Graham Stringer
MP for Blackley and Middleton South · Labour · United Kingdom
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) on securing this debate. One of the surprising things, given how many people died during the covid epidemic, as well as the cost of approximately £400 billion and the cost of the inquiry heading northwards to £1 billion, is how little debate there has been in Westmins…”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“But on 11 February 2020, SAGE had before it a report from Imperial College, based on Chinese statistics, showing a very strong relationship between age and mortality among people who caught covid. Basically, children were not at risk and people over 70 were at serious risk.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The information was there and could have been used. The heroine of this episode, mentioned in the report, is Kate Bingham, who ran the vaccine taskforce. Because of her expertise in both science and funding, she was primarily responsible for getting the vaccine out more quickly than anywhere else.”
House of Commons27 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will call Matt Vickers to move the motion. I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. I have had no notice that such permissions have been given.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I strongly agree with the Government’s policy on devolution and better technical and scientific education, but all that will be for nought if we do not do something about the cost of energy. We cannot grow and compete as an economy when we have higher energy costs than our major industrial competitors.”
House of Commons7 September 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am fully supportive of Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester. It is the first time I can say that about a chief constable since the 1970s.”
House of Commons6 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“The last thing we want is busybody marshals upsetting members of the public by being over-officious. The confusion of the Government’s messages in this and other areas has meant that many members of the public, particularly younger people, have lost trust in the Government’s message and are no longer following it. What would make that situation worse was if we had untrained marshals throwing their weight about and upsetting the public so that there was even less support for what might well be necessary regulations.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Lancet , which has criticised the Government’s tardiness and slowness on this matter, and could have argued with Professor Van-Tam and any of the other advisers, has pointed out that lack of evidence does not mean the evidence is not there. They could quite easily have challenged those things. Finally, on the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham made, I was at a meeting at the weekend with leaders of local authorities and some of the Greater Manchester MPs and there was no support from anybody for the Government’s proposals on marshals. Will the Minister guarantee to the Committee that untrained marshals will not be given enforcement powers that would normally lie with well-trained public health officials or the police?”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is understandable that Ministers do not always challenge the advice. When I asked what the latest evidence was, I expected the Minister to say that there was a large meta-study done by Professor Melinda Mills of the Leverhulme Centre in Oxford. It was not fundamental research, but the study looked across the board at all the papers that had been done and found that 120 countries were advising on masks, so we would have been massively out of step not to follow the advice. I realise that the original advice was not in accordance with that, but the Government could probably have moved earlier and more effectively, with parliamentary scrutiny, to the conclusion that they have reached.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government advise putting a scarf over one’s face or getting a mask, which is actually not in line with the World Health Organisation’s recommendations. Following experiments conducted not on the virus but by firing laser beams at masks in Australia, published in the Thorax journal, the World Health Organisation recommended that three-layer masks are better than two-layer masks. The Welsh Government have followed that recommendation of having three layers. Our Government say that two is probably okay, but people can do anything they want. Having moved from saying that masks were of no use to saying they are now of some use, they are not using the best scientific advice, which the Welsh Government are using, to advise on which masks should be worn. I think that is a mistake. We have to go one way or the other.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Most of the evidence on masks has come from experiments with mannequins, which are difficult to do, conducted in laboratory settings, not real settings, so when the Government’s scientific adviser and other scientists say that there is no evidence that masks work, they are right, partly because no experiments have been done on this virus. Also, in the experiments and work that have been done we have not had the scientific gold standard of being able to test one experiment against a double-blind experiment. That is part of the science background. The Government now come along and said that there is some evidence to suggest that, when used correctly, face coverings might have some benefit in reducing the likelihood of getting the virus, but common sense and the non-covid experiments tell us that.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To go back to the science, one problem Ministers have is that most of them do not have a scientific background and, therefore, have not challenged the scientific advice, which cannot be that precise. In early April, the deputy chief medical officer said that masks should not be worn and that they even have a negative effect. I can understand why Ministers followed that. A few days later, on 16 April, the Secretary of State for Transport said that wearing masks would have a negative effect. In the next month, masks were introduced on transport and now we have them in shops and all sorts of places. Challenging the advice and asking for its source in the first place might have led Ministers to reach different decisions earlier, and even to different decisions leading to this SI.