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 wanted to speak today to pass on my condolences to Tony’s family, but also to mark somebody who is one of the most standout individuals I have come across in the 27 years that I have been in this House. I first got to know him soon after I was elected in 1997; we were members of the same trade union group. He was somebody who you looked forward to meeting socially around the place because he was always good company, and he was somebody who was always wise and worth listening to, whether it was here in the Chamber or in discussions elsewhere. Perhaps I got to know Tony best when I joined the parliamentary Labour party committee when he was chair of the PLP. You will remember, Mr Speaker, as will those of us who were here at the time, what we went through with the expenses issues, where MPs came under a considerable amount of criticism.”
“In my casework, I have seen an alarming rise in the number of no-fault evictions. This is leading to families being moved a long way from my borough, with children having to travel tens of miles to get to school every day. The Government have said that they are going to remove section 21 evictions, but they have not given the criteria under which they are going to do so, and it seems that this is going to be in the hands of the Minister. Opposition Front Benchers have offered to work with the Government to eradicate section 21 evictions. The Government said they would do it four years ago. According to the Government’s own figures, 80,000 families have been threatened with no-fault evictions. When are the Government going to co-operate and get this resolved?”
“T2. My local authority is bending over backwards to try to build social housing and is committed to building 2,000 new homes, yet the Government are still standing in the way by placing restrictions on reinvesting right-to-buy money in building social housing. Why will the Government not assist local authorities to build those houses? We have had 14,000 fewer homes a year since 2010. Does the Minister accept that that is a disgraceful record for the Government?”
“The businesses involved in providing childcare need to be able to plan ahead. The Minister may say, “Everything will be fine in April. There may be some problems down the road, but we are confident we can iron them out,” but that really is not going to be get people to invest in leases from premises and all sorts of things that those who run childcare businesses are going to need to commit to, so will he give us a bit more detail? He says he is confident that this is going to meet the need, but 700,000 children are going to join the scheme, according to the Government’s own figures. Where are those childcare providers going to get the information they need in order to be confident that they can invest to go forward?”
“Does the Minister accept that the reduction in the number of health professionals who support parents has contributed to the reduction in the number of parents presenting their children for the MMR vaccine, and that that is one of the lessons we should learn from this situation?”
“Has the Secretary of State read the speech made by the Auditor General this week about cyber-security, which said that lack of investment in upgrading our infrastructure makes the Government vulnerable to cyber-attack? Is he comfortable that we are safe from such attack? Does that not show that the Tories are penny wise but pound stupid?”
“We know that we are at the fag end of the Government, but these things need dealing with now. Why can we not have some co-operation to bring matters to a conclusion for those people?”
“I will be here to pay tribute to my friend Tony Lloyd at the appropriate time. The Hillsborough inquiry, the Post Office Horizon scandal, Windrush, contaminated blood, and LGBTQ veterans have all been the subject of reports, and they are all examples of how the state treats working-class people when it should be there to support them. Victims of the last three of those scandals—Windrush, contaminated blood and veterans—are still waiting for their compensation to be sorted out and for the outcomes of the reports to be enacted. Can we have some form of cross-party arrangement whereby we can all come to an agreement on how we should respond to the reports and treat those people with the dignity to which they are entitled? The Government are just obfuscating and kicking the can down the road.”
“There are currently 56,000 asylum seekers in hotels. The Prime Minister promised to close those hotels some time last year, but since then the figures have gone up by 10,000. Can the Minister confirm that that figure is correct?”
“Clearly we could not ignore attacks on international shipping, and we were right to act with international partners. We must continue to work to broaden that partnership in dealing with the situation as we go forward. Having said that, can the Prime Minister say how we measure success with this limited engagement? How do we deem it to be safe for international shipping to return to the Red sea? What is the end plan?”
“We need to give them the confidence to do so, because they might be frightened about being approached by the Post Office. I am sure that anyone who signs one of the agreements that the Minister mentioned will want an assurance that they will never again be pursued by the Post Office.”
