Yvette Cooper
MP for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley · Labour · United Kingdom
“NATO has been the cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security for over 75 years, protecting more than a billion people, but to ensure it remains as strong for the next 75 years, it needs to respond to changing threats.”
“He may have seen that the Prime Minister and the Canadian Prime Minister put out a joint statement over the last couple of days to set out how we seek to work together to ensure that those initiatives, which do slightly different things, can combine and collaborate to ensure that we get the best possible impact.”
“The world must not fail the people of Sudan again. Last week, the UK convened an urgent debate at the United Nations Human Rights Council. A UK-penned resolution condemned atrocities, called for an urgent UN fact finding inquiry and urged the RSF to comply with international law and halt this attack, urging both the RSF and the Sudanese A…”
“We agree about the nature of the increasingly dangerous world we live in and the importance of us being able to defend ourselves and maintain our security. We have committed to reaching the 3.5% commitment on defence, but that is part of a 5% commitment that was made to cover broader defence and security intelligence.”
“I did take the opportunity to discuss the situation in both the west bank and Gaza with some of our allies and partners. I am deeply worried that last year’s 20-point plan for Gaza—which was hugely important and which we supported, as did the whole world—is at risk of running into the ground.”
“As I have said, our security since the second world war has very much depended on the NATO alliance, which has always been a defensive alliance that has built its strength through deterrence. Deterrence is immensely important. When we reached the end of the cold war in 1990, there was at that point a substantial peace dividend.”
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“My hon. Friend is right. That was the evidence we heard. Parliament has a responsibility to have a contingency plan. Whatever it is that we hope might happen over the course of the next 12 months, we have a duty to ensure that we have plans in place for every eventuality and that Parliament itself can take some responsibility. Right now, with the Government’s amendments made and without my amendment, it would theoretically be possible for us to just drift towards exit day without any substantive opportunity for Parliament to step in perhaps to amend the withdrawal terms in the Bill or maybe to require the Government to change their plan or to go back and negotiate some more. That would be up to us in Parliament to decide, but we will not get the chance to decide under the Government’s current plans.”
“We understand why Ministers might want a provision to be able to come back and say that exit day needs to change because we have reached the 11th hour, because the negotiations need to be extended by an extra month or because the process needs to be changed. Ministers have kept that power in the Bill for themselves, but why should the power be reserved just for Ministers? Why cannot Parliament have that power, too? That is the flaw at the heart of the Bill. If in unforeseen or difficult circumstances Ministers need to change the timetable, they can, but Parliament will have no choice, no say and no ability to do so.”
“There is a con in what the Minister said earlier, because the Government actually do recognise that there may be circumstances in which exit day has to be changed. The Minister said that clause 17 will not apply and that somehow it will not allow the Government to change the exit day through regulations after it has been agreed in the Bill, but that is not the advice I have had—it is not the advice the House of Commons Library gave me this afternoon, for example. In fact, the combination of clause 9 and amendment 383 will still allow Ministers to change exit day, if they so choose and if they think it appropriate. That is the impact of the Henry VIII powers throughout the Bill.”
“I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. As Select Committee Chairs, he and I have both heard evidence about security and wider issues, and I also share with him my personal views about the importance of having a transition period and a smooth process. To be honest, whatever people’s views on whether there should be a transition and on how we should respond to different negotiating outcomes, it should still be for Parliament to debate and to decide before exit day, not after. That is what Parliament should be for. Frankly, the Government would be irresponsible not to give Parliament the opportunity to debate and take a view on the terms and on the timing once they have been agreed.”
“The Government told us that it would, and they told us that the whole process would be stopped, but it was not stopped because each and every one of us understands that we have obligations and responsibilities towards the referendum result, just as we have obligations and responsibilities towards the negotiation process that the Government have to conduct on our behalf, and that we cannot directly conduct for them. We know that we have those different responsibilities, and we know that we have to take mature and responsible decisions given the complexity of the situation that faces every single one of us. We just do not think that those decisions should be entirely in the hands of Ministers; we think that the whole of Parliament should have a say on something so important.”
