Ms Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his clear-sighted commitment not only to talk about a two-state solution, but to actually try to act to achieve it, as the only foundation of a safe Israel and a free Palestine.”
“Could he reassure the House that we will not acquiesce and bend to such pressure, and that the only action that could ever be acceptable to us to make us contemplate reversing this ban would be a halt on the E1 development and a permanent end to settler violence?”
“I start by paying tribute to the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for all the work she did on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on these issues. I know that she will do a brilliant job in this role.”
“I do not really understand the technology, but I know that he does, and I understand and share his fear accordingly. We come here today to debate this Bill because we all know that trust is a bygone issue in our politics.”
“We would welcome her having that conversation, which might be more illuminating than whether she is concerned about Zach Goldmsith’s leaflets. I add my support to the amendments tabled by my hon.”
“From today, if we do not take a stand with this Bill to tackle the ways that money has infiltrated our politics, the risk is that they will think we are acting in the interests of our own back pockets.”
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“They should bring back the independent victims champions and make them a requirement for all police and crime commissioners, as Claire has so powerfully advocated, but also give those agencies real powers to hold people to account not just in a generic sense but in a specific sense. The sad truth is that we know how difficult that will be even if there are powers. We have to give the Victims’ Commissioners the ability to do something. There have to be legally defined rights. There has to be a system to tackle non-compliance that goes further than just a spreadsheet and a dataset. We are all sick of seeing those letters of apology and of having those meetings where people say, “Let us try to learn the lessons”, when we can see those lessons happening time and time again.”
“Her own work on compliance showed that only 11% of victims were being made aware of their right to criminal injury compensation, and only 25% knew of the victims code at all. Claire’s work shows us powerfully why this cannot just be about the idea that, somehow, sunlight is a disinfectant—that, somehow, if we publish data about who is not supporting victims and who is not doing what we would ask of them—that will be enough to lead to change. The honest truth is that we have had the evidence—indeed, MPs’ casework provides the evidence. We have all dealt with these challenges for years and years. So I join others in this place in asking Ministers to go further and to give teeth to this legislation, and not just to have publications.”
“There has to be a process whereby the victim’s voice is heard, and heard loudly, and that voice must be supported wherever a perpetrator might use a different institution to cause harm, particularly if they use third-party institutions for malice. Fourthly, there is the issue of legal protections. It is a welcome win to recognise that asking for someone’s medical records should be allowed only in very exceptional, very specific circumstances. At this point, I would not be doing her justice if I did not call for Claire Waxman not only to be recognised as the Victims’ Commissioner but, frankly, to be knighted for the work she has done. She shows so clearly the power of having somebody to hold organisations to account, but she has found that extremely frustrating.”
“If we prove that someone is involved in domestic abuse, this does not have to go through other courts, so that they can be re-victimised time and time again through third-party organisations. My own experience was with the use of social services to try to target and harass. Again, that is a loophole where there is no criminal offence that can be used to protect safeguarding and make sure that we stop those people who use these institutions to try and target people, or indeed to join up those experiences. When I challenged the police about my experience and the fact that they wanted to use a community resolution, I was told that it would be nice if, as a victim, I agreed with what they wanted to do, but it did not matter.”
“That is just one chink of the injustice that she has faced simply because the crime took place overseas. Again, the victims code and Victim’s Commissioner need to understand these issues. The third issue I want to raise is third-party harassment —I have recently experienced this myself—and organisations using third-party organisations to harass victims of crime. We see this particularly in domestic abuse courts. We see this with the family courts. My hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse and for Birmingham, Yardley powerfully set out the need to act. The idea that somebody would kill the mother of their children and then have access is incredible. It does not have to be about death.”
“Sharon’s case has been an absolute testament to her, as a mother, turning her grief into a determination to achieve justice for Tyrell, and she will always have my support in that fight. I am absolutely shocked at how victims of crimes are treated. At one point Sharon was told she was not the victim, because the victim was Tyrell and therefore she was not entitled to any support. We have to change that because, sadly, this is an increasingly common experience. She got a letter—my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham touched on something similar—from the court saying that her son’s killer had been allowed to go on holiday, even though he had been convicted of a knife crime. Because they had decided to suspend his sentence for two weeks he could go on that lovely holiday, where he was then part of killing Tyrell.”
