Gareth Thomas
MP for Harrow West · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“Local councils such as Harrow need to invest more in youth facilities that divert young people away from crime. Some of the CCTV projects in my constituency that Harrow council has turned down—in Wealdstone, south Harrow and central Harrow—should get funding.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle and Clitheroe (Jonathan Hinder) on securing the debate and on the way in which he approached the subject. I join him and my hon.”
“I also want to suggest that the Metropolitan police does not get recognition across the whole of the UK for its hugely important work in tackling national and international crime, and that perhaps more recognition of that is required in the funding formula.”
“In particular, in Harrow, we recently saw enforcement teams contracted out to an organisation called Kingdom. The responsibility for that contract was with Harrow council. There was widespread criticism of the way some of the staff employed by Kingdom tried to levy fines on a number of young people in south Harrow, in my constituency.”
“One way we can further support the Metropolitan police is by allowing it to keep more of the proceeds from successful operations, such as recovering stolen funds hidden in bitcoin assets. I congratulate my hon.”
“Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has done a huge amount to try to redirect funding from other parts of his budget to minimise the impact of that cut.”
The complete record
Every one of 7,011 lines we hold for Gareth Thomas, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 21 of 141.
“What the amendment does, if anything, is ever so slightly increase Ministers’ powers to implement regulations, wherever and however they want. Given how Ministers excluded some groups from the negotiations—including trade unions—given the disregard for the legitimate interests of our devolved nations, and given the failure to negotiate commitments on climate change or proper protections for specialist British brands such as Stilton cheese or Scotch whisky, Ministers’ apparent determination to try to claim a little more freedom to implement the procurement chapters does not encourage any sense that they have learned lessons from what has happened. I have one specific question for the Minister on the implementation of these trade deals.”
“The leading procurement expert Professor Sánchez Graells set out clearly in his evidence to the other place, and indeed to this House, his concerns that the Australia deal worsens the protections for British businesses competing in the Australian procurement market. We are entitled to ask ourselves whether this amendment helps to address that concern in any way. Sadly, I do not think it does. Professor Sánchez Graells also made clear his view that the benefits of the trade deal in terms of access to Australia’s procurement market have been significantly exaggerated. The noble Lord Purvis and Labour Lords also picked up on that point in the debates in the other House, but the one Lords amendment that the Government backed does not address this concern.”
“My right hon. Friend, as ever, makes a hugely important point. Australia and New Zealand, as I said earlier, are important allies of this country with whom we have crucial security interests as well as trade interests. I accept that anything that helps to maintain and strengthen those relationships is very positive, but I am sure he would agree that we need to learn the lessons from how Ministers carried on those negotiations, particularly with the Australians. Given the specific context of the Bill and the focus on implementing the procurement chapters of the two trade deals, it is a struggle to see how this amendment will help to improve the implementation of the supposed better access to our partners’ procurement markets.”
“I realise that the Minister probably does not have much more to say, but may I take this opportunity to press him to set out the plan to help small businesses benefit from the trade preferences in these deals?”
“I hope we will see a Labour Government soon to put right its mistakes.”
“The Chancellor also had nothing to offer on more funding for our police services. We have seen a drop of more than 75% in the number of police community support officers in London over the last eight years. Where once we had local police teams of a sergeant, three police constables and three or four PCSOs in every area of Harrow, now we are lucky to have one PC and one PCSO per ward, and even that has required extra investment by the Mayor of London to achieve. Funding for the Met police is so tight that it cannot fund town centre police teams in every part of London. The constituency of the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), gets a town centre police team, but my Harrow West constituency does not. I must say that this was a very disappointing Budget.”
“But to address the crisis in NHS, it is not just staff that we need. None of the 40 new hospitals that we have seen promised has actually had work begin on it, and all the while the need for new investment is growing across the NHS estate. At Northwick Park Hospital, as well as a rising backlog of essential maintenance, there is a need for capital investment in new intensive care beds to help to improve A&E services. This Budget does not offer much hope that there will be change in that regard. Our borough’s schools need more investment, too, and a Government determined to put in place a plan to boost recruitment and help headteachers retain staff. Per-pupil funding is lower now in real terms than a decade ago. It was striking that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had nothing to say on that.”