“The hon. Lady is right. We had all those debates about taking back control and parliamentary sovereignty, yet somehow the Minister seems to want to rip it all up. The Government are trying to concentrate huge amounts of power in the hands of Ministers, rather than giving the whole of Parliament a say. Ministers have to stop infantilising Parliament and treating Parliament as if it is the enemy. The truth is that the sky did not fall in because Parliament had a vote on article 50.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend, because this should be about the whole of Parliament, just as when we had the responsible debate on article 50. We know it is complex. It is our job and our responsibility in a democracy to deal with that complexity, and not just to abdicate our responsibility and hand it over to Ministers because, somehow, it is too difficult for us in Parliament to deal with. Of course it is not too difficult, and of course we are capable of dealing with the complex situation we face.”
“I agree with the right hon. Lady. The truth is that the plans for our Brexit future have to be sustainable and have to command consent. The plans will have implications for many decades to come. They have to give us the chance to heal the Brexit divide across the country from the referendum, and they have to give Parliament the chance to debate the details and to have a proper, honest debate about what it will mean across the country.”
“Clearly, we need more transparency. I want to draw my remarks to a close. My amendment gives Parliament the opportunity to indeed take back control. The hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said he wants us to debate in this House how we are governed. Well, then he should vote for my amendment, rather than concentrate power in the hands of Ministers. At a time when we have seen democratic values and democratic institutions undermined and under threat right across the world, we have an even greater responsibility to ensure that there is a proper democratic process and that we follow our obligations that come with the parliamentary Oath we took. So much of the debate we had during the referendum was about parliamentary sovereignty. What my amendment does is make that real.”
“The Foreign Secretary has rightly said that the priority for everyone should be the return of a wrongfully and inhumanely imprisoned mother, who has been separated from her child. That is welcome, but he also knows that words matter. Every time he says things such as, “My words were simply open to misinterpretation”, he provides a lack of clarity and sounds as if he is wriggling in a way that other people can exploit. For the sake of Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, will he say unequivocally for the record, “I got it wrong”?”
“I welcome the Government coming forward with a separate Bill for the withdrawal agreement. That is something on which I and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) have tabled amendments. Can the Secretary of State clarify the timing? He just said that it was only in an ideal world that this withdrawal agreement Bill would come before Brexit day. There is a real problem if the Government think that they can simply use clause 9 provisionally to implement a withdrawal agreement through secondary legislation, while not having the withdrawal agreement Bill until after Brexit day. Will he confirm that the Government will bring the withdrawal agreement Bill to the House before Brexit day, not after?”
“The Foreign Secretary had a week to correct the record and to apologise over Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and he has not done so. This is not the first time that the Foreign Secretary has said things that are inaccurate or damaging, and he cannot simply shrug them off as a lack of clarity or a careless choice of words. In this case, there are fears that this could mean the extended incarceration of a British-Iranian woman. The right hon. Gentleman knows that the lives and safety of British citizens across the globe depend on having a Foreign Secretary who does not bluster and who is not too careless or too lazy to consider his words. Will he now apologise? Does he accept that he cannot be trusted to do this job and that he should resign?”
“Does the Minister agree that that is not proper parent consultation and that Normanton parents need consultation in Normanton, at Freeston, before the consultation ends, and will he urge the Education Secretary to honour the commitment she made to me to meet me and other affected colleagues, because this is very serious?”
“Given the broadening of the question, may I tell the Minister that I have met constituents who are parents at Freeston school, in Normanton, which has been hit by the shocking collapse of Wakefield City Academies Trust? They were promised a consultation on the school’s future—they are worried about the future of special educational needs provision and about the school losing its name, its identity, its uniform—but all they have been offered is a meeting in another school in another town. They will have to travel miles and book tickets online—or else they cannot go.”
“The Government miscounted the number and could not even get the figures right in the first place. Worst of all, once the 480 places had been offered the Government just stopped filling them. After the first group had come through Calais, we had month after month of no child coming through the Dubs scheme at all. I hear that the Government may have managed to scrabble together a few additional numbers from France last month and I hope that is the case, but it is simply not good enough. Well over 250 places are still empty; at the same time, there are 63,000 unaccompanied children and teenagers across Europe who came to Europe this year.”
