Mr David Lammy
MP for Tottenham · Labour · United Kingdom
“I am delighted to welcome the shadow Housing Secretary to the Dispatch Box. He, of course, could have been doing that job every week if he were better with numbers.”
“The right hon. Gentleman has not proposed what the Conservatives would do if they were in office. They released 10,000 under four different schemes, with no impact assessment when they released them, no victim contact when they released them, and no warning. They did it on the sly.”
“This is a very serious issue and the right hon. Gentleman is experienced in this House. He knows that while he was Home Secretary, the Conservative Government had an early release scheme that let out 10,000 offenders—10,000. They had six schemes within a year.”
“I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Prime Minister, who is attending the NATO summit. Working with our allies, we are strengthening Europe’s role in the alliance, which remains the cornerstone of our national security.”
“The right hon. Gentleman insists on proving that he cannot count. We lost 16,000 police officers when the Conservatives were in power. The British people have not forgotten what they did to our country. After two years of this Labour Government, I will compare our record with theirs every day of the week.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have the honour to say that His Majesty the King has accepted our advice to grant Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom, a conditional pardon. [Hon.”
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“I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He allows me to say that I, too, lost a very dear friend—James Adams—in the bombings in July 2005. I will never forget James. He was a great Conservative and debating partner at school. That is why I, like the hon. Gentleman, take these issues so seriously.”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when the Secretary of State talks about flexibility, it would be helpful if there were some evidence, given that the cases that have been discussed—Fishmongers’ Hall and Streatham—certainly do not relate to the TPIM regime? Perhaps the Secretary of State might want to consider whether he ought to ask those who engage with these things to provide some of that evidence, at the very least on Privy Council terms.”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. On the issue of polygraphs, does he note that the independent reviewer also says that there is an absence in the Bill as to how they will be used? Are they to be used against high-risk offenders, or very high-risk offenders, or are they to be used against low-risk offenders to assess their tendency to reoffend or offend?”
“That is why so many charities and campaign organisations that work with victims of domestic abuse have called for reform in this area for many years. The new law will allow and promote conciliation and compromise. That will be of real help for families and children of broken relationships. Importantly, it will reduce legal costs that can quickly reach eye-watering sums, quite unnecessarily.”
“If neither party is willing to make such an application, the parties must separate but remain married for a period of two years, or five years if one party disputes the divorce. The option for couples today is entering into a lengthy and costly adversarial legal proceeding, or delay and legal limbo. Both routes lead to difficulties for all and a real risk of harm to others. Couples who enter the process amicably can be quickly pulled apart by the law. There is an incentive for each party to make accusations about the other’s conduct, and that cannot be right. Some couples can easily live apart and bide their time, but for others, moving into separate accommodation without a finalised divorce and any financial settlement is impossible.”
“The Bill modernises the law, which has been fundamentally unchanged for more than half a century, so that it better reflects the realities of a breakdown in a relationship, better protecting the most vulnerable who attempt to come out of an abusive relationship and simplifying the process of ending a marriage or civil partnership without undermining its social and cultural importance. The divorce process today is archaic and confusing to most people as they enter into an emotionally fraught process. The law forces parties who are going through a divorce to choose between evidencing one of the three fault-based facts about their partner: unreasonable behaviour, adultery or, less commonly, desertion.”
“It was 30 years ago now that I studied Evelyn Waugh’s “A Handful of Dust” for A-level English, and as the Secretary of State might recall, in the case in Waugh’s novel, the character Tony is forced to spend a platonic weekend in Brighton with a sex worker to fake evidence to allow his divorce. That, of course, was set in the early period of the 20th century. It is surprising that it has taken that long to update these laws. Divorce is an unhappy event in the lives of many. It has a profound effect on families, and on children in particular. It is important that the law does not force couples into an adversarial contest when a breakdown in a relationship occurs, but allows and encourages them to resolve matters in a constructive way.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his speech introducing this important piece of legislation. Labour welcomes this Bill, which offers a common-sense approach that continues to respect the institution of marriage and civil partnerships, but avoids unnecessary antagonism and costs for people dealing with an often incredibly difficult time in their lives. Sir James Munby, the former eminent president of the family division, has described the current divorce laws and procedures as “hypocritical” and based on “intellectual dishonesty”. As Sir James pointed out in his damning judgment in the infamous case of Owens v. Owens, the requirement of many couples to evidence unreasonable behaviour can lead to farce.”