“Similarly, at Northwick Park Hospital, which serves my constituents, over 43%—almost 50%—of people attending accident and emergency services are having to wait longer than four hours. It is not that long ago that we had three clinics that supported GP surgeries across the borough of Harrow, ensuring that no one who needed to see a doctor or a nurse waited more than an hour. Many now face very long waits to do so, which inevitably increases pressure on the rest of the NHS. The Chancellor knows that there are huge staff shortages in the NHS. He also knows that, if he backed the abolition of non-dom status, as Opposition Members have argued for, we could double the number of medical school places and train some 10,000 more nurses every year. That would certainly make a start.”
“We all remember only too well that on the Prime Minister’s watch nearly £30 billion has been lost to fraud, vanity projects and even crony contracts. That could have been invested in galvanising the green economic renewal that our country so desperately needs, or simply in our schools, hospitals and police. In Harrow, our public services are crying out for investment. There is huge pressure on our GP surgeries. Over 2,000 people in Harrow had to wait more than a month for a GP appointment in January, and 8,000 had to wait between two and four weeks. That is not a criticism of the staff who work at our excellent GP surgeries; it is simply the fact that they are under huge pressure.”
“The poorly negotiated trade deal with Europe has clearly done considerable damage and the lack of the much promised US trade deal has not helped, but cuts in support to British businesses wanting to attend trade shows, a woeful Government website for helping exporters, late decisions by Ministers on which markets to prioritise, and then little follow-up from Whitehall when businesses go to those markets, are consistent criticisms from British businesses. The other striking thing about the Budget is how little there is for our public services, which are heavily stretched—to put it generously. That is perhaps hardly surprising given the attacks on staff in those public services who have the temerity to ask for decent pay.”
“I am particularly disappointed that the Chancellor has not brought forward a bolder package to address the slow growth that Britain has experienced over the last decade and is likely to see over the next two or three years. Other G7 countries have seen faster growth—for example, in exports to the world’s largest economies. Germany and America, and even Italy and France, have seen their exports to the world’s fastest growing economies in the G20 racing ahead of Britain in the last decade.”
“The Resolution Foundation also highlighted last year that the Conservative party’s particularly toxic combination of low growth and persistently high income inequality has led to some in our country being particularly exposed to the cost of living, so it was particularly disappointing, although sadly not surprising, again to see nothing of substance in the Budget to tackle the rise in child poverty. Nearly 20% of children are living in poverty, including almost 16% in my constituency alone. We can do better as a country and we must do better for our constituents, although I fear it will fall to a future Labour Government to reverse the trends.”
“Between 2016 and 2025, the UK is set to experience even worse—an average growth rate of just 0.8%. We face a Conservative decade of lost growth, missed opportunities and, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) said from the Dispatch Box, managed decline. The Resolution Foundation last year underlined the significance of that lost decade for the UK: typical incomes are higher in Ireland than in the UK by 6%, in France by 10% and in Germany by 19%. Those are extraordinary figures that underline the point about the UK increasingly having become the sick man of Europe—a profoundly worrying state of affairs for us all.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who rightly implies that this Budget offers thin pickings for most in the UK—it certainly does for my constituents. It underlines the fact that we have seen no wage growth across the UK for 13 years. Taxes are at record levels and we have the OBR confirming today the grim news of record falls in living standards. It would be churlish of me not to welcome the moves on childcare, albeit with the powerful caveats mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), and the move on prepayment meters. I want to highlight a message from Japan’s decade of lost growth, with which many in this House will be familiar. It took place at the end of the 1990s, when there was an annual rate of growth of just 1%.”
