John McDonnell
MP for Hayes and Harlington · Labour · United Kingdom
“It is not a laughing matter—I am sorry for interrupting the flow of the discussion. It would be useful if the review looked at NATS’s long-term investment plans, particularly since its partial privatisation in 2001, which I opposed. I thank the Minister for meeting Unite this morning and thanking the workers, who have worked so hard.”
“On a number of occasions, I have raised the case of Lee Cheuk-yan, who many Labour Members will remember was the general secretary of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions and founder of the Labour party in Hong Kong. He was detained during the democracy movement five years ago.”
“I thank the Minister for his statement. NATS used to be in my constituency and then moved down to Swanwick. Of course, with Heathrow in my constituency, I receive—as I mentioned yesterday—a large amount of correspondence from a whole range of other MPs’ constituents, who think I am responsible for Heathrow airport.”
“I fully agree, and let me also say that wheelchair compensation is significant in this legislation. Most of us have dealt with cases like that. Going back to accountability in the process, a number of different organisations have provided us with notes on the legislation.”
“I apologise to my right hon. Friend; I should have checked this before the debate. The proposed new section 61G refers to priorities and objectives of the Secretary of State, which include a requirement for the Secretary of State to issue a document setting out those priorities and objectives for the CAA.”
“At the moment, when people in my constituency are faced with these problems, they do not know where to go; it is as simple as that. Finally, the debate that we will have on Heathrow expansion and the new policy statement will be interesting, given that we do not know what the flight paths will be. If I was a constituent of my hon.”
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“I was critical of the previous Government. We had debates such as this, but I think that the Labour party has learned the lesson that we now need to invest in social housing on a scale that we have not done in the last 20, 30 or 40 years. We need a massive council housing programme. Councils should be encouraged compulsorily to purchase empty land. We cannot wait around any longer while we negotiate with developers. The crisis is too large. In an area of desperate housing need, we still have empty properties. Homes are standing empty. There are 700,000 empty properties in this country, 300,000 of them long-term, beyond six months. We should be encouraging councils to use their compulsory purchase powers to take over those properties, and put homeless families in them. I support everything in the motion, but, as my right hon.”
“The environmental health standards of some properties are appalling, yet obtaining enforcement by the council is difficult. I do not blame the local authority, because with staff cuts it is difficult to provide cover for the scale of the problem faced and the enforcement required. Houses in multiple occupation in my constituency have experienced all the health and safety risks, including fires and, unfortunately, some fatalities as well. There is a continuous churning process, with families in short-life accommodation, perhaps for 18 months or two years, being moved out. That disrupts the family, breaking down family relationships and undermining communities, and the long-term impact on children’s education and social relationships is devastating. The solution is a statement of the blindingly obvious: build more council houses.”
“I cannot give way any more. I apologise. There is also squalor in the private rented sector. In my constituency there are landlords, the majority of whom own one or two properties, who do not maintain them. This has been made worse by the economic recession. Walk down any street in my constituency and it will be clear from the standard of the properties and their maintenance which ones are the buy-to-lets. When the tenants complain, they are evicted. They have virtually no legal redress, because they cannot get into the courts; or they turn up at the citizens advice bureau or the law centre and it is difficult to get advice because they too are swamped. There is also an element of blacklisting of certain tenants who challenge particular landlords.”
“I hope to catch the Speaker’s eye later and contribute to the debate. The Minister may be convinced, but it is the seafarers and their families who need convincing, and they are not convinced. Will he clarify the process from here onwards? Will there be detailed regulation and consultation? If the legislation is agreed to today, how do we go forward towards implementation?”
“The RMT undertook its own investigation, along with Nautilus and the International Transport Workers Federation, as my hon. Friend said. They found the ship and discovered the real causes. However, the investigation would not have been reopened but for a piece of legislation introduced in 1995 by—who? By a Conservative Government. Until then, the system was not satisfactory. The Derbyshire relatives, the unions and others had to campaign because reopening an inquiry was left to the whim of a Minister. That was unsatisfactory. A Conservative Government thus changed the legislation to provide for an automatic reopening of an inquiry when new evidence was found.”
“On marine investigations, again, people are slightly bewildered about why the measure is included in this Bill. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), who sits on the Front Bench, for taking us through the history and in particular the Derbyshire incident. I, too, want to go back to that incident, because I find it extraordinary. I remember the campaign about the Derbyshire and I remember that key period when a number of the unions and others were raising the problems with that type of ship. From 1975 to 1997, nearly 400 of them went down and we lost something like 1,300 seafarers. The Derbyshire was one of those ships. There was an issue with design and safety. At the time, there were all sorts of insinuations about it being the crew’s fault.”