“There was no support for us when we were trying to get video evidence involved to manage the costs. There was a horrific situation last year when, yet again in a retrial situation, the victim’s family and the witnesses were in the same hotel as the perpetrators’ families—clearly, a high-risk scenario. [ Interruption. ] I see that the hon. Member for Bolsover is shocked. Nobody was thinking about that family as victims, because this had all happened out of sight. The victim in this instance was British, as are the perpetrators. A wider challenge for me in looking at the legislation is how we hold the police and the CPS to account when things to do with overseas violence lead to a possible risk here in the UK.”
“Sharon faced a system that did not understand how to help her, and anybody who has ever dealt with a case involving someone who has been murdered or faced serious violence overseas, whether or not they were on holiday, will know how frustrating it is to deal with a different legal system and about the importance or otherwise of the victim in different jurisdictions. They will also know that that inconsistency is an injustice. Let me be clear about some of the challenges that we have faced in supporting Sharon and her family through this. There was the idea that there would be a cap on the financial support available to the family. If someone is trying to get over to a foreign country to be at a trial, that is clearly a problem. There was no support for the witnesses to travel and give evidence.”
“The second area I would urge the Minister to think again about and that I would add to his inbox is when people are victims of crimes overseas and particularly when murders happen overseas. I have a phenomenal woman in my community called Sharon Matthews, whose beautiful son Tyrell was murdered brutally in Malia in 2013. We are still seeking to secure justice against the killers, and I can say “killers” because they were convicted in a Greek court, although they are here in the United Kingdom and have reoffended, so another family have lost a family member.”
“It is absolutely welcome that we have talked about an advocate in major investigations, but there is a risk that we end up with a very narrow definition of a victim within a local community, which would be to the detriment of understanding how crimes affect people. I am pleased the Secretary of State said he would sit down with me and some of the campaigners and others working with the traumatised, victimised communities dealing with this epidemic of youth violence. There is merit, particularly when we are talking about serious harm, in taking a victim-led approach and in understanding that communities can be victims of crimes and how that might then influence the work we do.”
“If we recognise that the trauma that comes from a severe crime can ripple through somewhere, it is right that we do not say that it is only when people speak up that we recognise that impact. In my community, four people were raped—one of them was murdered—and I think about the impact that that had on the community. We fought for eight years for justice for Michelle Samaraweera. Her killer was not found until we fought and fought for him to be brought back from India. I think about the community at Kelmscott school, which lost one of its 16-year-old members 10 days ago. That community is grieving and traumatised, and we need to get it help and support. That is something we want to be able to build in from the start, because it helps the investigative process, but it also helps to address what has happened. That is absolutely critical.”
“It would preclude people who experience antisocial behaviour, which is a blight on the lives of everybody in our communities. That often fills up a huge amount of our inboxes, and understandably so, as people tear their hair out over the fact that behaviour that stops them living their lives is not being addressed. Another area where we need to be clearer about victims and victimisation is what happens when traumatic events happen to communities, and I note that we are recognising that now in the concept of a public advocate. We are long overdue a public advocate, and I pay tribute again to my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who is not here, for what she said; it was incredibly powerful, and it is absolutely right that we have public advocates.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham that this is absolutely a cross-party thing. I want to raise five points—I know that a list of five might seem frightening, but I promise to be quick—about what it is to be a victim; when something happens to a family member overseas; third-party harassment; the legal rights of victims; and the issue of IDVAs, ISVAs and advocates more generally. Let me start with the concept of what a victim is. The Minister is hearing loud and clear from many of us our concern that setting out that a victim is only somebody who engages with the justice system might make sense in a process way, but it does not make sense in a person way—it does not make sense for the people we deal with.”