“When the Minister dug out the letter from the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), I wonder whether he also stumbled upon my letter of 8 February to the Secretary of State about the desperate need for new intensive care investment at Northwick Park Hospital in my constituency, and whether he might expedite a reply on that issue.”
“Earlier this month, the pan-European EVOLVE project found significantly greater potential for marine energy in British waters, which would obviously help us achieve our net zero targets and offer a quicker route to round-the-clock renewable and carbon-free energy. Why are Ministers being so timid about backing that cutting-edge energy technology?”
“I hope the hon. Gentleman will not mind my encouraging the Minister to look, in addition to the case for more investment in his local hospital, at investing more in Northwick Park Hospital, which serves my constituents. It needs a 60-bed intensive care unit to improve the quality of critical care and, crucially, to help attract more critical care nurses and other medical staff.”
“The protracted nature of the conflict, the significant threat of exposure to violence and the many other humanitarian issues affect the quality of schooling that can be provided. Again, British support to UNRWA has been fundamental in helping to keep the Palestinian education system moving in the right direction. I gently encourage the Minister to take a particular interest in that issue.”
“I stress that nearly 23 million Pakistani children aged five to 16 do not attend school, because of teacher shortages, distances and parents’ safety concerns. Surely we have a particular responsibility to provide increased support there. Another area of development assistance that does not always get the attention that it deserves is the support that we give in the Palestinian territories—particularly support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency with investment in education in the west bank and Gaza. Education is very highly valued by families across the Palestinian territories, and there is very high enrolment in basic education, but there are issues with the quality of education.”
“It noted that the biggest cut in long-term development assistance would be to Pakistan, where the largest sectoral decrease as a result of the cut to aid spending would be in education, and that there would be “significant and abrupt cuts to programmes focused on education, economic empowerment, and sexual and reproductive services targeted at women and girls in Pakistan”. While earthquakes in Turkey and Syria have rightly caught the world’s attention, it has not been that long since the terrible floods in Pakistan were on our television screens. More than a third, at least, of the population in Pakistan were very directly affected by those floods. Surely Pakistan, a fellow Commonwealth country, is worthy of continuing and significant support from the UK.”
“In the light of covid, better healthcare in developing countries also helps to reduce the threat of diseases that may start in other places having a significant impact on our citizens too. The charity ONE estimated that, as a result of the cuts in development assistance, some 3.7 million girls worldwide would no longer receive a decent education —surely a matter of significant shame for the UK. The International Development Committee looked particularly at the impacts of the decline in UK aid on specific countries and sectors.”
“However, there is surely also a moral responsibility for us, as one of the richest nations in the world, to do our bit to help those in the poorest countries and the worst circumstances to access better lives, too. I have also always believed that it was in our self-interest to do so. DFID was a global leader in development throughout its existence, which certainly enhanced UK soft power. Development assistance helps to build up markets, creating job opportunities not just in country but, as a result of trade, that benefit people here in the UK. It helps to reduce the pressures on those in the poorest places to migrate and seek sanctuary in the UK or other developed countries.”
“Friends the Members for Reading East and for Vauxhall, in that I think we need a timetable to get back on track to 0.7%. I certainly think we need to re-establish an International Development Department as a separate Department, which perhaps reflects the point made by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). Perhaps slightly unfashionably, I also think we should renew support to the World Bank, which saw one of the biggest cuts in multilateral aid as a result of the UK’s cuts in development assistance. I will return to that in a moment. I have always believed that our first responsibility in this House is to our own citizens.”
“It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), who gave a powerful speech on the significant impact of the cuts on the fight against HIV and AIDS. I very much hope that her points are heard and acted on. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) for securing the debate and for his opening remarks, rightly praising all those from the UK, in particular, doing their level best to help the peoples of Turkey and Syria to deal with the terrible impact of the earthquakes. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) also rightly praised the many church groups that help to keep all of us in this House focused on these issues—I can think of a number in my constituency that do just that. I share the views of my hon.”