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I recently read the Lords Hansard from when the Coronavirus Act 2020 was passed. In that debate, phrases were used such as, “It would normally be anathema to a democratic Parliament to pass these regulations,” and, “Unprecedented powers are being given to the Government.” The Minister in the Lords gave all the assurances one would have expected him to give: at the appropriate time, when these wide and extensive powers were used, there would be proper parliamentary scrutiny. It is not just about this SI—there have been many such statutory instruments laid and used, in terms of levels of fines and what is and is not against the law, that have yet to receive parliamentary scrutiny. We have been back here for some time. That is a breach of trust, given that all the parties gave the Government support for the Coronavirus Act 2020.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If they are given the weight of the rocket, they will be able to say the force required to reach that velocity, because physics in that sense is an exact science. The science surrounding this pandemic is not exact and cannot be exact, partly because it is a new virus and people do not know anything. I suspect it will surprise members of the Committee to know that, as far as I am aware, in real situations or in laboratories, no experiments have taken place on covid-19. We are relying on experiments on other germs, bugs, viruses and bacteria, and on other kinds of experiments. I will come back to the science, but the biggest point, on which I think I am in agreement with the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell, is that there should be much more scrutiny of this legislation.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington and my hon. Friend the shadow Minister. That is to be regretted, but it is part of a bigger lack of scrutiny, which I will come to in a minute. First, I want to make a very general point. I do not envy the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, any Health Minister, or, indeed, any Minister from other parts of the Government who has to deal with these issues. They are really difficult. People have died. It is difficult to know what to do. When Ministers and the public pray in aid science—of course science should be looked at—I think people sometimes misunderstand its capabilities. If someone wanted to find the escape velocity of a rocket to leave the earth’s gravitational pull, they should go to an astrophysicist, who would give the exact figures.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a genuine pleasure to see you in the Chair this evening, Mr Twigg. This is first time I have served under your chairmanship, and I look forward to doing so on many further occasions. There are a number of things I would like to say about this statutory instrument. Some relate to process, some to science and some are political. On the process, the Minister, for whom I have every respect, made the point that these regulations last for only 12 months, which is absolutely right. However, the downside is that when regulations last for only 12 months, no regulatory impact assessment is required. A regulatory impact assessment would of course have answered some of the questions asked by the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell, as well as by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, my hon.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Is the Minister saying that the advice given to the Welsh Government was different from that given to the United Kingdom Government, dealing with England in this case? Secondly, we on the Science and Technology Committee have had all the scientific advisers before us on a number of occasions and they have been clear that they lay the evidence before Ministers and they may give advice, but, in the final analysis, it is for Ministers to take the decision, which may differ from the detail of the advice, or the advice may have to be interpreted. They are clear that it is not their decision. Does she agree with that?”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I want to make a point similar to the one I made in the Minister’s opening contribution. What was the evidence, when was it given to Ministers, and what meant we had to wait until recess before the decision was taken? That is key to me. I am sure that if she was in opposition, she would be making exactly the same point.”
House of Commons14 September 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The measures the Foreign Secretary has announced in the Commons today are supported by all parts of the House, I am sure, but I thought his preamble was a little optimistic. It is clear that in international organisations China has the objective of subverting those organisations, rather than either trying to change the rules or obeying them. Will he be more explicit about how he intends to work with China, given its attitude of undermining the World Health Organisation, the World Trade Organisation and other international bodies?”
House of Commons20 July 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope I will not break the sequence of the hon. Gentleman agreeing with all hon. Members who have intervened. Like me, he must have received a letter from the BBC this morning, proudly saying that it spent two thirds of its money in the regions and other nations. Of course, London is not a third of the economy. That shows that there have already been cuts to the regional broadcasting service, and we are suffering from them. We do not want any further cuts. While I do not want to be a little Englander or a little UK-er, does the hon. Gentleman also agree with me that there is an imbalance in the obsession the BBC has with Donald Trump? It is more likely that we get reports from Washington DC than from Washington in the north-east.”
House of Commons22 June 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not know whether my hon. Friend is as sad as I am, but over recent weekends, I have switched on the Parliament channel, and people can see coverage of virtually all the general elections there have been since television started covering them. One really interesting factor from those BBC archives is that the swing across the country in 1955 was almost uniform. In 1959, commentators were shocked when there was a slightly smaller swing to the Conservatives in the north-west—it was a big change. The four countries of the United Kingdom are increasingly diverse. Does my hon. Friend agree that that means there should be more regional coverage, not less?”
House of Commons22 June 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree with the Leader of the House about the nature of debate and response and making a decision at the end of that debate, but what argues against that is the practice of pairing, where the decision is taken before the debate. Many hon. Members want their constituents to know where they stand on issues. Why do we not put the pairing records on the record? [Interruption.]”