“I commend the Minister again for his excellent work. This is an unprecedented situation that requires the solution he suggests. May I ask him again about “no public interest” cases, including my constituent’s case? The situation has changed since I asked him about it on Monday, and new cases have come forward. The Post Office must have a list somewhere. It must know who was held to be in breach by the Horizon accounting system. There may be people out there who are frightened to come forward because they have signed non-disclosure agreements. Is it possible for us to tell the Post Office, “Come on, cough up. Let us know who has not been contacted”? Letters could then be written to those people, perhaps by the advisory board, to invite and encourage them to come forward.”
“The Minister says he has a plan, but this is the third plan set out during the last two years: the Illegal Migration Act 2023 has not worked, we were told the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 would stop the boats, and now we have the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill. We are told that the Bill has been watered down because the Rwandans themselves want to comply with the international law and conventions that the Tories wanted to breach. How is Rwanda dictating our immigration policy consistent with the Government’s claim to be taking back control of our borders?”
“Happy new year, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State has indicated that he is in contact with the Israeli Government and is expressing the Government’s views, but has he raised with them the prospect of widespread disease and famine among Palestinian people in Gaza? If so, has he received any sympathetic response from the Israeli Government that they are aware that how they are conducting their bombing campaign is likely to bring that about?”
“The BMA says that junior doctors’ pay has been cut in real terms by 26% through consistent below-inflation increases. If the Tories really cared about this strike and about the NHS, would they not have avoided creating the circumstances that made junior doctors so angry that they felt the need to go on strike? Does that not just show that you cannot trust the Tories with the NHS?”
“It has been shown to be untrustworthy and incapable of dealing with the matter in an even-handed way. Does the Minister agree?”
“I also pay tribute to the Minister, and to all the people he mentioned in his statement, for their work. We must recognise and accept that it is not sound to base any criminal conviction on Horizon. My constituent was one of the original 555 in the group litigation order scheme. His conviction was overturned, so he is now seeking full compensation in the overturned convictions scheme, but his is one of three cases that the Post Office says there is no public interest in pursuing. It says that Horizon was not intrinsic to his conviction, but the figures used in his conviction were produced using Horizon. That is a Kafkaesque situation and it cannot be allowed to stand. The Post Office should not be anywhere near deciding who gets compensation and what compensation they get. It should be removed from the process.”
“Sir Brian Langstaff came up with the recommendations that he did because he recognised that people were dying without getting justice. The amendment that was passed in this House two weeks ago, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), was Sir Brian’s recommendation word for word. The Minister has come to the Dispatch Box sounding as though he has only just started work on this, and that there was no work done by his nine predecessors. Has he met Sir Brian Langstaff, and what does Sir Brian Langstaff say to him about this constant delay in paying compensation?”
“On Tuesday, at the Premier League stakeholders’ meeting, discussions about the financial package deal between the Premier League and the English Football League broke down. The representatives of the Premier League cannot agree among themselves about what that package should be, let alone come to an agreement with the English Football League. We are waiting for the legislation that was in the King’s Speech, because we need a regulator with teeth and a backstop that can sort this financial package out. It is essential for the future of our national game that we have a strong and competitive English Football League as the foundation for the Premier League, sitting at the top, so when will we see that legislation?”
“I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend and her Committee on this excellent report. Will she comment on the research that found that 75% of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation are advertised online? One of these adult services websites gave evidence to the Committee that it allows “individuals to advertise multiple people for prostitution concurrently, that age verification of individuals advertised on their site is not required, and that the same contact phone number can be used on multiple adverts.” When I read that, I was struck that we could take simple measures to eradicate the loopholes that these websites exploit. What does my right hon. Friend think the Government should do? Does she think the Government could act quickly to deal with such issues?”
“The policy is hardly likely to be much of a deterrent when so few people will be sent to Rwanda in any one year.”
“Without taking a single refugee or asylum seeker, they have upped the ante threefold. They were given £140 million just to go to the table and talk about it. Now we are told the figure is up to £400 million and still growing, and Rwanda has not taken a single asylum seeker, which is an incredible feat. Not only that, but Rwanda will offer only 100 or possibly 200 places a year. This is going to cost £2 million per person on the current figures, which is an incredible achievement by the Rwandan Government. I cannot understand why Conservative Members are not arguing about why the numbers are so low. They are arguing about people being able to take their individual cases to court, but they do not seem to be concerned that the number of places is so small.”