“The Bill will certainly help couples going through this process, but further investment in legal aid is necessary to ensure that justice is being done fairly for all. I hope that the Secretary of State might say something about the position on legal aid during the course of this Bill, but Labour supports this Bill and will support the Government in the Lobby.”
“She has also highlighted something else that is not fair, which is the potential for an imbalance in resources because of the lack of access if, for example, there is a wealthy applicant and a respondent without access to funds. Some studies suggest that legal fees for divorces can be £8,000, on average. That is simply unaffordable for large groups in the population, but there is no legal aid provision at all. Ironically, the legal aid system introduced by the Attlee Government with the aim of guaranteeing access to justice was initially focused on divorces, where numbers rose exponentially after the war; after a decade of a Conservative Government, it is not provided for at all in these circumstances.”
“The lack of legal advice can also lead to delay. Despite the Government introducing online divorce applications, the average time from the first stage to completing the divorce was 58 weeks last year, an increase of three weeks. The delays have effects on the couples, who often want to get on with their lives but are held back by a lack of early legal advice. Without such professional advice, the process for the parties, their families and, in particular, children, is inevitably emotionally strenuous. As Baroness Hale said, upon leaving the bench: “It’s unreasonable to expect a husband and wife or mother and father who are in crisis in their personal relationship to make their own arrangements without help”.”
“In the year immediately preceding the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, 58% of parties were recorded as having legal representation in family cases that had at least one hearing, but that has reduced to just 36%, which means more people are acting as litigants in person during the divorce process. If a separation is acrimonious, the lack of legal advice can make an already stressful situation even worse. In courts across the country the effects of that are being felt: hearings take longer; more are emotionally heated without a focus on the law, because there are no lawyers representing the parties; and the process is more burdensome and stressful for all concerned—the judiciary, who have to hand-hold the parties through the process, and the parties who have to represent themselves.”
“The Bill safeguards important procedural challenges—jurisdiction, fraud, coercion—but it will prevent the unnecessary dragging out of traumatic proceedings. Finally, the Bill modernises the language of divorce. While a modest reform, many family practitioners in this area speak of their clients’ bewilderment at terms such as decree nisi and decree absolute. More accessible phrasing is important. It is a reminder that the law must serve all people, not just those who are legally trained. Therefore, Labour welcomes this Bill, but these reforms must be put into context. The cuts to legal aid over the past decade mean that parties do not receive any support—none at all—in divorce proceedings, whatever their financial circumstances.”
“The Law Commission recognised that all the way back in 1990, stating: “It is unjust and discriminatory of the law to provide for civilised ‘no-fault’ ground for divorce, which, in practice, is denied to a large section of the population.” This Bill rights that wrong and it is long overdue. Thirdly, the Bill removes the opportunity to contest a divorce. However, in reality, even now a party cannot simply argue that they want to remain in the marriage, but must identify a legal reason why the divorce must be refused. The law as it stands does not prevent disputes or help to bring about reconciliation, but instead only serves to aggravate a conflict that can be manipulated by perpetrators of domestic violence to further torment a partner.”
“The current law also drags out the process of separation, which can affect the vulnerable in society. Many women have reported that lengthy divorce proceedings, and the adversarial nature of them, have given an opportunity to abusers to continue to torment them. It may be claims of a lost marriage certificate, not attending court or issuing spurious cross-allegations, but a perpetrator can prolong proceedings, causing more harm. Some people’s circumstances require a faster conclusion to the legal relationship. The Bill will go some way to helping them. More broadly, the law as it stands discriminates against those on low incomes. For some who can afford to live separately, a no-fault divorce is perfectly viable, but others must make accusations of the other’s behaviour if they cannot afford such an arrangement.”