“The victims I have had the privilege to work with as an MP for 13 years are no wallflowers; they are people who have been wronged, and they need to be recognised as people who have none the less done their damnedest to speak up for themselves or for somebody they love who has had a traumatic experience. I agree with the hon. Member for Bolsover about the Casey report, and I fear there are issues within the CPS too. Therefore, when we look at this legislation, we are looking not to find ways to make more victims come forward, but to recognise that, for too long, the systems and institutions we had set up supposedly to speak for these people have been found wanting, and they need to change. Let me try to add something different to the Minister’s inbox, although I agree with many of the points that have been raised cross-party.”
“We all remember the first time that we read those emails, had that phone call or met that resident, and the meetings in which you feel a burning sense of injustice by the end of the conversation—tears flow, and you and your team need to take some time out to recover from what you have heard. It is privilege to meet the people we meet as MPs, because we cannot understand how they have been able to carry on, let alone champion such causes. I have to say I was a little frustrated by some of the earlier conversation. It felt so much—I hesitate to use this phrase—like victim blaming, because we talk about wanting victims to fit our systems.”
“It is a genuine pleasure to take part in the debate, which is increasingly becoming an example of this place at its best. We are all sharing our own experiences and concerns. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Burton (Kate Kniveton); to the esteemed expert, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion); to my hon. Friends the Members for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who are no longer in their places; and to the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), who spoke before me. We all bring with us a determination because, having waited so long for a piece of legislation that was explicitly about victims and their experiences, we really want to get it right. After all, for many of us, that is our day-to-day work as MPs.”
“Given the attitude that she has expressed today towards this Chamber, the process and the role of MPs, if she is serious about scrutiny and democracy, will she accept the amendment standing in the names of Lord Hope, Lord Anderson, Lord Hamilton, who is a strong Brexiteer, and Lord Hodgson, also a Brexiteer, that will give this place the ability to have the final say, whether laws are being revoked, rewritten or reformed? Will the Secretary of State accept that amendment—yes or no?”
“The biggest problem with this Bill is not the haste and chaos that has come with it, the failure to be able to identify what is EU retained regulation or the fact that it risks the Windsor agreement; it is that even with the changes the Secretary of State is now proposing, the Government are giving themselves power over 4,000 areas of public policy and taking back control from MPs over what happens next on them—that has not changed. The Secretary of State says that she is across the detail.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that those who wish to trumpet how poorly we treat refugees in this country to show that we do not take their claims seriously will rue the day when we removed the capacity for local authorities and local people to have control over where people are sited?”
“The regulations explicitly remove local communities from that process. What legal advice have the Government received should the regulations mean that, when the licensing requirements are gone, someone is placed in an unsafe property, and we are waiting for that awful call when somebody says that people were seriously harmed—or even worse, that due to a faulty boiler there was a stampede in a building because of its size and the risks of overcrowding that come with that? The Minister talks about single refugees, but the regulations do not specify that, so we are talking about families and children living in buildings without smoke alarms under this legislation.”
“] The Minister is shaking her head and wants to say that there are other regulations; why are we making it harder to enforce basic standards? Why are we making it harder for local communities to be part of the process? I wager that it is because Ministers in the Home Office are fed up to the back teeth of their colleagues coming to them to complain about hotels and the behaviour of private contractors. The answer is not to take out that local accountability but to get to grips with the private contractors and the way in which we deal with the support of refugees. Those of us who have had refugees appear in our area overnight who do not have access to schooling, clothing, food or doctor’s services know that it is better to co-ordinate at a local level if we want to ensure that the impact on a local community is managed.”
“What stops a landlord from claiming that they are setting up substandard accommodation for the use of refugees but renting it to other people—to people such as those very constituents we all wish to protect from not having a smoke alarm or want to ensure have a working boiler to avoid the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning? Those are basic regulations. They are not an onerous set of rules but a set of rules for a decent society in which we say that we do not want people to live in places where they could simply die from being in the building. What safety measures could a local authority introduce, then? My right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South mentioned Grenfell, which plays on all our minds. This instrument would essentially set up somewhere like Grenfell to be a reasonable place to house refugees. [ Interruption.”