“I urge the Minister to look again at reversing the cut in funding to the World Bank as another way of addressing the challenges of access to education in developing countries.”
“British development assistance can help to provide support to address some of those issues, in particular by providing the ideas to improve them. Clearly that is done in partnership with the Indian authorities and other multilateral players. The World Bank developed what is called the learning poverty indicator, which flags, as a key statistic for each country to be measured against, the proportion of 10-year-old children who are unable to read and understand a short, age-appropriate text. The World Bank’s ambition is that the number who cannot read and understand a short, age-appropriate text by the age of 10 should halve by 2030. That is a significant target that the UK should get behind. I suspect we will need an increase in development assistance to the World Bank to support that.”
“Any school being torn down, particularly in a developing country and particularly in the circumstances that the hon. Member describes, is devastating for the communities affected. We need to support the people of the Palestinian territories to get those schools back up, because education gives hope—it gives a route out of poverty and hope of a better future. Surely that is something that the whole House could row in behind. I am privileged to have a very large Indian community in my constituency. India has seen huge growth and development over the past 20 years, with massive progress on access to education along the way, but there are still significant issues with access to the necessary quality of education on occasion.”
“Over the past three years, according to the latest German trade figures, exports to Germany are up by almost a third from the US, by almost a quarter from the rest of the EU and by more than 10% from China, yet exports from Britain to Germany are down. Everybody else’s exports are up; Britain’s are down. Is it a lack of support to our exporters to Germany, is it the poor deal that the Conservative party negotiated with the EU, or does the Minister blame British business for the situation, as one of last year’s Prime Ministers once did?”
“Had the Conservative party negotiated a free trade agreement with the US, as it promised at the general election, British firms would have been protected from new market barriers to green trade that are being introduced by the US Inflation Reduction Act 2022. That means that new investment and jobs here in Britain in green energy, electric vehicles and new technology are at risk. Is it not the truth that the infighting in the Conservative party last year meant that Ministers woke up much too late to the threat and that they have done far too little since to try to ameliorate the damage?”
“It would be helpful to understand exactly why this particular individual has not been sanctioned. Can the Minister give some more clarity on that point, not least because my constituents—and, I suspect, the constituents of everyone else in the House who has spoken or is going to speak on this urgent question—will be profoundly concerned about the level of human rights violations taking place towards the Uyghur community, for which this man appears to be very directly responsible?”
“Trade unionists in 1984—and indeed those of us who are trade unionists now—are not above the law, but the Cammell Laird 37 were part of an official national dispute, and they enabled essential maintenance to take place on the destroyer being built at the time. They had impressive records of employment service and were clearly patriotic. The decision to imprison them was completely disproportionate. There have been many attempts to highlight the injustice of what happened to the 37. They and their families, supported by their trade union, GMB, have campaigned for almost 40 years for this injustice to be made right.”
“Their supposed crime was to have been found in breach of a contempt of court hearing following an earlier judicial hearing; as they had been sacked, they were guilty of trespassing. No other industrial action resulted in so many men being sent to prison. The prison sentence of 30 days was grossly unfair. By the time they were released, the 37 had been sacked. They lost redundancy pay, and those entitled to pension payments lost those too. Officials from GMB believe that one of the men may have lost out on £120,000 or more. The men were locked up alongside murderers and criminals. They were blacklisted and struggled to find work afterwards. In a democracy, belonging to a trade union and taking industrial action should not lead to the risk of imprisonment.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the potential merits of a public inquiry into Cammell Laird workers imprisoned in 1984. I declare at the outset that I am a member of the GMB trade union. I note the unfortunate absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), who has campaigned on this topic consistently since his election to the House, and whose brother was one of the 37. He had hoped to take part in this debate, but unfortunately he has tested positive for covid and therefore cannot be here. In October 1984, 37 trade unionists who had fought to stop the closure of the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead ended their occupation of a gas rig in the shipyard and were promptly arrested and locked up in Walton jail, Merseyside’s maximum security prison.”