“The current law is often counterproductive to any hope of reconciliation, as it can put off couples from moving back in with one another for fear of having to start the separation process once more. This can also be incredibly dangerous. Women’s Aid has highlighted the barrier for many women leaving abusive relationships, which is compounded by current divorce law. With over half of survivors of abuse shown to be unable to afford to leave the family home and with the decline of refuge accommodation, women are forced to rely on fault-based facts in any divorce proceedings, making accusations in litigation that can often increase their risk of harm. Indeed, figures show that 77% of women killed by their partners are killed in the year following separation.”
“The new law has been welcomed by many relationship and family charities, such as Relate, which has long called for reform in this area. The minimum time for the application to a final divorce will be 26 weeks, which Relate has welcomed as providing the time to reflect, to give things another go if appropriate and to access counselling and mediation. In reality, of course, couples have often contemplated and discussed separation for a long time before legal proceedings begin. Secondly, the Bill ends a reliance for amicable couples unwilling or unable to make allegations about one another to separate and remain married for a further two or sometimes five years. This leaves couples in limbo, married but unable to make other arrangements.”
“Importantly, for the first time couples will be able to make this statement jointly. In many circumstances, this will help couples to work together constructively to put a legal end to a relationship that is already broken. Indeed, the new law means that couples will now have the option of a joint application for divorce—a welcome and sensible new provision that must be good for children in particular. This approach strikes the right balance between respecting the profound role marriage and civil partnerships play in our society, while also allowing for amicable resolution to relationships ending. This is not the introduction of shotgun divorces. The process will still take time, providing for reflection and perhaps a reunion.”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. Ever since I first came into this House, it is true: we have had a sort of friendship across the aisle. I say that with a degree of humour, to which I know he is disposed himself. He raises an important issue, but I think the point is that the Bill allows for a period in which couples can reflect and for mutuality between partners. We in this country are taking an important step, whereby two adults contemplating the breakdown of their relationship can reflect and pause, or come to a mutual agreement and step away from some of the antagonism that the system used to create. First, the new law does not force couples into an adversarial dispute, but allows for an account of the breakdown in the relationship to reflect nuanced reasoning. That is provided by a simple statement.”
“I am very grateful, Mr Speaker. It is nice to be back. I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving me two detailed briefings since I took office. He announced on 4 April—coincidentally, the day the Labour party elected a new leader—that he wanted to introduce a release scheme for up to 4,000 prisoners. Can he update the House on how many prisoners have been released and how many prison officers and staff and prisoners have sadly lost their lives?”
“With just 33 released out of up to 4,000, the Secretary of State will recognise that, under the restrictive regime he talked about, prisoners cannot be kept in their cells for 23 hours a day, which puts prison staff at risk, never mind potentially seriously breaching important human rights. What is his exit strategy in terms of tracing, upping testing and moving back to a degree of order in our prisons, without which we could see rising tensions across the country?”
“Will the Home Secretary commit at the Dispatch Box to implement every single recommendation in this review? Will she review the £62,000 that has been paid out to those who should be compensated by far more? Will she ensure, at the Dispatch Box today, that she will end the hostile environment, which amplified things and has brought this about? The report asks for contrition and genuine understanding. We will hold her to account and to her word that that contrition is genuine, so that we right these shameful wrongs.”
“Wendy Williams’ Windrush lessons learned review is a brutal indictment of the Home Office, which shows that it is wholly unfit for the society it is supposed to serve. The review states that the Home Office displayed “institutional ignorance and thoughtlessness” on race issues that is “consistent with some elements of the definition of institutional racism.” The review accuses the Home Office of having a “defensive culture” that makes it deaf to those raising genuine concerns. Will the Home Secretary accept today, in this House, that, as was said previously, this was not a mistake or an accident, but a systemic pattern of appalling behaviour, rooted in a toxic internal culture and a failure of the Department to understand Britain’s colonial history?”