“I also wish to highlight the need for collaboration and appeal to Government Members who, as I said earlier, might think this is a good, strong measure to show that we will show neither fairness nor favour to refugees. They will rue the day when they removed the ability of local communities to have a say, which is, if our experience to date of private contractors is anything to go by, what this legislation will do. How short-sighted it is to make more complicated the regulation of houses in multiple occupancy. I have a number of questions for the Minister, as little of this makes any sense. Why two years? What do we think will happen in two years, apart from further confusion for the regulation of houses in multiple occupancy?”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. When the Government brought in the houses in multiple occupation legislation, they described the reason why such housing should be licensed as “to combat rogues from being able to operate substandard accommodation”. The question before us is: who is the rogue? It is the Home Office. That is the challenge that this legislation sets. I want to put on the record my and other Members’ experience of dealing with Home Office service providers at local levels, and in particular our frustrations about making sure that when refugees are sited in our communities they are given appropriate support.”
“Removing the tools to do that rather than simplifying or strengthening them is not in anyone’s interest. I urge the Minister desperately to rethink this legislation before any further harm is done.”
“We have seen it already with the concept of safeguarding: there is no safeguarding regulation in Home Office contracts, so children have been put at direct risk of harm and, indeed, have experienced harm. There is nothing to indicate that this will be any different. Vague terms mean there is no ability for enforcement, even if the Home Office wishes to avoid the next Grenfell. There is nothing in the regulations to suggest that has been thought about. Where there is to be no enforcement or monitoring process in place, particularly in cases in which the ASC has subcontracted accommodation to a third party, there will be no direct relationship with the Home Office to even oversee the process. Many Committee members have experience of local government. They have experience of the messy reality of getting regulation right at a local level.”
“Local authorities play an important role in arranging housing standards and representing local communities in upholding those standards. The Minister wants to claim that standards are not being watered down; if that is the case, what is the point of this legislation, apart from to explicitly exclude local communities from being part of the process and having their say? Whatever people think of asylum seekers, surely it is better for there to be more eyes on what is happening on the ground, making sure that we put them in safe places where they are not at risk and do not pose the risk that people believe they pose, than not. The asylum support contract for the south of England does not set criteria for safe, habitable and fit-for-purpose accommodation. This is very clearly a watering down.”
“Again, the Minister is shaking her head. Then why bother doing this? Why bother making it harder to make sure that we have basic minimum standards so that a child who has come here is not at risk? People may be critical of those who seek sanctuary in other countries when they flee persecution, but are we really going to subject their children to lower standards as a result of penalising them? That is exactly what this legislation does. How will the legislation be enforced? This is like putting the fox in charge of the hen house. There is no incentive for private providers and the Home Office to ensure minimum standards if it means their bottom line has to increase. We have seen time and again cost-cutting measures when it comes to the treatment of refugees.”
“On Friday, a young man with brilliant potential, Renell Charles, who was 16, was brutally murdered on his way out of school in Walthamstow, in my constituency. Yesterday, a 16-year-old boy was charged with his murder. Renell’s family are heartbroken—”
“Children are terrified to go to school, their parents are frightened to let them and the teachers are at their wits’ end. They have asked me to come here today, Prime Minister, to beg you to make the epidemic of youth crime in our country a national priority. Will the Prime Minister meet me and representatives from my local community to talk about how we can get the mental health and mentoring support these young people need, so that every young person in our country has the future they deserve?”
“I know you will be as concerned as I am about parliamentary scrutiny of any substantial changes, and I am sure the Business Secretary would not wish to evade that scrutiny in taking back control to this place so that we are able to understand what the Government intend. Have you been informed of whether we, as parliamentarians, might have an opportunity to scrutinise any of these proposals?”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Have you been notified of any change to the business, either today or tomorrow, in the light of the announcements in The Daily Telegraph —I believe a written ministerial statement has also been published—about the Government’s proposed fundamental changes to the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill? We have debated the Bill at great length in this place, and I understand from The Daily Telegraph that the Business Secretary is proposing changes to regulatory reform, in addition to deleting certain regulations, but that has not been notified to us.”