“There may well be some association between donations, speed and amendments, but to be frank, what concerns me most is getting the legislation right, and I just do not think that the measure will prove effective. I think it will cause more problems than it is worth. I also think it will prove deeply unpopular as it is rolled out. If there is a lack of safety, particularly for women, the Government will reap the whirlwind. They will face a backlash, because what they are doing flies in the face of all the expert evidence that has been presented. Everyone who practises on the ground, right across the country, is saying that this is not the way to go about it, so I caution the Government: they are making a mistake today and may well want to think again before the day is out.”
“From the point of view of the union and a number of other organisations that have been cited, everyone thought that we were on a journey over the last couple of years: the Law Commission would conduct its investigation and review; there would be adequate consultation; a comprehensive Bill would be produced; and then we would establish a regime that, although perhaps not everyone would be happy with it, would at least be nationally comprehensive, effective, properly enforced and readily understandable. There is therefore a lack of comprehension of why the measures have been introduced in such haste. In fact, I am led to believe that one of the informal consultations on some of the legislation lasted only 10 days and was conducted by e-mail.”
“I convene the RMT group in Parliament. I raised these issues at the RMT conference this morning and we had a discussion about their implications. On the taxi and minicab issue, the RMT represents only the black cabs in London, which has been prayed in aid as operating the system that will now be rolled out elsewhere. I want to dissuade the Minister from the view that the RMT is happy with the regime in London at the moment. In fact, in the RMT’s view, there should be further regulation, with annual testing. The figures have already been given for assaults and rapes, which are occurring even in the capital city’s regulated regime. What worries me is exactly what others have said.”
“The Minister should recognise that he is now taking the law back to what it was when it was completely ineffective. The Conservative Government had to amend the legislation, and the Derbyshire relatives had to campaign for 20 years to ensure that they got justice.”
“The reason why the Conservative Government introduced the legislation was that the decision was at the discretion of the Minister. This measure returns it to the discretion of a Minister—it does not matter which party is in power—in whom the public no longer have confidence.”
“That is precisely why I support the amendment. However, if the amendment is not suitably drafted, the usual process is that Government consult on the detail of regulation. People will be involved in that, and we can hopefully arrive at a consensus. Today the Minister is saying that there will be no regulation that will guide Minister and therefore no consultation. We are back where we were before 1995.”
“Thirdly, it is a disgrace that we are tearing up legislation introduced by a Conservative Government that ensured there was a proper investigation into the sinking of the Derbyshire and brought at least some comfort to the relatives of the victims. What we are doing now is ensuring that if another such accident occurs, the decision whether or not an inquiry is opened or reopened will be based on the whim of a Minister. That is a step backwards, and it means we have not learned the lessons the Conservative Government did learn in 1995, when they put this legislation in place. For those reasons, I will seek to oppose this Bill at every possible opportunity.”
“Only during the debate did we receive from the Minister a list of supposedly dangerous categories of employment, where people who are self-employed will still have the health and safety legislation applied to them, but whole areas of employment were left out, including the docks and some parts of the maritime sector, which are particularly dangerous. I think this will cause absolute confusion and will, sadly, result in loss of limbs and loss of life. I am also opposed to the Bill because of its reforms relating to taxis and public hire vehicles which, as has been said today, will put the travelling public at risk. There will be no effective control over who will be plying that trade. Last year there were 200 incidents of attacks on people travelling in private hire cars in London, where this type of legislation already applies.”
“I thank the Minister for his courtesy and for the constructive way in which he dealt with the development of amendments 16 and 17, meeting representatives of the National Union of Journalists, editors and others to avoid what could have been a disastrous incursion into the freedom of speech and of written material. None the less, I oppose the Bill overall and will be shouting against it. I will seek to vote against it, if only with a few others, for three reasons. I believe that the health and safety legislation with regard to the self-employed means that people will be put at risk. It will cause absolute confusion.”
“In my constituency, there has been a massive expansion in the number of buy-to-let properties. Landlords charge higher rents and cram large numbers of people into those properties, but do not invest in them. That means that families are trapped into high energy prices. What can we do not just to encourage but perhaps to force those landlords to invest in energy conservation?”
“We recently marked the 30th anniversary of the Indian Government’s attack on the Golden Temple at Amritsar. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister set up an internal inquiry into allegations of collusion between the Thatcher and Gandhi Governments at the time. The inquiry was limited and internal, it did not include publication of all the documents, and it has not gained the confidence of the Sikh community in Britain, who have now launched a call for an independent, judge-led inquiry into the whole affair. Will the Leader of the House ask the Prime Minister to come to the House and make a statement in response to the Sikh community’s request?”