“The whole point is that we want to reduce the number of people coming through the illegal, irregular and very dangerous routes and instead make sure that there are legal and safe routes to sanctuary. The longer we fail to have a functioning Dubs and Dublin scheme, the more we will simply see teenagers and children take these crazy, dangerous risks—on lorries, through tunnels, putting their lives at risk and causing huge problems to the system. That is what makes the Government’s failure since last autumn on Dubs even more shocking. First, they announced they would close the scheme that Parliament voted for just six months after it was set up and started operating. They refused to even ask councils to look again at how many more places they could provide each year, even though we know that there were councils ready to do more.”
“The Dublin arrangements, which Ministers made work so effectively, so briefly, last autumn, have now become far too slow again. The failure of co-ordinated action across Europe, despite the partnership working we had 12 months ago, is now allowing the numbers to build up in Calais again, particularly those of unaccompanied child refugees. Why are the Government still refusing to publish the number of unaccompanied children and teenagers coming to Britain under the Dublin scheme? They have the figures and there is absolutely no excuse for not publishing them and making them available to everyone. It is not good enough for the Government to try to fudge the facts by pointing to the number of children who come either with asylum-seeking families or through irregular and illegal routes instead.”
“We have seen lives transformed as a result. I am thinking of the Syrian teenager I met in London who now has a place at university, after being out of education for many years. I am thinking of the Eritrean girls who are in safe homes, having previously been trafficked, abused and exploited along the way. That is what this Parliament and the Home Office’s action made happen. That is what the work of councils, campaigners, local volunteers and people across the country has made possible, by giving those children a future. I wish I could keep on praising the Government for the action they have taken since, but sadly I cannot; some of the failures from the Home Office since then put this country and Parliament to shame.”
“Let me start by welcoming the work done by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) in securing this debate. Let me also respond directly to the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who has rightly long had concern about the pressures in Kent and the conditions in Calais. I agree that all councils across the country should do their bit and the whole country should come together to support vulnerable child refugees. Twelve months ago, when the Calais camp was cleared, I praised the work of the Government and the Home Office at that time to help 750 child refugees, and the speed with which they had acted. I welcomed, too, the Government’s decision 18 months ago to support the Dubs amendment, after it had received cross-party support.”
“He is a gay teenager who had fled because he was being persecuted in his home country. We had a long conversation, because he spoke brilliant English—he spoke no Greek. Yet he was one of very many children and teenagers in Greece without proper support and proper shelter, who needed a future and for whom we and our country should be doing our bit.”
“The hon. Lady is right about that. We are also talking about something that has had cross-party support. I do not see this as a party political issue, which is why I would like to be able to welcome the work the Government have done. The trouble is that we have seen huge problems and the gaps in action on the Alf Dubs amendment—a measure that is widely supported. Lord Dubs came through the Kindertransport and has done so much for this country, like so many other child refugees we have welcomed here. We are talking about children whose lives and futures are at risk, and we could be helping them. I am thinking of those such as the Iranian teenager I met in Athens on the very day the Government announced that they would open the Dubs scheme. I told him what we would be doing.”
“Ditch the cut-off date, rip up some of the bureaucratic hurdles that the Home Office has put in place, and make the Dubs scheme work as Parliament intended it to and as we all voted for. We promised in good faith to do our bit to help those child and teenage refugees. We promised to do our bit, just as we did with the Kindertransport. The Home Secretary said herself that “it is the children who matter most.” —[ Official Report , 9 February 2017; Vol. 621, c. 639.] It is. Members of this House could come together with the Home Office, on the same cross-party basis on which we came together 12 months ago and 18 months ago, to support child refugees again.”
“We could bring her over, through either the Dublin scheme or the Dubs scheme—frankly, it does not matter which. She is the kind of child we should be trying to help. I urge the Government to reopen the Dubs scheme, to speed up the Dublin scheme, and to take fast action now, as the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire said. Let us fill those 280 places by Christmas. We must stop insisting on the unworkable cut-off date, which has no impact at all on whether children and teenagers arrive in Europe. It is drawn from some kind of fantasy world in which the detailed conditions of a small British refugee scheme somehow have an impact on whether children or teenagers make an incredibly dangerous journey to get to Europe in the first place.”
