Graham Stringer
MP for Blackley and Middleton South · Labour · United Kingdom
“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.”
“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.”
“We cannot call ourselves a civilised society while Shabir Ahmed is walking the streets of this country. I agree with the thrust of the question by the hon.”
“Particle physics and astronomy have had a rough deal since the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council—PPARC—was abolished about 19 years ago.”
“In the ’80s and ’90s in this country, many police officers carried out their duties in a prejudicial and racist way. I am proud of having worked alongside many others to eliminate that racism as much as we could.”
“I remind hon. Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge and the Minister. I have received no information that such permission has been given. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.”
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“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We will now hear evidence from the Country Land and Business Association and the Tenant Farmers Association. We have until 5pm. Welcome; please introduce yourselves. Judicaelle Hammond: I am Judicaelle Hammond. I am the director of policy and advice of the Country Land and Business Association. George Dunn: I am George Dunn. I am the chief executive of the Tenant Farmers Association of England and Wales.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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?”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“Thank you for that point of order. As Chair, I probably should have made it clear at the start of the debate that the time gained on the first hour-and-a-half debate was carried over. I apologise to hon. Members for not having made that clear. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the report of the Commission on Justice in Wales.”
“The new owners of Flybe got the airline for a song, destroying shareholder value. They must not be allowed to profit from the public sector through subsidy for their failure. The Minister has made clear his position on APD—he will not comment—but does he recognise that that tax is damaging to the economy and costs jobs? Does he recognise that reports given to the Department for Transport and the Treasury show that abolishing air passenger duty would lead to an increase in tax income and have a beneficial impact on the economy and jobs? Will he look at those reports?”
“Will my hon. Friend tell me what definition of sovereignty he is using? It is completely confusing me. I have just checked, and the normal definition is “the authority of a state to govern itself”, but my hon. Friend is talking about majority voting when we might be in a minority. What is his definition of sovereignty?”
“At present, however, our ability to support our own industries depends not on whether we or the Conservatives win an election, but on rules for state intervention and support set down by the EU.”
“That is a fundamental principle of democracy. Without it, we simply do not have a democracy. I also think that making our own regulations and laws for our own industries is likely to make us economically more efficient and proficient. The other side of my hon. Friend’s argument is that the Conservatives want a race to the bottom. They might or might not. I am in the Labour party, not the Conservative party, because my philosophy differs from theirs on many issues, but it is better in a democracy if we argue those issues out in general elections such as the one we have just had. If the Conservatives, as they tend to, want a more free-market approach, they should argue for that, and if we want a more interventionist approach, we should argue for that, and whether we win or lose the argument is up to the electorate.”
“I am pleased we are now to leave the EU on 31 January, but I am less pleased that, because of tactical mistakes made by my colleagues, we are in a minority against the Conservative Government and look like being so for some time. I take issue with both the philosophy and the detail of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) from the Front Bench. The debate about whether we should remain in or leave the EU was never simply about the economy. Much of the debate—certainly this is one of the things that has motivated me since the 1975 referendum, when I voted to leave—is about the democratic argument. I believe it is better for both the economy and our society if people in this country elect the people who make our laws rather than letting unelected and appointed people in other countries make them.”
“The public want us to get out, and it is in the mutual interest of the EU and its member states and the UK to get as good a deal as possible, so I do not believe the catastrophic predictions. I voted against the previous Prime Minister’s deal three times, and against the current Prime Minister’s deal—in November, I think—but I did so because there were not simple majorities and I believed there was a better deal out there. Going through the Lobby, I was aware that some were voting against because they wanted a better deal—one we believed would better represent the decision in the 2016 referendum—but that others were voting to delay the process because they wanted, either by measures in this Chamber or by a second referendum, to overturn the 2016 decision itself.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir George. It has been mentioned that I am the only Labour Back Bencher in the Chamber, which is a double privilege. First, I think I am the only Labour leaver from the last Parliament left in the House. Secondly, the hustings for the start of the Labour leadership election are going on upstairs, which is important. One of my party’s problems is that although many of our supporters voted to leave the EU—and are enthusiastic about leaving—they are very poorly represented in the Labour party itself. There is an element of tilting at windmills in this debate. I do not believe the catastrophe theories about the next 11 months or so.”
“If new clause 4 were to be put to the vote, I would not join my colleagues in support of it. I agree with what Labour Front Benchers have said—that we should use the debate on the Bill to improve things—but going over the debate we have been having in this Chamber since 2016 will not do that. I have no idea—I have not counted up the time—but my guess is that we have spent as much time in this Chamber discussing the 2016 referendum, at which we committed to giving the people the choice, as we did debating both the Lisbon and Maastricht treaties put together. I understand, however, that Front Benchers do not intend to put the new clause to a vote. I hope they can be more constructive as we continue this debate.”
“Not only do they undermine the minimum wage and the nature and definition of a trade dispute; they are effectively unchangeable, as we in this country cannot change laws made by the ECJ. That is what is fundamentally wrong with being a member of the EU. I have no doubt that there will be changes when we leave the EU—people will be able to claim there has been a negative economic change there or a positive one here—but that happens all the time. Where has our paper industry gone? Has it been helped by the EU and its regulations? What about our agrochemical industry? It was essentially destroyed by European legislation, but I do not hear people in this Chamber arguing against the EU in that regard. It is accepted—I do not know why—that the EU will always be good for these things.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He will not necessarily take this as a compliment, but Tony Benn could have made those points, because they have run through the arguments of both Conservative and Labour Members who support leaving the EU ever since we joined in 1972. Not only is it better that those decisions be taken here, but it is often assumed that the EU is good for the economy and the protection of trade union and environmental rights, yet quite a lot of evidence runs counter to that. I am not an expert on fishing, but the discard rule has been an environmental disaster in the North sea. I understand quite a bit about trade union protections and legislation and I never get a satisfactory answer from my side about the Laval and Viking decisions of the European Court of Justice.”
“I put on record my thanks to the right hon. Gentleman for his time chairing the Select Committee on Science and Technology. It has been an interesting period, in which we have gone into great detail—effectively, I think—on many subjects. I was annoyed that NHS England, which has the time to put out often crass and obvious statements on health, did not have the time to come and give us advice on e-cigarettes, the use of which, as he says, is one way get people to stop smoking.”
“It is not only the World Health Organisation that is not using evidence for its advice, but the EU. The EU’s directive on the size of the bowls used and the amount of substance put in is not based on evidence. It is likely to mean that those people getting a nicotine kick—much less dangerous than cigarettes—will not find the products satisfactory and will go back to smoking.”
“Plastic was rare when I was brought up in the 1950s, so is it possible for the Government to set targets to get us back to those low levels? Recycling just delays the amount of plastic going into the environment.”
“Would any hon. Members wishing to speak stand up so I can see them? [Interruption.] It looks as though we have plenty of time, so there is no need for any kind of time limit.”