“Now, add into the chaos the announcement that the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill will be changed and we have a recipe for people in Northern Ireland with nobody having an eye on the ball when it comes to their basic rights, because the Government will not be clear or be scrutinised about those conversations and which devolved competences they may use to amend those rights.”
“I have asked through freedom of information requests for information about the kinds of meetings the Government are having, because they have told us in answer to a written question: “UK Government Officials have been proactively engaging with their counterparts in the Northern Ireland Civil Service on the progress of the Bill”. What that means in layman’s terms is that some decisions must have been made about how to use those competencies, and we know that these interim arrangements will exactly cover the period during which those decisions are being made.”
“People currently have the right to have their pension pot protected, but we still do not know quite what will happen to that pension pot protection at the end of this year for anybody in the United Kingdom. However, certainly in Northern Ireland, where the competency of the devolved authority would be expected to be a part of it, the lack of clarity about how the Government are proceeding on this is deeply troubling, especially when we are entering into another process of having to bring in these interim arrangements, so there is even less scrutiny of how they are using those powers.”
“The point of the amendment I tabled and of the questions we have been asking the Government is how, in the absence of Stormont to scrutinise, these devolved competencies may be used, given the potential impact of changing these regulations in undermining the Windsor framework and therefore changing the alignment on which many of these deals have been done. Those are not my words, but concerns raised by the European Union. The fact is that the Government have consistently tried to avoid even answering the question. They have suggested that the Stormont brake would apply, but it does not, because this is about existing legislation—not new legislation, but existing legislation.”
“Indeed, there is ongoing co-operation in 61 areas. Let me give some examples of the sorts of EU laws that we would be talking about. There is the single-use plastics directive, the regulation on clinical trials of medicinal products for human use, directives about medicines, directives about organisation in agricultural markets—I know that is a deep concern for many of my colleagues representing constituencies in Northern Ireland—and EU Acts on the regulation of energy and electricity markets. This is not small fry when we add it all together.”
“In doing so, Northern Ireland stayed dynamically aligned over many of these areas of legislation, and the Minister may therefore say that this is not an issue to be concerned about and that it does not need this level of scrutiny, because these issues are covered by the protocol. However, Queen’s University Belfast is very clear that about 300 areas of EU regulation are not covered by the protocol, and therefore would be automatically deleted by the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. They would cover many of these issues, and there is also the issue about direct effect cases, which is where the judgment about protecting people’s pension pot comes from. The 142 areas of co-operation identified in 2017 as being underpinned by EU policy frameworks and north-south co-operation are the areas up for grabs.”
“Rules on pensions are devolved competencies, but the Government announced in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill Committee that they will revoke at the end of this year the EU regulation holding businesses to account which makes sure that people have at least some basic protection. I do not know the status of that now, but it is a good example of the sort of legislation we would be talking about. Obviously, Members who have huge experience of devolution would point out to me that when the UK left the European Union, the UK and the EU agreed the protocol—if I can dare to mention that word—which talked about maintaining the necessary conditions for north-south co-operation and protected the 1998 Good Friday agreement.”
“Let me say a little, if I can, to resolve why those complications may happen, and therefore why amendments on the role of the Fiscal Council or the Human Rights Commission—or, indeed, about the ability to take evidence on, frankly, what the Government are doing on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland on this issue—matter. This issue covers devolved competencies of things such as employment skills, pensions and child support, and environmental laws such as planning and equal opportunities. Northern Ireland Members will no doubt be as shocked as I was to discover that this Government were planning to delete, without any public consultation, people’s right to a basic protection that originally came through EU regulation, which was that if their company went bust, they would be entitled to at least 50% of their pension pot.”