“Whatever Mr Pugh said yesterday, let me read what he put in his annual report only a year ago. He said, on the transfer of work in 2014, that “IPS will be providing passport services for approximately 350,000 additional customers worldwide annually.” That is the increase in demand that he predicted.”
“I join the Home Secretary in congratulating the staff on their hard work, and I think that that is shared across the whole House, but is she aware that Passport Office staff are paid £3,000 less than equivalent grades in the Home Office? There was a mechanism in the Passport Office where if the backlog got to 150,000, measures would automatically be put in place to deal with it. Management took the decision to increase that figure to 350,000. Was the Home Secretary aware of that, and why did it happen?”
“I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but it is not borne out by the facts. From a local government perspective, judicial review has been one of the most effective methods by which local councils have held Government to account and ensured that they follow due process. I rarely do this, but I praise the London borough of Hillingdon, my own local authority, for effectively using judicial review over issues such as the third runway at Heathrow to ensure that the Government abide by their own legislation.”
“I do wish that the hon. Gentleman would not rile the Front Benchers, because we end up going off on tangents. If someone is listening—with regard to the offenders; I did not mean listening to the Front Benchers—who might carry a knife, my concern is this. I have seen some evidence in my constituency that people have tried to avoid the existing legislation by looking for other weapons. In a recent murder in my constituency, an axe was used, and we have also seen the spraying of acid. If people listen to the message that they will be committing an offence by carrying a knife on two occasions, my fear is that they will diversify into other weapons to avoid that, if they are sufficiently calculating.”
“The Secretary of State has quoted the Prison Officers Association. He is not a man who would want to mislead or confuse the House, so may I tell him what the POA has said today? It has said: “The decision by NOMS”— that is, himself— “to further ‘crowd’ the already overcrowded public sector estate by an additional 440 undermines the commitment that prisons will be safe, secure and decent”. The POA describes that as “the perfect storm of a rising population, a lack of staff and too few prison cells.” Could the Secretary of State start listening to the prison officers themselves, for a change?”
“I welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary has said on several occasions that the Government are not planning any military intervention. Can I be absolutely assured that there will be no military intervention by this Government, or support by this Government for others’ military intervention, without a vote of this House? On the second part of the Foreign Secretary’s statement, with regard to sexual violence, will he look at reports that women who have come to this country seeking asylum from areas of conflict have been detained in Yarl’s Wool, where they have been subjected to sexual abuse?”
“Part of the anger and frustration is that these problems were not just predictable—they were predicted. They were predicted by the front-line staff. Will the Home Secretary review the correspondence of the past two years, at least, from Public and Commercial Services Union front-line staff representatives, who wrote consistently that “the closure of 22 interview offices and one application processing centre and the sacking of 315 staff…around one in 10 of the workforce…has been a major factor in creating this current crisis.”? She has set up a review. It is best to talk to the front-line staff doing the job. Will she meet a delegation of PCS representatives from the front line to talk about how we can go forward urgently and in the long term?”
“I believe that a draft list was given to Members in Committee. I tried to obtain it in the Library, but was told that it is not available until the consultation starts. Would it be possible to at least have a copy of what was given to the Committee?”
“We have heard about false self-employment, and a lot of construction workers today are basically told to be self-employed or they will not get a job. It is as simple as that and if they try to argue against it they do not get work the following week. That is one of the big battles being joined at the moment by Unite and other unions, including the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians.”
“Some Members may be aware that a few weeks ago, after a fatality at Crossrail, an extremely damning report about health and safety attitudes on the Crossrail project was published in the media. I am meeting Crossrail management and the unions to try to see how we can resolve those matters. It will be argued that Crossrail will be covered by these provisions because it is part of the construction sector, but the question comes up of what will happen with deliveries to Crossrail sites. Will they be covered when they are purely on the construction site or will they be covered on their way to a Crossrail site? We will have endless debates and arguments about what happens in construction, which is the area where self-employment has grown in recent years.”
“When we meet the families of victims, we understand why health and safety is such a cornerstone, and so essential in protecting people at work. As soon as we try to resolve some of the smaller exaggerations of the health and safety at work legislation, we then open up the possibility of absolute confusion about what is going on. We will spend the next few months on the consultation about the list. Endless hours will be spent trying to identify what activities are included on the list and what activities are not included. We have already heard something like that today with the issue of what happens in the construction industry. I have been dealing with Crossrail.”