House of Commons2 June 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The World Health Organisation recommends a distance of 1 metre. Other countries recommend 1.5 metres. We, together with a small number of countries, recommend 2 metres. There has been very little study on covid. The studies that lead to those distances, which are not universal, are on previous viruses, not this one. I urge the Government, partly for the sake of democracy and partly for the sake of getting the health issues right, to consider again and look to moving towards the recommendations of the World Health Organisation.”
House of Commons2 June 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That means that the whole House has not been doing its job properly on this matter. It has been suggested that Members want their constituents to know which way they have voted. If they have not been part of the debate, I do not really see the distinction between pairing and voting via an iPhone. The only distinction at the moment is whether it is recorded in Hansard . I take the point of the Leader of the House that he will discuss this with the Whips. If a pairing is recorded in Hansard , there is really no difference: constituents know where Members stand on the issue, even though it is not the exact equivalent of a vote. The other matter I wish to raise in the brief time allowed is the number of people in the Chamber. The Government have said that they are following the science and the advice. Science is universal.”
House of Commons2 June 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Any right hon. or hon. Member who was in this House during our lengthy debates on our membership of the European Union after the referendum will be in no doubt that minds and votes were changed during those debates. I know that because, once or twice, mine were changed after a debate—sometimes with discussion. A Conservative Member who proposed an amendment actually voted against it after a debate. I suspect that there was a little arm twisting by the Whips. At the present time, we have, in this country, some of the most authoritarian legislation that we have ever had for reasons that are both understandable and credible. That means that, as a House, we have not been having that thorough full-blooded debate where people can change their mind and vote at the end of the debate.”
House of Commons2 June 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. Can I just say to the hon. Lady that it is normally good practice to not intervene on a speech when you have not heard the beginning of it? The hon. Gentleman gave way, so I allowed the hon. Lady to speak, but it is not good practice to come in midway through a speech and intervene.”
House of Commons11 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. I recognise that the hon. Lady is a new Member, but if she says “you”, she is referring to me, and I do not have a view on this. It is an easy mistake to make.”
House of Commons11 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am sorry. Before I call Holly Lynch, I say to new Members that if they want to catch my eye, they must stand, even if they have put their name down to speak. I call Holly Lynch, and apologise again.”
House of Commons11 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. I believe I am right in saying that the hon. Gentleman for Bracknell came in after the Minister started his speech. The Minister has given way, so I will call the hon. Member, but it is very bad practice to intervene, particularly in an Adjournment debate, when the hon. Member has arrived after the Minister started speaking.”
House of Commons11 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The right hon. Gentleman is making the case that security is paramount. Does he agree that there is also a commercial argument, in that the Government are going to reward Huawei, which has bought its way into the system? Its first tenders in the 3G and 4G networks were at a quarter of the costs of its commercial competitors in Europe and North America. We should not reward people who are basically trying to bankrupt our industry.”
House of Commons4 March 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“20. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the local government finance settlement for local authorities to deliver their statutory duties for the protection of children.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Andy Burnham’s inquiry into the abandonment of Operation Augusta showed a shocking scenario in parts of Manchester where children were being groomed in open sight. It also showed that before Operation Augusta was abandoned, and when the children’s department was working with the police, it was beginning to be effective in stopping that grooming. I simply do not accept the Minister’s answer that there is sufficient money now or that sufficient money will be provided. Ninety per cent. of children’s departments in this country are underfunded, and all the children’s departments in Greater Manchester are underfunded.”
House of Commons24 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses for attending today on behalf of the Committee. Examination of Witnesses Judicaelle Hammond and George Dunn gave evidence.”
House of Commons11 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I very much welcome the announcement as far as HS2 and the integration into HS3 are concerned. Does the Prime Minister agree that his statement could be improved and bring more immediate jobs to the north of England if, as well as building HS2 from London to the north, we also started building HS2 from the north to the south? Finally, for real ambition, would he agree that HS2 should go to Scotland, which would help to unite the two countries?”