“Our job was not just to rock up in Greece or Italy and say, “We have a whole load more hurdles and a whole load more headaches for you, and more complex bureaucratic procedures in our scheme for you to meet”; instead, our job should have been to design the Dubs scheme in a way that made it easy for the overstretched social services systems in Italy and Greece to send some of those children here to the sanctuary that this country had already promised to offer. We must think of teenagers such as the 12-year-old Eritrean girl who is on her own in Italy, and whose case I have raised with the Home Office. Her brother is already in foster care here in Britain. The foster carer has offered to take the sister as well. The girl is only 12, but she has been in mixed accommodation with adult men in Italy. She has tried several times to run away.”
“I want to make some progress because other Members wish to speak. There are nearly 3,000 unaccompanied children in Greece, of whom 1,800 are on a waiting list for shelter. Some of them are being held in police custody because there is nowhere else safe for them to go, and Harvard University has established that they are at risk of being trafficked by gangs and of being taken into modern slavery, which the Government have rightly condemned and are determined to stamp out. The Minister will say that he has been to Greece and Italy to try to sort the issue out, but the problem is with our system, not theirs. It is not good enough simply to blame the Greek and Italian Governments for the failure to bring children in under the Dubs scheme.”
“The Minister said the Dubs scheme is not closed. Will he therefore now agree to contact again local councils across the country and ask them what further places they could provide under the scheme for next year?”
“Would the Leader of the House accept that, in any debate on sexual harassment, there is too much victim blaming? People blame women for not speaking out about harassment, rather than asking why they did not. We have seen young women who did speak out being targeted with abuse on social media. If we are to get the right kind of reforms—independent reforms—of processes, or the right kind of culture change in not just this place but institutions right across the country, there has to be a much stronger voice in any reform debates for the young women and men and the junior staff who too often end up being the victims of unacceptable abuses of power. Their voices must be heard.”
“This report strongly recommends that this policy is reinstated and implemented.” Will the Minister set out what the Government are doing in response to that recommendation? It is clear that appropriate emergency healthcare is immensely important in these cases.”
“I welcome the report and the Government’s response. In West Yorkshire, we had the tragic case of Mark Camm, who died as a result of being held in police custody when he should have been sent to hospital as an emergency. His family campaigned for many years to uncover the truth about the lack of monitoring of him in a police cell. They also endured real difficulties because of the failure of the IPCC to investigate properly and in a timely way and ensure that lessons were learned from the case. I therefore welcome the Minister’s statement. Nevertheless, the report states: “NHS commissioning of healthcare in police custody was due to have commenced in April 2016, but was halted by the Government earlier in the year.”
“Further to the Prime Minister’s answer to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union said last week that “a transition phase will be triggered only once we have completed the deal itself” —[ Official Report , 17 October 2017; Vol. 629, c. 741.] I understand that the Prime Minister’s spokesperson said today that an implementation period is “a bridge to where you are heading. You need to know where you are heading.” Will the Prime Minister clarify whether she is saying that if we have not agreed a long-term trade deal by this time next year, there will be no transition deal at all and Britain will end up on WTO terms by March 2019?”
“The Minister will know that it is around 12 months since the Calais jungle was cleared, and Britain did its bit through the Dublin and the Dubs schemes to take some unaccompanied child and teenage refugees. Will he confirm, however, that since then no further child or teenage refugees have come to this country under the Dubs scheme and, in particular, that there have been none from Italy or Greece? Will he accept that the Home Office has designed the scheme in a way that is too restrictive and that makes it too difficult for Italy and Greece to send children here, despite the fact that there are still 280 pledged local authority places that remain unfilled? Will he now agree to revise the scheme to ensure that those 280 places can be filled before Christmas?”
“The answer from the Secretary of State on Wakefield City Academies Trust was just not good enough, and not fair on parents, pupils—most importantly—and teachers at Freeston Academy in my constituency and many other academies. They had this announcement in the first week of the new school year—out of the blue—yet it turns out that there have been huge problems with the trust for a long time, on governance, finance, accountability and performance. Her Department has been pushing all of these schools into this model. Is it not time she had a full review of the complete failure of local accountability in these multi-academy trusts, and made sure there is enough finance and support in place for the pupils in my constituency so that they do not lose out as a result of this failed management?”
“The Secretary of State will know that the key issue is not what Ministers say is the aim of the Bill, but what are the actual powers in it. So can he tell the House what safeguards there are anywhere in the Bill—in proposed statute—that would prevent Ministers from using clause 7, clause 9 or clause 17 to completely rewrite extradition policy in future, in relation to the demise of the European arrest warrant, without coming back to Parliament with primary legislation?”