“In the absence of a sitting Assembly, those powers are falling to this Government and a Minister who cannot even be bothered to respect the issue, listen or engage with what is being said. That, again, tells us something about how seriously they take these powers. I digress, but I am sure that whatever I am saying about how he treats the employment rights of people in Northern Ireland is not as important as what he is talking to his Parliamentary Private Secretary about. As ever with Northern Ireland and devolution, these are complicated issues. They are complicated in two different ways—first in the EU regulations that may or may not be at stake, and also in north-south co-operation, and the restrictions and requirements that are made in order to have convergence.”
“That is not a new concern when it comes to Northern Ireland, because for months now we have been asking the Government to come clean about how they intend to use the powers in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill in Northern Ireland. So far as I am aware, with today’s announcement there is no change to how that Bill approaches devolution, so let us be clear that it gives the Secretary of State, in proxy of the devolved Administration, the power to decide when the sunset clause that was in the legislation, which I think has now been removed, would kick in, and to replace, restate or revoke legislation. Those are serious powers over how thousands of regulations would be interpreted in Northern Ireland.”
“For several years now, that has been done by the Government, rather than the devolved Assembly overseeing it, because of the challenges within Northern Ireland. That powerfully makes the case, for example, for using the Fiscal Council or consulting the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, which has been a diligent and doughty defender of the rights of women in Northern Ireland to equal access to abortion. However, I want to talk about the points that my amendment raised about the use by this Government of the powers in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, knowing that right now something very different is happening to that legislation, which nobody is clear about, as the Government are yet again hiding from scrutiny on it.”
“Thank you, Madam Chair. [ Interruption. ] Apologies, Dame Rosie, it is hard to remember all the different protocols, but I hope I can make up for it in making a short contribution. I put on record a number of concerns. I recognise that amendment 1, which we tabled to address the concerns directly, has not been selected, so let me speak in support of amendments 6 and 8 from my colleagues, as well as new clause 2. I think they all get at the same point, which is why it matters to have scrutiny. Members in this Chamber who know of my interests in human rights in Northern Ireland might expect me to come at this issue from the question of what is happening with the delivery of abortion services in Northern Ireland.”
“The Bill explicitly gives the Minister, in the absence of Stormont, the powers to use the devolved competences. Is he saying that he has not looked into those powers at all, or is he not prepared to talk about how he is exercising them?”
“Does he agree that the Government need to be honest about how awfully they wish to treat asylum seekers and how they will avoid local authorities being part of that conversation?”
“I understand why the Minister did not want to give way on this issue, despite saying that he would, but my hon. Friend raises the question of people being in hotels. Does he agree that the Government need to be honest with their own Back Benchers about the statutory instrument that they tried to slip out at the end of the previous Session that will remove the licensing laws from houses of multiple occupancy for asylum seekers? That will presumably prevent local authorities from refusing to license those places, and it will also have the consequence of meaning that we no longer require places where we are expecting families, pregnant women and small children to live to have fire alarms, smoke alarms or running water.”
“Let us be very clear: demonising refugees will not tackle the cost of living crisis in this country, but it might create some local election leaflets, just like this piece of legislation. We know that this legislation will not survive the other place, thankfully, so the question for us today is: what messages do we need to send to our colleagues in the other House as they scrutinise and hold to account this Government, given that the Government have systematically failed to provide the time for scrutiny in this place?”
“The Minister has not explained why he has put forward that statutory instrument. People will still come because it is still better than the death that they face in the country they are fleeing from. We see that with the Sudanese. The Minister said earlier that he would listen to the UNHCR when it came to taking Sudanese refugees; in that case, he needs to tell us how many he will take because right now, there are people facing that very same situation. There are no queues in a war zone.”
“This legislation will not do so. More people will keep coming, including from Afghanistan, where the Government have failed to bring in a safe and legal route, and where they still fail to listen to those of us who have constituents who have been affected by that fact. They will come from Eritrea. They will come from the war zones and places of persecution—those people whose religion means that they are at risk. They will come because they see what we did with the Ukrainians; they see this country, and they know that there is a better way of doing it. The Lords will take this legislation on—that is probably the point of it for the Government—but let nobody be under any illusions: the Bill is just about 4 May. It is not actually about resolving the problem.”