House of Commons11 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The report makes it clear that although Operation Augusta was successful in identifying those girls and suspected perpetrators, it was bedevilled by a lack of resources and territorial disputes between three police divisions in Manchester and about access to HOLMES, the police computer that records cases. The situation was difficult, and it is clear that leadership was lacking. After 16 months, Operation Augusta was wound up. One of the many worrying factors about this report is that the social workers and more junior police officers have vivid and clear recollections of the operation.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think her death was eminently foreseeable, so I hope that the Attorney General will agree to order the opening of an inquest and that the Home Office will support that. That was the genesis of Operation Augusta, which was set up to see whether many children—mainly girls aged between 13 and 16—were in the same situation as Victoria Agoglia. A dedicated team of police officers was set up with embedded social workers to look at the situation. Relatively quickly, they found that there were 57 girls in a similar situation and 97 suspected perpetrators of this kind of vile abuse.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is particularly difficult because the current coroner is refusing to release documents. In the absence of those documents, we would like the Attorney General to order a fresh inquest. The coroner’s conclusion was that “there was no evidence of a gross failure to meet Victoria’s needs that would have had a significant bearing on her death” and that there could be no inference that the events leading to her death were “reasonably foreseeable”. She claimed she had been raped, sexually abused, assaulted and plied with drugs for two years, and the coroner could not see how her death was reasonably foreseeable. The social workers knew what was happening; they had given her recommendations about what to do.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Shockingly, although she died in 2003, the report states that there has been no follow-up investigation into her death, despite the fact that Peter Fahy, the chief constable, told her relatives afterwards that he was quite happy to look at the case again, which led them to believe that it would be. Since then, Peter Fahy has said that he was just being open. I think that is dissimulating to the point of dishonesty. It was clearly the intention to reassure the family that the death of this girl would not be forgotten. There has been no investigation, although there has been a coroner’s inquest. Four of my colleagues from Manchester and I have written to the Attorney General asking for a fresh inquest. Reading the report, it is difficult to see why the coroner came to the conclusion he did.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Reading the report, one varies between despair and outrage at the failures of Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council to protect mainly young girls, but young boys too, from predatory sexual exploitation. If we had the same rules as the US Senate, I would ask for the report to be read into the record so that people could read it, but we do not, so I will have to summarise it. Part 1 focuses on Operation Augusta, which was set up following the death of Victoria Agoglia on 29 September 2003. She died after being injected with heroin by a 50-year-old man.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I beg to move, That this House has considered Operation Augusta. This is a story of the gross failure of public policy, and the implementation of public policy, to protect vulnerable children. Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, watched “The Betrayed Girls”, a BBC programme about the sexual abuse and exploitation of young people, in 2017. Afterwards, he set up what became the independent assurance review of the effectiveness of multi-agency responses to child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester. I want to discuss part 1, which is an assurance review of Operation Augusta. I watched “The Betrayed Girls” on Sunday evening on BBC iPlayer, and it was a harrowing experience.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Margaret has argued very strongly, alongside the family of Victoria Agoglia, for the case to be re-opened and for the police to take more action against the perpetrators. Those two women deserve serious praise for what they are doing. I do not want in any sense to trivialise this serious debate, but they are more worthy of being nominated to the House of Lords than some of the people who have been put forward by the Labour party, which has put forward a pretty eccentric list, to put it mildly.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I would be grateful if the Minister explained when the Home Office will fund and sponsor research into grooming gangs. As I said, if people had blown the whistle, a stop could probably have been put to these things, because the public would not stand for them. I want to mention two people who have stayed with this issue and have continued to bring it to the public’s attention since the first Rochdale and Rotherham cases came to light. Sara Rowbotham, who worked in Rochdale as head of its crisis intervention team and is now a Rochdale councillor, and Margaret Oliver, who was a detective on the Augusta team before her maternity leave, have constantly brought it to the public’s attention.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) recently asked that of the Home Office, both by letter and on the Floor of the House. It is a mistake to think that the grooming of children, as described in the report, is the same as paedophile rings. The Home Office has done good research on paedophile rings. They are understood by the police and the Home Office, which know how to disrupt them. However, very little research has been done on grooming gangs. For instance, we do not know whether there are “Mr Bigs” behind the gangs at a national level or whether the cases represent major crime or decentralised local activity. That is important for our understanding; if it is major crime, organised on a national and international basis like drug crime, the National Crime Agency should be involved in disrupting that activity.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The police, who probably had good intentions, made a mistake in saying, “We will be accused of racism if we point this out.” Nazir Afzal, the previous director of public prosecutions in the north-west and a practising Muslim, said that such activities are against the teaching of Islam and of the Koran, and that the vast majority of Pakistani people are as appalled by what has happened as the rest of the population. That is not to say that one should hide what has happened on Wilmslow Road or in other parts of the country, such as Telford, Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford or Ipswich—one can go on and on listing different towns where such cases have happened. A final point on resources is that a number of requests have been made for the Home Office to do serious research into grooming. My hon.