“I understand that there are at least five different families, as I think they are called, over there on the Conservative Benches, who all disagree with one another. I think there might be seven. They have their own private version of “Gangs of New York” going on. We will have to have a general election soon because they are going to run out of backs into which to put their respective knives. This is the third such piece of legislation that we have had in just two years, and each time the Conservatives have told us, “This is going to stop the boats.” We had the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which we were told would stop the boats, and now we have the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill. I am impressed by the stand the Rwandans have taken.”
“This is a new low even for this Tory Government. This Bill is spawned by overpromising on immigration over many years by the Conservatives. They are constantly seeking to hoodwink people into believing that they are competent enough to deal with this situation. On the balance of evidence, the courts have decided that Rwanda is not a safe country for them to send people who are seeking asylum to, so the Government have stamped their feet and brought legislation here so that they can legislate to say that something that is wrong is right. That is a new low that I have not experienced in all my years in this place. It is a slippery slope when a Government take that sort of power to themselves. Where will it stop? Some of the speeches made on the Government Benches have raised that question.”
“There are those who want to defend the rule of law and the right of individuals to seek to uphold their rights in court, and those who want to take away that power. Members have made it quite clear that they are not going to vote for legislation if it does not satisfy their requirements, but the two requirements are complete opposites—they are totally and utterly irreconcilable. I do not see how the Prime Minister is going to resolve this conundrum. From the expression on his face earlier, he has clearly managed to cobble together a coalition to get the Bill through today. He is confident of that.”
“I will not go down that rabbit hole, if the hon. Member will forgive me. I think Rwanda has done an incredible job. Furthermore, it has reined in the Conservatives by saying, “We also have international agreements. We have treaties and agreements with other countries that require us to abide by international laws and conventions. If you, the UK Government, don’t want to abide by them, we certainly do.” Rwanda has almost saved the Conservatives from themselves, from going too far in breaching international laws and conventions. I have listened with interest to the speeches from Conservative Members, and the Gangway has never seemed so wide. It seems to be the equivalent of the Berlin wall for the left and right of the Conservative party. Listening to their speeches, they seem to be completely irreconcilable.”
“With its rhetoric, the Conservative party has overpromised and brought us to the point where we are having to legislate that black is white and that the Tories can have their own facts.”
“] They are all laughing over there, but the fact is that convictions for trafficking people across the channel are down by 30%. Perhaps Conservative Members should take a look at themselves and understand why this problem exists. It is because of the sheer incompetence of the Government. Some 160,000 people were included in the net immigration figures because the Government failed to deal with their asylum cases within a year and the Office for National Statistics included them in the figures. That is just sheer incompetence from this Conservative Government. They are incompetent in dealing with people’s claims, and in dealing with the boats and the illegal operations running them. This is the fault of the Conservative Government from beginning to end, and this Rwanda scheme is doomed to fail.”
“I hear it all the time from the Conservatives that Labour does not have a policy. It would be nice if one of the policies implemented by this Government over the past few years actually worked. That would have been a revelation. I commend— [ Interruption. ] Can we have a bit of silence over there? I commend the Government for the arrangement they have made with Albania, which is the sort of route we should be taking. Ministers have stood at the Dispatch Box today and said, “We have brought the small boat crossings down by a third.” That is largely due to the agreement with Albania, which is an indisputable fact. By being practical in dealing with things at source, we could resolve this problem. Investing in dealing with the gangs— [ Interruption.”
“When Channel 4 representatives gave evidence to the CMS Committee recently, they were asked about that producer-provider split and whether they would make use of it. Their answers were quite dismissive in tone. They suggested the change would require them to take responsibility not only for production, but for the marketing of any product, which they do not have to do now; that is part of the role of independent producers that produce the content. Did Channel 4 at any time in its discussions with the Minister indicate that it wanted this new responsibility?”