“My constituent Sarah Goodman is stuck in Morocco. She travelled with friends just on Saturday and is now subject to a ban. I have also heard from students on years abroad who are stranded. Can the Secretary of State work on his website to update British nationals who find themselves stranded abroad? Can there be a global strategy because there must be people from abroad stuck in our own country who would like to return home?”
“The right hon. Gentleman will know that it has now been almost two years since the Windrush scandal. Do the allegations made in relation to the Home Secretary relate to the publication of that long-overdue report? Will this debacle, and the loss of the permanent secretary, mean that that report will now be delayed even longer?”
“The Minister will know that the Prime Minister David Cameron asked me to carry out a review of disproportionality in the justice system. It showed a very worrying rise not just in disproportionality for all ethnic minorities but in the Muslim population in our prisons. Will the Minister ask the Secretary of State to meet me to discuss the Department’s progress on the review, a review that successive Secretaries of State have taken very seriously?”
“I have a building in the Tottenham Hale village with 432 people who cannot get a mortgage or re-mortgage. Is it the view of my right hon. Friend that that is entirely unacceptable, because fire and building regulations are rightly the Government’s responsibility? The Government should step in to support those individuals.”
“(Urgent Question ): To ask the Home Secretary, as she leaves the Chamber, if she will make a statement on the suppression of the Windrush lessons learned review and its implications for the deportation flight that is set to leave the country on Wednesday.”
“So I ask the Minister: when will we see this lessons learned review? It was promised in March last year. It was then delayed until September. We are almost two years on now, and people watching see the way in which this Government hold in such disrespect the contribution of West Indian, Caribbean and black people in this country. When, when will black lives matter once again?”
“The question today is why have the Government resumed those flights? In light of the scandal of people who arrived in this country as children, how can the Minister guarantee to the House that there are not people on this flight who are actually British nationals? In the wake of the leak, in which Wendy Williams herself says Ministers should not deport people under the age of 13, can he confirm that there are people on that flight who arrived in this country aged two, three, five or 11? He gives the House the impression that they are murderers and rapists, but he knows that many of them were convicted of non-violent offences. We in this House cannot condemn county lines and those who would pimp young black children in this country and, at the same time, send those same children back to Jamaica for such drug offences.”
“I regret the tone with which the Minister has responded to this urgent question. It is two years since there was consensus in this House on how the Windrush generation had been treated in this country. This is a generation of people, thousands of them, who came to this country after the second world war and gave so much but took so little. Let me just remind the Minister: 164 people were detained and deported, which the Government say they got wrong. On the back of that, 5,000 people were denied access to public services, healthcare, pensions and education—all that they were entitled to. Against that backdrop, he is correct that the Government rightly set up the independent lessons learned review led by Wendy Williams. In the wake of that, they suspended flights to Jamaica.”
“The right hon. Lady will understand that one of her predecessors resigned because she assured the House that the people involved were foreign nationals and they were not. I would urge her to tread more lightly if she wants to remain in post.”
“The hon. Gentleman is eloquent in his case for speeding up the process. Does he appreciate that some of the people who are due to be deported this week finished their sentences in 2015 and have been waiting five years to be deported? Does he not consider that to be cruel and unusual punishment? If they were to be deported at all, the system should have been much swifter.”
“That means the Government are only making it more expensive for themselves every day they fail to fulfil their moral and political obligations.”
“It tells them that the British state is more likely to compensate the descendants of slave owners than the descendants of slaves, that the British state is more likely to reimburse those who made a living displacing human beings in the 19th and 20th centuries than those it continues to displace in the 21st, and that they live in a country that thinks the loss of profit from colonialism is more regrettable than the continuation of colonialism itself. We still do not know how many people were wrongly detained and deported. What we do know is that only 3% of Windrush claimants have so far received compensation. That is a national disgrace. Every day an injustice is not rectified constitutes a new injustice in itself that is committed.”
