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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“Yet, at the same time, our forensic service has gone from being one of the best in the world to, quite frankly, being moth-eaten and not as good as it should be. I have spoken for quite a long time, but I want to emphasise a point that the Chair of the Committee made about custody pictures. If you, Dr Huq, were arrested—I am sure you would not be found guilty of anything—and taken into a police station, your DNA, fingerprints and photograph would be taken. If you were arrested by mistake, your DNA and your fingerprints would be destroyed if you wanted them to be, and you would have no criminal record, but your facial record would remain in the computers. With all the connections those computers have, that is very worrying. Most people do not know that they can ask for those photographs to be deleted.”
“It is half on a statutory footing now because my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), with Government support, took a private Member’s Bill through. However, even that Bill does not deal with biometrics in terms of the statutory basis for the regulator, so that demand has only partially been met. I do not know whether the Minister, who has been in office for a period, knows why the Home Office, under different political parties, has not given the service the political prioritisation that the public would want, because I think the case is overwhelming. The public have an enormous appetite for television shows about forensic science and for reading detective novels, in which cutting up cadavers is the main focus.”
“Another driver, over a longer period, was that the police were taking a lot of forensic sciences in-house to save money. However, they were not only saving money but using non-ISO-accredited systems to do that. They lost the good Forensic Science Service and replaced it with something with no accreditation, which makes it more challengeable in court. That was another reason why the Committee did not support the disbandment of the Forensic Science Service—because the market was too volatile and not stable enough to ensure that the forensic science that the police and the courts needed would be there to be used. I do not know why Governments of different political colours have not got this correct and have dragged their feet on the regular call for the Forensic Science Regulator to be put on a statutory footing.”
“That indicates that the decision was viewed entirely as a cost-saving issue and not as a way of ensuring that the criminal justice system worked as well as it could to bring criminals to justice. The other side—which the Committee has written about in every report since, including the latest one—is that now that the Forensic Science Service has effectively been disbanded, we all rely on the market to work. At different times, as the Minister will know, because he has replied to this point, the market in forensic science has been close to collapse for a number of reasons—most recently, because of covid, not as much work was being commissioned. One of the good sides of covid was that there was less crime, so there was less need for forensic science.”
“The right questions would not be asked, so the right information would not be fed into the courts system and very bad people would not be brought to justice. Murder and rape are the worst crimes, but the problem goes right the way through the system. If we do not have a good forensic science service, we do not have a good criminal justice system, because the criminal justice system relies on the scientific interrogation of crime science. When the original decision was taken to disband the Forensic Science Service and leave things up to the market, there was an internal Home Office problem that I think indicates a broader problem. Professor Silverman, who was then the scientific adviser to the Home Office, told the Committee he was not consulted, and nor was the then Forensic Science Regulator.”
“The different science funding bodies do not really recognise forensic science as part of their bailiwick or funding responsibilities. Not only are the right questions not necessarily being asked, but the money going into research and science has been lost, and I believe it should be replaced. During one of the many inquiries we have had, we heard from Dr Tully, who worked for the Forensic Science Service, then became a regulator and has now gone into academic life. When she came before the Committee, I asked her three or four times whether murderers and rapists would get off because of the changes in the Forensic Science Service, and every time she answered positively—that that would be the case.”
“What is missing from the service at present, however, is the ability for the police to go to a public sector body, or a private sector body for that matter, and ask, “What question should we be asking? We are not scientists.” Previously when I visited the Forensic Science Service, it was very strong on the point that it would be able to help the client—the police, the criminal justice system—ask the right questions, which it could then examine scientifically before giving the information back. That has not happened, and that is one of the losses to the service. The other loss to the service, to which the Government have never really responded, is that when the Forensic Science Service went, the money going into forensic science research and forensic science was lost and has never been replaced.”
“Having said that, there has been a failure of Government, right the way through the process, to properly consider how to keep our elite status in world forensic science—it looks as though we have lost it now—and how best to deliver forensic science for the criminal justice system. One of the conclusions of the Committee’s forensic science report, which was published during the 2010 to 2012 Session, was that if and when the Forensic Science Service disappeared, which it did, one of the things that would be lost was the context of the crime. The private sector does a very good job when it comes to simple, repetitive operations, such as doing fingerprint or DNA analysis.”
“I will say this now so that there is no mistake: the Labour Government made some of the original decisions to change the Forensic Science Service, the coalition Government made a number of changes and the Conservative Government have made further changes. I do not see this as a party political matter at all. Like the Minister and other hon. Members around this Chamber, I want the forensic science facilities, whether private or public sector—it is not about differences between private and public—to yield the best information that will lead to the conviction of criminals. That is the key issue. It is not an ideological issue.”
“They said that there was a real possibility, given that the Forensic Science Service was world leading, that we could sell our services internationally and make money from them. The Committee looked at that and said that the case was not made, because the statistics claiming that the cost was £2 million a month were based on false information. The laboratory at Chorley had already been closed, and the people working in the Forensic Science Service on the other side of Lambeth bridge were very worried about their future. The Committee certainly was not convinced that the changes should be made.”