“Then we could put the exit date, which some Government Members are concerned about, into primary legislation and legislate without giving Ministers any more powers than is strictly necessary, rather than hand them unrestricted power to do the job.”
“This is about the powers in principle, not who is doing the job right now. Clause 9 is particularly disturbing; it should not even be in the Bill. We should be legislating separately for the withdrawal agreement. We should have a separate Bill—and, yes, it would need to provide for secondary legislation; we should not be doing it now, when we have no clue what the withdrawal agreement will be, when we have not had a vote to endorse the Government’s negotiating strategy—we do not even know what it is on a whole series of different areas—and when there is not even a statutory commitment to a vote on the withdrawal agreement. We could start legislating later, in the summer perhaps when we have a bit more of a clue where on earth this is all going, or perhaps in the autumn when the withdrawal agreement supposedly will have been signed.”
“Given, however, that some of the Act’s genesis depended on ECJ judgments and its relationship with EU legislation, the Bill today could give Ministers the power to reopen the Act and change the primary legislation that we put forward with great care, and—again—to do so through secondary legislation only, without there being proper safeguards and checks in place. Ministers will have the power to rip up the working time directive, too, if it does not fit with what they think should happen under the appropriate arrangements after Brexit. I do not trust the Prime Minister and the Cabinet with these immense powers. One would expect me not to do so, but no parliamentarian should trust them with these powers. None of us knows who the next Prime Minister will be or who will be in the next Cabinet.”
“We also know that within the scope of the Human Rights Act there is a huge range of potential policies on extradition on which Parliament should have a say. On my past record, I suspect that I am probably closer to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary on what the extradition policy should be than many of their Back Benchers. I still do not think, however, that they should have unlimited powers to decide extradition policy without having to come back to Parliament. We debated the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 forensically—in fact, it was an example of Parliament at its best. We gave that Act detailed consideration that balanced security and liberty and changed it as it went through.”
“The Bill also includes the power—the Secretary of State made slightly disingenuous remarks in the way he presented this—to create new criminal offences so long as sentences are not more than two years. That is a serious power to give Ministers on such a broad area without parliamentary scrutiny. Let me give some examples of the things that the Bill would do. I raised the European arrest warrant with the Secretary of State, and his response to my question about what safeguards there would be was simply to point to the Human Rights Act. The Human Rights Act—by the way, Conservative Front Benchers have pledged to get rid of it—is not a sufficient safeguard. We know that we should not rely on the courts to have all the safeguards, and that we in Parliament should provide some of them as well.”
“The unprecedented powers given to Ministers in certain clauses—clause 7 and, in particular, clause 17 —are powers that would make a Tudor monarch proud. Everyone realises that the sheer extent of the provisions means that we will need both primary and secondary legislation as part of the process, but not to this scale, not with this lack of safeguards and not with this concentration of power in Ministers’ hands. The Bill will give Ministers the power to change primary legislation for an incredibly broad range of reasons, and the test will simply be whether they think it is appropriate. The test is not whether a change is needed, proportionate or essential, but only whether Ministers consider it to be appropriate.”
“There are the powers in clauses 7 and 17, as well as those in clause 9, and there is the fact that it will reduce British citizens’ rights. Far from allowing Brits to take back control, the Bill weakens protection for employment rights, equality and environmental standards; it weakens remedies and enforcement; and, crucially, it reduces the right of redress. It is both sad and telling that Ministers have chosen to exempt the charter of fundamental rights. I hope that that will be reversed, and that they will change their position. The greatest concern—I want to focus on this point—is the concentration of powers in a way that, frankly, is not British. Parliament will not be able to do its job to stand up for citizens’ rights against a powerful Executive if the Bill goes through in the way that it has been drafted.”
“Parliament will need to repeal the 1972 Act, and Parliament will also need to transfer EU-derived law into UK law. As the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), has already said, we will have to have a Bill, but not this Bill. There is a choice about the way in which we do this, and we do not have to do it in a way that concentrates so much power in the hands of a small group of Ministers. Let me run through some of our concerns. The shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), set out a very forensic and powerful account of the Bill and the detailed powers that it will give Ministers, with no safeguards in place.”