“These are people who have been denied a lifetime of employment, housing, citizenship, wealth and opportunity. Many of the victims are still heavily in debt. Glenda Caesar came to Britain legally as a three-month-old child in 1961 from Dominica. She was sacked from her job in a GP practice, and then denied welfare while she remained unemployed. Her daughter, who is deaf, was forced to share her disability benefits with her to get by. How did the Home Office arrive at a compensation fee of only £22,664? Was this meant to cover the loss of earnings over 10 years, the impact on family life, and the distress caused by being wrongfully detained? For so many people, these petty pay-outs have been nothing short of insulting, degrading and shameful. What does this tell Windrush citizens?”
“They were the children of the very slaves that James Blair owned, and the children of people who had their British identity thrust upon them centuries ago when they were stolen from their homes and sold as property. When it was revealed that hundreds of the Windrush generation had been wrongly detained, deported, left destitute and made homeless by the Government, I am sorry to say that the British state did not rush to compensate the victims with the same conviction as they previously did for those who enslaved their ancestors. Originally, the expectation was that the Home Office would distribute between £200 million and £570 million to victims of the Windrush scandal. But just £62,198 has been paid to 36 people from the Home Office compensation pot.”
“I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak in this Second Reading debate. James Blair, a Scottish-Irish MP, owned 1,598 slaves in British Guyana. When slavery was abolished in 1833, he was awarded £83,350 in compensation, a sum worth £65 million today. In total, the British Government paid out today’s equivalent of £16.5 billion to compensate some 3,000 families that owned slaves for the loss of their so-called property and investment. At the time, it represented 40% of the Treasury’s annual spending budget, and the sum was so large that it took British taxpayers 182 years to pay it off—taxpayers like the children of Windrush who were invited to Britain from Commonwealth countries in 1948.”
“At the very least, the Government should show black British citizens as much remorse as was given to those who enslaved their ancestors. That would be the beginning of a long process of national self-reflection, repentance and justice.”
“This is an indictment of the Government and the kind of atmosphere they are determined to maintain. When 50 people are about to be put on a plane to Jamaica tomorrow morning, how can we trust the Government? The Windrush citizens can never be repaid. There is no financial settlement that will restore the dignity that was stolen from them. There is no amount of money that will reverse years of pain from family separation. And there is no reimbursement that will rectify state-sanctioned brutality. But the Government seem to think that the appropriate response is to absolve themselves of any responsibility to compensate altogether. The Windrush victims deserve much more than mere crumbs for one of the most grievous scandals in this country’s modern history.”
“Many need legal advice to help them apply for compensation, but the Government refuse to provide any financial support whatsoever. Claimants are provided with a 45-page guidance booklet instead. I am struggling to find a reason why the application process is so arduous, other than to impede people in submitting an application in the first place. It is worth stressing that the application process requires extensive documentary evidence—the kind of evidence that people were explicitly denied because of the “hostile environment” or dissuaded from accessing for fear of alerting the Home Office. Many people do not want to come forward at all, as they do not want to risk testing their status in case they end up being detained or deported—and who could blame them?”
“I respect the hon. Gentleman greatly and understand his point, but I have to say that there are many beyond this House who believe that the state of amnesia the Government are displaying is wilful. At least 11 people have died before they received any compensation. How many more people will the Government let die in the hope that the outrage dies with them? This is before we have even taken into account those who have yet to apply for compensation they are rightfully owed. The Home Office’s own estimates suggest that 15,000 people could be eligible for compensation, yet only 1,108 have applied so far. This is because the “hostile environment” continues to deny victims the support that they need to submit the incredibly complex 18-page application.”