“The then Home Secretary, the noble Lord Blunkett, thought that there should be a more commercial relationship between the Forensic Science Service and police forces, and that the Forensic Science Service should be moved into a public-private partnership body. The Science and Technology Committee looked at that proposal and said that things would be lost if the service was changed in that way. A lot of evidence was taken, and the Committee’s report, which I will summarise, having just read it again, said that the evidence was not there to justify doing that. Nevertheless, after the 2010 general election, the new coalition Government looked at the funding of the Forensic Science Service. They said that it was losing £2 million a month and things would have to change.”
“The “Forensic Science on Trial” report went through the even longer history of forensic science. The way in which the Home Office has responded over time to the changing science is interesting and relevant. Science and the ability to examine and get information from crime scenes have changed enormously over time. It was only in 1988 that DNA led to the conviction of the double murderer Colin Pitchfork. Since then, DNA has been used thousands of times for many different crime scenes. What worried the Committee then was that there had been big changes. Back in the early 90s, police forces went along to the people who did forensic science and asked for analysis of things from a crime scene, and they got it with no cost.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. It is also a pleasure to serve on the Science and Technology Committee under the chairship of the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). I associate myself with his questions and the general points that he made, with one exception. The history of the Science and Technology Committee looking at forensic science goes back even further than he set out. I have been on the Committee a long time, but the first report on the subject came out before I joined it. Called “Forensic science on trial”, the report was published on 29 March 2005. The right hon. Gentleman referred to issues that have been examined repeatedly by the Committee—these are not my speaking notes, Dr Huq—but not to all the reports and the responses of the Government that have been produced on this issue.”
“I do not disagree with anything the Minister is saying, but would it not be easier if, when people are taken into the custody suite after an arrest and have their photograph taken, there were a simple sign next to the camera saying, “If you are found not guilty, or you are not guilty or the charge is not sustained, you have the right to have these images deleted”?”
“The Minister is being extraordinarily generous with his time. The Government have moved a good distance to get all-party support for what they are doing and to take the burden away from leaseholders. However, I suspect that in many cases, the people responsible for the defects will have liquidated themselves and will no longer be there. Is not one possible solution that a charge be put against the land, so that neither the leaseholder nor the taxpayer has to pay? Has he considered that?”
“My hon. Friend started off his speech in an excellent way and has got better as he has gone through it. I say that, but I will almost certainly not be in the same Lobby as him on some of the votes this evening. There is a general point to the specific point that he is making on vaccines, which is that the Government should be clear, explicit and transparent on every issue that they raise if they want to take with them people who are not just worried about vaccines but worried about this whole affair. Repeatedly, the Government have refused to do a cost-benefit analysis on the impact of their policies. We have before us now a number of statutory instruments without impact assessments. Does he agree that that information should be available?”
“Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) was waving a sheet about, which may or may not have been the impact assessment—that no impact assessment has been done.”
“The information we were getting was opaque when it should be transparent. This time last week, the Deputy Prime Minister stood up and said there was no plan to go to plan B. Some 36 hours later, we were starting plan B. Why was that? What was the scientific advice given? We were told fairly definitively that no such advice was given to change the view. What changed the view was that the Prime Minister was in a state of crisis and under pressure from his own Back Benchers and everybody else. That is not a sensible way to make decisions. It is not a sensible way to make decisions to put forward statutory instruments that say—the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon.”
“and hon. Members have had the time to read it. They may not agree with its conclusions, but it contains very valuable information. The key point, which a lot of the press missed, was not that the Government followed the science on the issue but that they got into a groupthink with the scientific advisers and did not challenge them. They assumed that science was something handed down on tablets of stone, whereas it is not. It is a process and it needs challenging by those of us who have responsibility in this House for making laws and policies, and by other scientists. We seem to be repeating that process. My Committee had as a witness this morning Susan Hopkins. Let me say that at best—if I can use a word somebody else used—the advice we were getting from her as an adviser was opaque.”
“As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I was trying to help you with the intervention by withdrawing from the list, but I am grateful to be on top of the list for the Labour Benches. I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) the Leader of the Opposition when he says that the Prime Minister is a threat to public health. I think that that is absolutely right. I draw a different conclusion from my hon. Friends on the Labour Front Bench on how we should respond: not by being irresponsible but by taking a look at the way the Government have dealt with the whole of the covid crisis from the very beginning to what they continue to do. I am a member of the Science and Technology Committee. Together with the Health and Social Care Committee we produced a 150-page report. I hope that right hon.”
“To come to the right decisions, this House needs all the information available, but it is not coming from the NHS and it is not coming from Government Ministers. That is why I will not give the Prime Minister the benefit of my support for the way he has arranged to respond to this covid crisis.”