“As I understand it, under sections 9 to 12B of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995, which lists the type of cases the Criminal Cases Review Commission has the power to review, there is no mention of decisions of the High Court to commit someone to prison for contempt of court. Either a public inquiry is needed to review the treatment of the 37—that is the purpose of this debate—or the case should be reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, with all the investigative powers it has at its disposal. If so, the law will need to be changed to bring contempt cases resulting in prison within scope, because the Cammell Laird 37 will have little chance of justice until one or other of those options happens.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She and my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead are two of the many MPs who have already raised the case of the 37. Strikingly, in response to one of the questions tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead in 2021, the then Justice Minister, the right hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), argued that if there were concerns about the imprisonment of the 37, the case should be referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The problem with that answer is that the men were sent to prison for contempt of court—a civil matter.”
“The papers also reveal how Norman Tebbit wanted to spin the decision, to put the blame and responsibility for the closure of Cammell Laird first on the British Shipbuilders Board and crucially, too, on the workforce, whose growing concern about their future they comment on—although they describe that as union militancy and worsening industrial relations.”
“He particularly underlined the fact that Cammell Laird had won the MOD’s tendering process. When British Shipbuilders published accounts in July 1984 for the previous year, it noted that Cammell Laird’s warship-building operations were still profitable, making some £3.22 million in surplus. None the less, Norman Tebbit, Margaret Thatcher and a series of Cabinet allies eventually forced the re-tender of the contracts to build these warships, delaying for almost a year the award of a warship-building contract to Cammell Laird.”
“The records released by the National Archives and the Margaret Thatcher Foundation detail how Norman Tebbit and the Department for Trade and Industry strongly objected, arguing, according to papers at the time now in the National Archives: “If Cammell Laird did remain open, overcapacity would remain in shipbuilding with gratuitous risk to the successful privatisation.” Commitments had been made that Cammell Laird would be able to bid and would have “a strong case” for building Type 22 frigates, as far as back as December 1982, by the then Secretary of State for Defence, John Nott, in this House. In April 1984, Michael Heseltine, then Secretary of State for Defence, underlined the significance of that commitment, and the impact on Merseyside if that commitment were not honoured and Cammell Laird closed.”
“Cammell Laird’s bid had met the quality threshold and apparently offered the best price. Over the course of nine months, from April 1984 to January 1985, Norman Tebbit successfully persuaded Margaret Thatcher and the rest of her Cabinet to delay Cammell Laird being awarded a contract to build at least one of the planned new Royal Navy destroyers. The then Secretary of State for Defence, Michael Heseltine, recognising the profound economic and social consequences for Merseyside if Cammell Laird were to close, wanted to place orders for one, possibly two, Royal Navy Type 22 frigates with Cammell Laird, which would have secured the yard’s immediate future, and prevented even more job losses.”
“The 37 had helped build ships crucial to our efforts to win back the Falklands and later to take on Saddam Hussein. Short of active military service, there surely are not many more patriotic things one can do for one’s country than help build the means to defend it. Word began to leak out in the spring and early summer of 1984 that Cammell Laird might be at risk of closure. Ministers at the time in the House of Commons denied that any major shipyard closures were being contemplated. “I know of no such proposal.” —[ Official Report , 27 June 1984; Vol. 62, c. 1095.] So said Norman Lamont, then Minister of State at the Department for Trade and Industry. That was not quite the full picture. The Ministry of Defence had tendered for contracts to build two Type 42 destroyers in late 1983.”
“We know that, because what emerges from these relatively recently declassified records of the time, is how Cammell Laird’s future became the centrepiece of a fierce Whitehall battle between the majority of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, hellbent on privatisation at any cost, and a far smaller group worried about the future of Merseyside if Cammell Laird closed. At the time, Cammell Laird was one of Britain’s most important shipyards. In existence for more than 150 years, it was a byword for engineering and shipbuilding skill of the highest order. Warships built at Cammell Laird, such as Ark Royal, helped to protect our shores during two world wars, while other ships built there delivered huge wealth from across the globe to Britain’s shores.”