“Contaminated blood, Grenfell, Hillsborough—the one thing they all have in common is that ordinary people suffered an incredible tragedy, and then the authorities and the establishment circled the wagons to deny them justice. What this report has exposed is a failure at the centre of the establishment to serve the public. This report is calling for candour from the people who represent such public bodies, so why is it that the Government, after all this time, have come back and said no to that one request?”
“Can the Home Secretary confirm that he went to Rwanda intending to get a treaty that went much further than he has been allowed to go, and that what stopped him was that the Rwandan Government refused to be party to a treaty that did not recognise international law and conventions? What does it say about taking back control when Rwanda is dictating his immigration policy?”
“Has the hon. Lady consulted any of the bodies involved in her proposal as to whether they welcome being listed in the way she has proposed? I know from discussions with some bodies that they are concerned, as has been pointed out previously, about their capacity to raise revenue for their sport. There is always a consequence when we set out—even with the best intentions—to do something like wanting greater coverage for football, as in this amendment, which I do think is laudable. If the hon. Lady has consulted those people, what was their view?”
“I accept that Hamas are a terrorist organisation and their infrastructure needs to be dismantled so that they cannot commit any more atrocities, but that does not justify the unrelenting bombing that we saw return to Gaza over the weekend. Have the Government satisfied themselves that Israeli bombing is precision bombing against terrorist targets, and if they have not been able to satisfy themselves of that, why are they not calling for a ceasefire?”
“Immigration figures have trebled since the 2019 general election, and it is worth reminding ourselves that, back then, the Conservatives told us that they were going to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands. The scale of the failure is enormous, as underlined by the Office for National Statistics, which says that 90,000 asylum seekers have been waiting over a year for their asylum cases to be dealt with, so more than 15% of it is due to the sheer incompetence of the Secretary of State’s Department. What is he going to do about that? I did not hear any reference to it in his statement.”
“Can the Chancellor confirm that, after today’s tax cuts, we will still have the highest tax burden for 70 years—up £4,000 per household on pre-pandemic levels—when we go into the next general election?”
“There was concern that the Premier League made very late representations and tried to water down the powers of the regulator. Will the Secretary of State say what the Government’s response to that intervention by the Premier League was?”
“My one request in this debate is that we continue to scrutinise that area and that recommendation to make sure that it is implemented properly.”
“When we asked questions about it, IPSA staff admitted that they had never even thought about the fact that MPs would need to use it when they set it up. You couldn’t make it up. It was like a question and answer session from “The Thick of It”. It is unbelievable that IPSA could have set up a system that was designed for MPs to use and not consider how we might access and use it. The web portal was designed for access by accountants, rather than Members of Parliament. IPSA accepts that it is not an easily usable or accessible system, but it has done very little to improve it—and it does require improvement. That it has taken so long to happen underlines the fact that IPSA has, for far too long, been running a “take it or leave it” service, because it has the regulatory power. It is time that was separated off.”
“We went to the Scottish Parliament and looked at the way it arranges its scrutiny of finances and provision of support to Members of the Scottish Parliament. I have to say that the Scottish approach impressed me no end. The people there understood that they were there to assist the MSPs in their role, but none the less there was a set of rules that MSPs had to adhere to. We need to move to a system similar to that. I urge the Speaker or the Leader of the House to continue to scrutinise what IPSA does in response to this report, particularly in separating its customer service and regulatory roles, because that is crucial to improving the way it deals with Members of Parliament. I will just give one example: the dreaded IPSA web portal.”
“I stand by the fact that transparency is important in that regard and that I should be accountable for what I do with taxpayers’ money to represent my constituency. I have no problem with that whatsoever. However, IPSA was set up in haste and, were we starting again today, it would not be created. There is no question about that. It cannot perform the dual role of regulator and service provider, and it has not done so very well. I welcome the recommendation from the Conference that IPSA at least takes a good look at itself and tries to separate those roles within its organisation. We need to scrutinise that very closely, because I do not think IPSA is capable of fulfilling both the customer service and regulatory roles.”
