years for open heart surgery, and we are back there again with the waiting lists. There was no righteous indignation from the Tories when the list reached 2 million before the pandemic hit. Will the Prime Minister commit today to hitting the 18-week target for waiting lists, and to clearing the backlog by the end of this Parliament?”
“We have heard from the Secretary of State that the Department is doing some work to advertise pension credit and encourage uptake, but we did not really hear from her any specifics, or any urgency, about the need to deal with the under-claiming of pension credit. So will she give us some more details about what she is intending to do?”
“We have become used to the Government’s breaking of manifesto pledges, for instance on overseas aid and a border in the Irish sea, but today we have had two in one day, which is pretty remarkable. First, we heard the Prime Minister announce that he would break his pledge not to increase national insurance—which was not just in the manifesto, but something he had specifically singled out and pledged not to do—and now we have heard about the breaking of the triple lock, which was put in place by the last Labour Government and which played a significant part in reducing pensioner poverty.”
“I pay tribute to everyone who worked on the airlift from 15 August. We had 18 months’ notice that this situation would come about, but I have to say to the Foreign Secretary that the organisation here—for us, raising cases on behalf of our constituents—was nothing short of chaotic, with different phone numbers, a lack of information and a lack of feedback. We still do not know whether anything that we wrote and passed in on behalf of our constituents had any effect whatever. The Foreign Secretary has said that the work to get people to safety started long before 15 August and that 500 UK nationals got out. That does not sound like many. What of those people we had an obligation to in Afghanistan—the Afghanistan nationals who worked with our Government? How many of them did we get out before 15 August?”
“What recent discussions he has had with the Colombian Government on the policing of protests and incidents of violence against protesters in that country.”
“I am grateful for that answer, but the truth is that the UK Government are providing extensive training and support to Colombian police, despite evidence of extensive police brutality, with up to 43 people allegedly murdered, a catalogue of sexual assaults and people being blinded by having tear gas canisters fired in their face. Will the Minister commit to publishing full overseas security and justice assessments for activities under this programme, so that the House can satisfy itself that the Government are not contributing to further abuses of human rights in Colombia?”
“Rather than create a developers’ opportunity to provide slum living accommodation through the relaxation of permitted development rights, why does the Secretary of State not force developers who have planning permission for 1.1 million homes, according to the Local Government Association, to bring forward those plans and also the planning applications for the 1 million homes that can be built on the sites that have been designated for housing?”
“Infection rates are at their highest since January, and the Health Secretary has said that he expects a spike following the relaxation of regulations today. So how can it be responsible of the Government not to require people to wear masks on transport? People spend long periods next to one another on planes, trains, the undergrounds and buses, so how can it be responsible not to require people to wear masks in those environments?”
“My constituent Jacqui Davies was diagnosed in April with a type of blood cancer that prevents her immune system from developing antibodies against covid. Jacqui wants to live as normal a life as possible, and to do everyday things like going shopping, but she is terrified and she thinks that the rapid lifting of restrictions on Monday is putting her at risk. With the delta variant about to spike due to the Government’s decision to lift restrictions, particularly the requirement to wear masks in public places, what is the Prime Minister’s message to people in Jacqui’s situation? Will he rethink the reckless gamble of lifting all these restrictions on Monday? And yes, Jacqui did support staying in the EU.”
“For too long, there have been those within the NHS who believe that it can only be improved if it is exposed to the rigours of the marketplace. The rigours of the NHS are saving lives and healing patients. There is no higher market test for the skills and dedication of health workers and none is needed. Where the private sector is used, it should be to support NHS services, not replace them. Nye Bevan said: “The NHS will last as long as there’s folk with faith left to fight for it.” The Labour party breathed life into the NHS. This Bill is one of those occasions where we have to fight for the NHS again, and the Labour party will lead that fight.”
“Why did we have 11 years of austerity, when billions were taken from public services, hitting the poorest communities hardest? There was no sign of levelling up there. In the past 40 years our NHS has come under threat on two occasions: first during the Thatcher years when it was starved of resources to breaking point, and again from 2010 with the Tory austerity years and the Lansley Health and Social Care Act 2012. Now the Tories are at it again. Integrated care systems are nothing short of capitulation to the forces of the market. This Bill will give the private sector the freedom not only to plan services but to do so in their commercial interests above those of patients and to cover their tracks by hiding the records of meetings where they have intervened.”
“Our NHS is built on the values that Britain holds dear: each of us is equal, and we will be treated on the basis of our need, never on our ability to pay. It is part of our national heritage, so much so that even the Tories have to pretend that they believe in its founding principles. Those are principles of fairness for all: from each according to their means, to each according to their needs. Those are the values that led to the creation of the Labour party over a century ago. If the Tories hold those values so dear, why have they failed to apply them everywhere else? This is the Tory Government who left children without food during the school holidays, and who are failing to pay for children to catch up with their education. They are cutting £20 from universal credit for the poorest households in the country.”