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We cannot wish, as I do, for better service provision for those vulnerable people without providing the resources. Police numbers have also gone down. However, that decline in resources does not apply to the time of Operation Augusta. Another point that was made in “The Betrayed Girls” and in the report, and that has been made more generally, is that the vast majority of the men involved were of Pakistani origin and of the Muslim faith.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In no sense would the public have put up with what happened if they had known about it—they expect our children’s services departments and the police to protect the most vulnerable young women—but they know about it only 16 years later. We need stronger protections for whistleblowers and an acceptance that bringing such issues to the attention of the public and senior politicians is a good thing. Although there were disputes about resource allocation in the police force and between Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council, one has to remember that, at the time, police numbers were going up and local government was better funded. That is no longer the case; there is not a children’s department in the country that is not short of resources for the protection of children.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Although I believe that Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester police are sincere in their attempts to be more effective and to get their act together, we need to understand the issue more deeply by asking why these things have happened time and again and what can be done to prevent a report from being written in 16 years’ time about children who are on the streets now, while we discuss this situation. I referred to the clear memories of the more junior police officers and the amnesia of the senior officers involved. If there had been a different culture and stronger protections for whistleblowers, allowing those junior police officers and social workers to report such cases in the knowledge that they would not lose their careers, I believe more would have been done.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for Bury North (James Daly) said, that is scandalous. Since the termination of Operation Augusta, the response of Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council to this quite shocking report has been to apologise and to say that they are improving co-ordination and intensifying work to identify people, and they have done that. The awful thing is that, for the last 50 years, many of the children who have been abused and murdered have become the subjects of well-known operations. Reports always make 80 or 90 recommendations after such failures, and those are always agreed to, but we carry on writing reports, and children carry on being abused.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman is underlining and emphasising my point about the lack of resources and leadership. Two of the senior officers became chief constables afterwards, and their recollection of events is either non-existent or hazy. I simply do not believe that someone who had been in charge of such an operation and received such awful reports would not remember—the junior officers have clear memories of how it was finished. That, of course, meant that the perpetrators, who were known about by the police and social workers, carried on, as the report says, in plain sight. A lot of the abuse took place above Indian restaurants on Wilmslow Road—the so-called curry mile—in south Manchester. Cars were known to pull up with girls, and the police did nothing—in fact, they withdrew from acting on that information. As the hon.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Currently, when I have no doubt that many perpetrators are still walking the streets of Greater Manchester and other cities, we need Greater Manchester police to do better. This is an awful and shocking story of the failure to protect some of the most vulnerable people in the country. One of the failures, which was a mistake, is that action was not taken in some cases because the police said that the girls were not reliable witnesses. However, there have been policy statements to the effect that we do not have to rely on the victims to protect themselves in order to take the perpetrators to court. I hope that the Home Office and all the councils in the country will redouble their efforts to ensure that such activities, which I am sure still happen, are stopped.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, if his point is that somebody should be held accountable, I agree with him. That is clearly right. The final point I want to make in this sad story is that the police and Manchester City Council have said that they will improve. Today, however, Greater Manchester police have declared a “critical incident” in the introduction of their iOPS computer system, which 90% of police officers rely on to get information. The system cost £29 million and is not working. With the best will in the world, if the officers whose job it is to look into these allegations do not know what is happening, they cannot do their job. We need not only resources—more police officers—but the proper use of resources and computer systems.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am not sure that I have a good answer for the hon. Gentleman. Some people, such as Pauline Newman, who was in charge of children’s services at the time, have moved on. The senior police officers who took the decision to wind up operation Augusta have moved on and are not co-operating—one is not talking at all, and the other says he cannot remember. In such circumstances, when people are no longer employed by the city council or Greater Manchester police, it is difficult to know what action could be taken or by whom. However, the hon. Gentleman asks a good question. A line of accountability is needed. When one reads the report and some of the reports since, records of meetings or of attendees at those meetings are absent in some cases. That makes things difficult.”
House of Commons5 February 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Huawei bought its way into the 2G, 3G and 4G networks by bidding to sell at only a quarter of the price of its competitors. Clearly, that was China trying to take control of the market. Where is the Minister’s scepticism? Not only will our security be at risk from a hostile power if Huawei is allowed into the network, some of which it could switch off even if it was not spying; it wants to control the commercial market as well. Where is his scepticism?”
House of Commons27 January 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not think this will be a problem, given the time we have, but will the Minister leave a couple of minutes at the end for the mover of the motion to sum up?”
House of Commons22 January 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. In half-hour debates on the Adjournment, people who speak have to have the permission of the proposer and of the Minister, and it is not good form to come in after the proposer has started speaking. I ask the proposer and the Minister whether Bill Wiggin has had permission to intervene.”
House of Commons22 January 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. I know the hon. Gentleman is newly elected to the House. Normally in these debates, the Scottish National party spokesperson has five minutes. Because we have time, I have been generous, but I would be grateful if he focused primarily on the topic of the debate, namely the Commission on Justice in Wales.”
House of Commons22 January 2020Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