“I think there will be a working group on MPs’ offices; it is an area where one size does not fit all, and MPs must be allowed flexibility in how they set up offices in their constituency, and whether they do so at all. As has been said, some MPs may just have their staff in Westminster, while others may be hybrid with both a constituency office and people here. That is where I am at the moment, although until covid, all my staff had been placed in my constituency. I welcome the recommendation for further work relating to offices. It will not surprise anyone who was on the Conference that the main thing I want to speak about is the dreaded IPSA. It is far from my view that the public money I spend on running my office should not be in the public domain.”
“However, that idea was quickly dispensed with as it became apparent that, because of the diversity in the way MPs approached doing their jobs, they had to remain the employers and the people who selected those who work in their offices. There is a very personal relationship and there must be a great deal of trust between MPs and the staff in their offices. It is a particularly close relationship, at times dealing with sensitive and political issues. It is impossible to have an arrangement whereby staff are not directly employed by and responsible to that Member of Parliament. However, that places a great deal of responsibility on us regarding how we go about doing our jobs and ensure that we are good employers. There are good recommendations in this report in relation to that.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones). I too took part in the Speaker’s Conference, and I echo his thanks to the Speaker for setting up the conference, because as we got into our work, it became apparent to us that there was a great deal that needed looking into. I think we went wider than the initial envisaged scope for the conference in many of the things we dealt with. It is an important step forward, particularly for our staff and the independence of the process, that staff can initiate the process if they feel that they are not being treated in the way they have every right to expect to be by their employer. When we set off, there was quite a strong feeling that we should be employing staff centrally, either under IPSA or some other body set up by the House.”
“I know from my recent visit to Colfe’s School that they will welcome their former pupil to his new role, as I do. I urge him to resist calls from people on his own Benches to remove us from the European convention on human rights. If we were outside that convention, a serious criminal or someone who means us harm—such as a terrorist, or someone suspected of terrorism—who seeks to hide overseas could legitimately claim that their human rights could be violated if they were extradited back to the UK. How is that taking back control of our borders?”
“Before we talk about humanitarian pauses, should we not agree first what we want to achieve by them? Would they not need to be for days or weeks, not just for four hours? We need to repair infrastructure and get aid in on a scale that is just not possible while hostilities continue. Do the Government not need to call for an immediate cessation of hostilities—a ceasefire—during the period that is agreed, to get humanitarian aid in at the volume that is required?”
“The Secretary of State has said that he is discussing with partners how to increase the amount of aid going into Gaza, and that humanitarian pauses must be part of that, but how long must a humanitarian pause be to live up to that name? Infrastructure needs to be repaired, and an enormous amount of aid needs to be shifted, in a very short time. Is there consensus with those partners on how long a humanitarian pause has to be?”
“Clearly, Israel is not going to have a ceasefire while it is still under attack, and it has every right to defend its citizens. However, the deaths in Palestine are increasing, and international concern about that is growing. Too few aid lorries are getting into the country, hostages are being held in Gaza, and we also need to ensure that we stop the deaths of innocent people in Gaza. Is the use of safe zones or humanitarian zones part of a solution that would allow the aid to get in and the hostages to be got out, and would save more lives?”
“Last man standing, Mr Deputy Speaker. No early release for me. The Secretary of State’s statement would be all the more impressive had it not come after 13 years of continuous Conservative Governments. They promised to create 20,000 extra places by the mid-2020s, but we have seen a net increase of 300. We have lost some places to dilapidation, and those that have replaced them amount to a net increase of only 300. Only a few weeks ago, we were told that the Government were implacably opposed to early release. I take it that he has dropped his idea of buying places in foreign prisons. The truth is that the management of the system has been completely chaotic for 13 years. When will we see the increase in prison places that the Government have been talking about?”
“The Secretary of State did not make any specific reference to his comments at Conservative party conference about the proposals for 15-minute communities that are out there. He has, however, said that the number of times drivers can get from A to B will be their choice, not decided by councils. Does he believe this nonsense? Can he tell the House about any local authority that has ever considered such a restriction on local people? This is just complete nonsense.”