“As day becomes night, the aisles fill up with young couples, groups of friends and families sitting down at tables to eat. The volume of the sound system is turned up. Beers imported from South America are passed round. People chat, their faces illuminated by fairy lights and the hues of shop fronts. Couples dance. Out of the rubble, Tottenham’s South American community has created a treasure trove of culture, community, love and life. London is often hailed as a centre of openness, diversity and multiculturalism; this is a corner of the capital that lives up to the hype.”
“It was not until the early 2000s, when new arrivals came to Tottenham—from Peru, Honduras, El Salvador, Brazil and other countries across South America—that it became lively again. Many had fled chaos and upheaval at home, but in Wards Corner they spotted an opportunity to build a new home out of the disused space. Stepping inside the Latin Village that they created is like entering a whole different world. Inside is a magical maze of shops, food stalls, barbershops and nail bars. Salsa and Spanish music vibrates the shelves of groceries. Kids run excitedly though the aisles. Men and women sit and chat, sipping strong Colombian coffee. The smell of Argentinian meat, freshly made empanadas and tamales is impossible to resist.”
“I am very grateful to have the opportunity to have the Adjournment debate this evening. Mr Speaker, you may not know that Seven Sisters tube station in my constituency has about 3 million people visit it every year. I can tell that you are aghast. It is because it is the home of Tottenham Hotspur and people arriving to see them often come through the station. It is very much the gateway to my constituency. Wards Corner is part of that gateway. It is the first building that people see on exiting Seven Sisters tube station. In the year of my birth, 1972, the former Edwardian department store was left abandoned. Soon it fell into a state of disrepair and throughout my childhood and teenage years, the space remained unused.”
“It is a place of community identity that gives more than 60 independent traders a livelihood. Their struggle, he says, is his struggle, and I associate myself with his remarks. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.”
“It would be a great failure if Tottenham were to become just another story of gentrification, with locals pushed out as wealthy investors come in, and culture bulldozed and replaced by clone high streets—if it were to become another deprived community that is not invested in, but pushed further away. Let Wards Corner instead become an example of how we can do regeneration better: bottom-up, not top-down, and with investment for the community that is based there, not in spite of it. Let us have a new future for Tottenham that does not demolish the past. The Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), would have liked to be here this evening. He has met people in the Latin Village, and he too says that he stands with the Latin Village community to protect the market.”
“First, given the housing crisis, it is outrageous that there is no provision for social housing. A new minimum quota of 10% should be introduced. Secondly, there must be a large increase in the number of spaces for independent traders. We cannot allow Wards Corner to become another clone high street. Thirdly, the five-year rent increase cap is not good enough. There is no point in preserving the Latin Village for half a decade only to let it collapse later. Let us introduce a review at the end of that period to decide whether to extend or change the cap.”
“It means recognising the huge cultural and social value of the Latin Village, investing in the traders who created it and taking their plans for its redevelopment seriously. I want to see the market operator got rid of, properly investigated and, if applicable, met with the full force of the law. I want to see the community plan for the market given proper and active consideration as a viable part of a new vision for Wards Corner. I want the Minister’s help to facilitate as a matter of urgency independently chaired roundtable discussions at which the market traders are treated as equals and genuinely listened to, so that a better future can be shaped for the site, with them at the heart of decisions on what happens next. If Grainger’s development is what goes ahead, at the very least it needs to make some serious compromises.”
“When a Labour council rightly talks about putting people before profit, that means being led by the voices of the communities, not developers. Some of the evictions we have seen just this week are a scandal and have caused real concern in the constituency. That is how people in my constituency have been treated by what has been called the first “Corbyn council”. We cannot claim to do housing differently and then simply do it in the same way. Due process matters. Proper scrutiny and accountability matter. Standing up to racism, bullying and victimisation in all their ugly forms matters. The good thing for Haringey Council, TfL and this Government is that it is not too late. There is still time to do the right thing. All it will take is swallowing some pride and applying simple principles that should have been followed from the start.”