“It is clear, from papers released by the National Archives and from Margaret Thatcher’s private papers, that Ministers were determined to privatise the building of warships, reduce the number of shipbuilding yards and sell off the remainder of the yards. Those records confirm a central belief of the 37 when they went on strike, that Ministers wanted to close Cammell Laird. They confirm that Norman Tebbit, then Secretary of State, and Norman Lamont, then Minister of State in the Department for Trade and Industry, wanted to close Cammell Laird, potentially as early as the end of the year, when the two ships then being built were expected to be completed.”
“I very much agree with that point; I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support for the case that others and I will make. In the latter part of 1984, across Britain’s industrial heartlands at the time, huge numbers of jobs in nationalised industries, including steel and coal, were axed by Margaret Thatcher’s Government, with a casual disregard for what would come next for those made redundant and their devastated communities. In shipbuilding alone, a hugely important source of jobs across the UK at the time, British Shipbuilders went from employing 62,000 workers in 1982 to just 5,000 five years later.”
“I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that there is an urgency to this case. I welcome his support for the points that I am trying to make.”
“I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for her support for this debate. I absolutely agree with her concluding point, which I want to come on to in a little bit. On balance, it is difficult not to conclude from the papers I have read that a significant group of Ministers in 1984 were so determined to drive through the complete privatisation of British shipbuilders, regardless of the wider economic and social consequences, that they decided that to achieve this, Cammell Laird had to close, and that any employee or union resistance had to be resolutely confronted.”
“As such, I hope the House will be sympathetic to the case for a public inquiry, a Hillsborough-style inquiry or, indeed, a review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.”
“Police records from the time, Walton jail records, and full records of the involvement of the official solicitor or Attorney General do not appear to be publicly available; what we can, I think, definitively say is that throughout 1984, decisions about the future of Cammell Laird were being taken at the very highest level of Government. The possible role of government —in its widest sense—in the decisions that led to those men being imprisoned and losing so much should be explored by those whose powers allow full and complete access to any remaining records. The proportionality of sending the men to prison at all, and of keeping them there once the occupation had ended, also merits review. In the end, this is about 37 men who were sent to prison when no other comparable national dispute, at the time or since, saw a similar outcome.”
“Others in the group encouraged those men to say sorry, so that they could leave prison to grieve and say longer goodbyes, but they would not: they were determined to stay, side by side with the others. They made a point of going back to prison after the funeral to show their support and solidarity. They went in together, and they came out together. The 37 have campaigned with, and through, the GMB to try to find out the full picture as to why they were sent to prison, with a film, a book, and rallies and meetings across the country down the years. They have searched for all sorts of records and made numerous freedom of information requests.”
“The desperate Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill that Ministers are pushing in an attempt to divert attention from a miserable record of economic mismanagement mirrors the efforts of Ministers back in 1984 to try to avoid public responsibility for the consequences of axing huge numbers of jobs across our industrial heartlands. The Cammell Laird 37 were brave men. They faced the full wrath of the judicial, media and political opinion of the time; they had the chance to say sorry in court for occupying the yard—in legal language, to purge their contempt—but that would have been apologising for fighting to stop the yard’s closure and save their community. Not one of the 37 did so, even when the mother of some of the men died.”
“The men did not stop the eventual closure of the yard, but their actions in helping to publicise what the loss of the yard would mean certainly delayed its closure. Eventually, one of the contracts to build the Type 42 destroyer was finally given to Cammell Laird, saving many jobs for a while longer. Very few people want to go on strike—a truth that very few Conservatives have been willing to acknowledge down the years—but it is a fundamental right that should be protected. Of course, what links the case of the Cammell Laird 37 to today is that the Conservative party is still trying to criminalise those who want to push for better jobs, a decent living and dignity in their employment.”