“Clearly, therefore, there is an issue of health and safety among the self-employed. Up until now, the simplicity of the legislation has meant that everyone knows that they are covered no matter what. No matter where they are working or what aspect of self-employment they are involved in, they know they are covered by the legislation. My worry is that legislating to solve one problem produces much bigger problems. I accept that there may be an element of truth behind some of the myths of the health and safety culture. Some small examples may be run in the Daily Mail, and we will all agree that they are daft, but the bulk of health and safety legislation protects people. There are too many people dying or being seriously injured at work at the moment.”
“Individual pieces of legislation would not have given us that comprehensive cover. At that point in time, self-employment was not a big issue, but it is now. The expansion of self-employment in this country—my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) gave some figures on that—has been massive. That is partly because people who have lost their job or who have had their job privatised in some form have been pushed into self-employment; some choose it willingly, but others choose it because it is the only option. It is a fact that deaths at work and occupational injuries for the self-employed are twice the rate for the directly employed. If we look at recent TUC statistics on deaths, we will see that there have been 16 fatalities in the past four months, the bulk of which were among the self-employed.”
“I have not received the Unite briefing, but I understand that it has been lobbying on this matter. I come to this matter from a trade union background—from the shop floor. When I first left college, I worked for the National Union of Mineworkers. Obviously, health and safety was a critical issue for mineworkers. However, it concerned not just those working in the mines but those involved on the surface, in deliveries and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) has described the process of health and safety at work. The trade unions initially tried to tackle health and safety issues on an industry-by-industry basis. The reason the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 came about was that we wanted comprehensive overall protection, which is why it was a global Bill; we did not want anyone to miss out.”
“May I first say that I welcome the new clause relating to the Sikh community? I chair the all-party group on the Punjabi community in Britain, and for a number of years there has been an issue, and it is helpful to get it out of the way now, once and for all. Others have also received representations on the matter, so today’s debate has been useful. I will be straight with the Minister: I am really worried about this part of the Bill. Before I go into that, I will, like others, outline my background. First, let me refer to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Unite has just made a contribution to my constituency party for campaigning. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority tells me that we do not have to declare such payments, but I have anyway.”
“No, it is not, but a lot of those workers who were directly employed have in recent years been forced into self-employment against their will. That is the only way that they have been able to get work. If we consider the role of agents in a lot of this, we can see that it is a way of avoiding taxation for some.”
“All our health and safety legislation up to now has been based on the precautionary principle of comprehensive coverage so that everyone is protected, including the workers and the general public in whose environment they are working, but we are now in a situation where no one will know or be absolutely clear about their coverage. As a local MP I have used health and safety legislation on a number of occasions to get the local authority to take action against self-employed workers on particular sites that are putting the general public at risk.”
“For offshore activities, it includes “operators, owners, installation managers, well operators and any persons under various Offshore Regulations”, but some of the highest risk in the offshore industry is land-based, at the port, before the equipment is transferred out. In years to come, we will define item by item what is on the list and what is not. It is all well and good publishing a list of what is covered, but if people want absolute clarity we should also publish a list of what is not included. Let me give another example, which I think came up in Committee. If a plumber—they are largely self-employed—is working in a person’s home, will they be covered or not? Are electricians working in people’s homes covered or not? I am not sure from this list, and that is the issue.”
“I have seen the list that the Minister has kindly supplied us with this afternoon and, to be frank, I think—I am not saying this in any critical way—that if we are going to go down the route of having a list system, it would have been better for us to have had the list well in advance for consultation and discussion. Nevertheless, that is what we will have now. Let me give some examples from the list. The category for high-risk activities relating to public safety includes the: “Organisation and operation of exhibitions, fairgrounds, amusement parks, theme parks, zoos, circuses, public fireworks displays and adventure activities,” but not festivals and concerts, which have some of the highest risks of such outside activities.”
“I have been involved in some of the direct action campaigns on sites across London over the past two years. Few major firms are left in London that employ people directly; they now employ individuals who are classified as self-employed. They have not gone into self-employment willingly, but have been forced into it simply to get the work. Let me go back to my major theme. Throughout its history, our health and safety legislation has been based on the precautionary principle of trying to ensure that we prevent as much as we possibly can the risks of individual sectors.”
“If the Government are going to legislate on the basis of hearsay and almost prejudice, they wind up with legislation that renders itself ineffective in the long run. I genuinely cannot see how the list could be implemented effectively.”
“We went through examples of what he thought was unnecessary health and safety legislation in certain areas. One of the areas he was looking at was shops, so I introduced him to the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, which explained to him that health and safety matters were a worry in shops where its workers were. From that original prejudicial approach, I thought the Government were going to lay out in detail how the duties would be implemented. To introduce the legislation without such detail in such an important area will render the legislation ineffective and put people at risk.”