“This has been a very thoughtful debate, and I hope that the Government are in no doubt about the scale of parliamentary concern about the way in which the Bill concentrates powers in the hands of Ministers. In his opening speech, the Secretary of State recognised that the Bill is not what will take us out of the EU; Parliament has already voted for article 50, which will take us out of the EU—and rightly voted for it, as well. However, Parliament also has a job to do to hold Ministers to account and the Bill, as drafted, stops us doing that. It stops us standing up for democracy in this House, and it stops us making sure, frankly, that the Government do not screw up Brexit in the process they put it through and the decisions they take. Many of the purposes behind the Bill are right.”
“History will judge us for the decisions that we make now, for the precedents that we set and the choices that we make. Six months ago, I voted for article 50 because I believe in democracy, but now it is that same faith in democracy that means I cannot vote for the Bill. Let us not choose to be the most supine Parliament in history. Let us be the parliamentary generation that stands up for Parliament: the generation that pursues the article 50 process, but does so in a way that holds Ministers to account.”
“Henry VIII’s Parliament had an excuse. The man had a habit of chopping off people’s heads. What is the excuse for this Parliament? How can we possibly, in this generation, allow ourselves to become the most supine Parliament in history by handing over powers on this scale? We sit in the Chamber and listen to maiden speeches with great respect because we all still think that there is something special about being sent here by our constituents—sent with the power of democracy; sent on the wings of all those many thousands of ballot papers folded up with the crosses by our names. We think that we have a responsibility to hold the Executive to account, and not to hand over to Ministers, in an unrestricted way, all the power given to us by our constituents to do what they like with. Yet that is what the Bill is doing.”
“This is about more than just Brexit. It is about the precedents we set. Many hon. Members have quoted precedents about different kinds of secondary legislation, but that only strengthens the argument: we should not be setting a precedent in Parliament that hands this stonking great lump of powers into Ministers’ hands without any safeguards. This is about who we are. It is about what kind of democracy Britain should be. Even before the Brexit legislation, the former Lord Chief Justice warned about the steady diminishing of Parliament, about the handing over of power and control, year after year, to the Executive—to be fair, that includes previous Governments, not just this one—and about the number of statutory instruments and the fact that since 1950 Parliament has said no to only one in 10,000 of those laid before it.”
“I am not comfortable with the right hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for giving the Government blank cheques. Even if he is happy to support the Government and let them do whatever they want on the negotiations, he should be deeply uneasy about giving Ministers unrestricted powers to implement the withdrawal agreement in whatever way they so choose. The Prime Minister has no mandate to do it this way. To be fair, she asked for one—that is what the election was all about; it was about subverting the Cabinet, her party and this Parliament—but she did not get one. In fact, the Conservative party lost seats. We now have a hung Parliament, and it would be even more irresponsible for a hung Parliament to hand over such huge powers to the Executive than it would be in any other circumstances. We do not need to legislate like this.”
“Last year, UK agencies initiated 3,000 Europol investigations, yet with just 18 months until we are due to lose our Europol membership, our European arrest warrant and our security co-operation underpinnings we still have no idea what the Government want—is it to replace this, to extend it or to include it in a transition? There have been no announcements and there was not even any mention of it in the Secretary of State’s statement today. When are we going to get some substance on this serious issue about public safety and national security? When is he going to realise that this waffle is letting the country down?”
“This is no criticism of her—I know she takes this very seriously—but I advise her to hand this one over to another Department and let them run with it instead.”
“I welcome the Government’s decision to hold this inquiry in response to the campaign led by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). I know that the Health Minister is acting in good faith, but over many years Department of Health officials have advised there is no need for the inquiry and no problem at the heart of the issue. Will she recognise that because of that it would have much greater credibility for many of those who have campaigned on this issue if the sponsoring Department were another Department—be it the Ministry of Justice or the Cabinet Office—if all the staff did not come from the Health Department, and if one of the other Departments could be involved in the consultation, the establishment and the remit.”
“It is shameful that all he has managed to do is send a few officials to Italy and Greece to try to arrange a few procedures for the future, when this has been going on for years. Stop the warm words about helping the most vulnerable children and actually get on with it, as Parliament said the Government should.”