“That worries me even more. I make this not as a party political point, but as a practical governmental point: that means that the legislation is a leap in the dark, before we know in any detail the consequences of what we are doing. The Government have been looking at the matter for three years now. I met Lord—I have forgotten his name. He got the sack after having a few drinks too many at a reception. I met the original Lord who was consulting on this. He turned up with an individual who I thought was his butler. It was an adviser. He eventually got the push because he had a few drinks too many and said some unwise words. He was so impressive that I cannot remember his name. I met him three years ago when the measure was first mooted.”
“The risks that will be incurred will affect many of us, throughout all these different industries, but more broadly, as self-employment now grows, not only will self-employed workers be put at risk, but the general public as well. That is why the Minister needs to think again very seriously.”
“There are times when one legislates on the principle and then rolls out the practical implications, but I agree with my hon. Friend that in this instance, because of the legislation’s significance and because the detail is so important to whether it is viable, in the three years when the consultation was supposed to be going on we could have drilled down into the detail and then come back with effective legislation, which would have achieved some element of consensus. Instead we have absolute confusion, and in health and safety matters that means risk. I will vote for the amendment, but I deeply regret the way in which the legislation has been brought forward.”
“We have only one copy of the list—that is how we have been treated today—but we shall share it. I will give one example, and perhaps my hon. Friend will be able to respond to it. According to the list, construction is covered overall, and a number of activities are listed under construction. However, there are sites where there is no construction going on but there is painting and decorating, which is not listed. If no construction was going on and some self-employed painters and decorators—there are a large number of them—turned up to work on the site, they would not be covered because their work would not be construed as construction. However, painting and decorating is actually quite a risky occupation, for the painter and decorator and for the public, because of the use of ladders, scaffolding and so on.”
“There is a reason for the concern. It has been argued that there is not an awful lot of self-employment in the maritime sector, but there is. My hon. Friend knows as well as I do, because he was involved in this, the issues with the Thames cruises, where there is self-employment: individual families own their own boats and there is a licensing regime. Health and safety still needs to be applied to them, but they do not seem to be anywhere near the list.”
“I am not sure whether my hon. Friend has seen the list. In the past, we have raised the risks on the docks, where self-employment is increasingly becoming the norm. My dad used to be a Liverpool docker and he lost a finger as a result of an industrial accident. Although offshore activities are listed, there is nothing about the docks. That whole sector is excluded from the list, yet it is an extremely dangerous area of activity.”
“That is why the Bill is allowing for the use of physical force against young people, contrary to everything the courts have told us.”
“The scale of this proposal in catering for about 25% of young people in the prison system means that these colleges will be located in the centre of the country, nowhere near the vast proportion of homes where these young people live, so we will be breaking down family connections. We have warnings before us, right across the piece, that in a mixed-gender establishment those most at risk will be young women. Some of the statements and evidence provided about those risks were frightening. All the evidence tells us that a system such as that proposed will not work, and I think the Government know that. This is Oakwood for children, and we know what happened in that privatised prison—riots, assaults, and a lack of control. I think the Government know that there is a danger that that will be replicated in this large institution.”
“I will be very brief, because other Members wish to speak. I find this whole secure college proposal abhorrent. It flies in the face of all the evidence that has been put before the Justice Committee and debated in the wider media. What do we know about trying to address the issues that confront young people once they get involved in this system? We know that the most successful units are the smaller ones. So what is the response? It is to create a mass-scale prison. The other thing that we know works—this is absolutely critical—is for young people to be located close to their homes so that they can maintain family and community contact.”
“This proposal is bringing borstals back into the system. We thought we had got rid of them. They were like large-scale prisons where a regime of brutality could emerge because of packing so many young people in, and where costs were limited so there was not the intensive investment looking at children’s individual needs. This is a dreadful proposal. If it is enacted, with £85 million spent on this large-scale Titan prison for young people, we will live to regret it, because it will damage young people’s lives and, rather than rehabilitate them, force them into a more brutal form of criminal practice in future.”
“I was unable to go on that visit because I was in hospital at the time. However, I have had the reports from Oakwood and I have met the Prison Officers Association. We have seen time and again the level of assaults there and the riots that have taken place. Only recently, a whole wing was taken over by prisoners. That is a result of privatisation. That is the agenda; that is what this is about. It is not about the rehabilitation, education and care of young people; the main thrust is reducing the overall cost of the system. That is why privatisation has come on to the agenda. As a result of this Government’s drive to reduce costs within the system, we are putting the lives of young people at risk. I grew up on an estate where young people were sent into the prison system—that is, borstals.”