“The Government should not be rewarded for unnecessarily using tough authoritarian legislation when other legislation was available that would have allowed more scrutiny. The Government have refused to give information. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) began his speech by saying that different people have different views and weigh the factors of civil liberties and health in different ways. That is absolutely right, but the Government will not tell us the costs and benefits of their policies. We now know that three quarters of a million people have failed to be tested for cancer. This is not a win-win situation. Cancer patients who are yet to be tested will eventually die because of the decisions being taken, because services are not available; some people will die of covid.”
“That is very interesting. It is also interesting that papers circulated by the Vote Office said there was no impact assessment. That does not impress me. The point I was just about to make—I do not know if other hon. and right hon. Members have noticed this—is that the 355-page Act passed at the start of the epidemic, the Coronavirus Act 2020, is barely being used. The Government could have used the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to bring in some of the restrictions that they have placed—maybe necessarily, maybe unnecessarily—on people’s freedoms. The difference between the 2004 Act and the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 is quite simply that much less scrutiny is available under the latter. Once regulations are passed, if there is not a sunset clause, they last.”
“However much the Minister blusters, he cannot get away from the fact that this is an £18 billion cut to the capital programme and a centralisation of the investment decision. The basis that the Minister and the Secretary of State gave for the change in the project and the cut was that it would take until the 2040s to achieve the expenditure of that extra £18 billion. Why, under the Government’s control, will they build and invest at a slower rate than the Victorians did using pickaxes and shovels?”
“The Secretary of State has done an extraordinarily good job of presenting what No. 10 is briefing to the press is an £18 billion reduction in the rail investment programme. That is the truth. He has also not told the House that the plan involves getting rid of the tunnels that take HS2 through Manchester to a low-level station at Manchester Piccadilly. Will he do an assessment of the impact that putting HS2 on stilts through Manchester will have on potential regeneration? HS2 will bring regeneration, but if we put it in the air like that, it is most likely to sterilise the areas on either side. He would not have put Crossrail on stilts in Greater London.”
“I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s apology on behalf of the Government and am sure that other Members will, too, but will he commit to the House that future disciplinary matters are matters for the House, not for the Government?”
“The Minister is talking about the potential commercial impact of not making the changes in the regulations. Unfortunately, the statutory instrument is not accompanied by a regulatory impact statement because, according to the explanatory note, the proposals are expected to last for less than a year. When one reads the amendment to article 2 of Council Regulation No. 95/93 in sub-paragraph (4) (b) it refers to November 2023, which is more than 12 months. Can the Minister explain that discrepancy?”
“Although I do not think that there is anything wrong in principle with what the Government and the Minister are suggesting, the detail is quite simply unjustified. It is unjustified because there is no regulatory impact assessment. These are important matters that relate to the commercial operation of airlines in this country, and of airports. I would be grateful if the Minister could reply to the questions and to the general points that I have made.”
“As far as I can tell from the notes, it is based on a reduction in flights that has occurred over time, but there has been a huge change within the last couple of weeks to where we can fly to, and where people can fly into this country from. It is likely that people will be able to fly into this country from the United States in two or three weeks. What will that do to the percentages that are proposed in these changed regulations? In a normal competitive environment, one would want them to be as high as possible, to stop the misuse of what are effectively anti-competitive grandfather rights. What account has been taken of the greater freedoms that we all now have to fly to and from this country?”
“If they were not consulted, why not? What will be the impact of the proposed regulations on the grey market in trading air slots? It is an obscure but very important issue. Some years ago, when I served with the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle on the Transport Committee, the slots were changing hands for at least £20 million a time. Given that the period in question will be extended for more than 12 months, those commercial interests should have been accounted for. What will be the impact of the proposed changes? There is nothing in the notes that justifies the reduction from 80% to 50% in respect of retaining rights. It may well be a sensible measure.”
“I should say that I made a mistake in referring to the change in sub-paragraph (4)(b) and that the scheduling period runs until March 2023, which is considerably more than 12 months. I believe that on its own that means that a regulatory impact assessment was required. Other issues in themselves, however, require an answer. Airlines want to monopolise slots not only because that means they can carry out their business but because of their value. There is a grey market in the trading of airport slots. A regulatory impact assessment may have been able to provide an answer as to who own those slots. Do the airlines own them? They assume that they do. What is the assumption? Clearly, airports lay down the tarmac for the runways and they have an interest in that, but it is not clear from the notes provided that the airports were consulted.”
“It is a pleasure to be here this early on Tuesday morning to talk about airport slot allocation. I would like to use the opportunity to ask the Minister a number of questions. I have no quarrel with the principle behind the regulations. It is sensible to take account of the fact that the world has been different over the past 18 months because of covid, and we do not want to damage or ruin an industry that provides so many jobs. In that sense it is a pity that there is no regulatory impact assessment accompanying the regulations, because important issues lie behind them. Even after the Minister was inspired to reply to my earlier intervention, I did not understand his response.”
“I agree with the point that my hon. Friend is making. I was talking to a 14-year-old over the weekend, and she said that she had seen on the internet a magnet that was attracted to somebody’s arm because they had been vaccinated. Does my hon. Friend agree that the internet companies and the Government should get such nonsense taken down as soon as they can?”
“Can the Minister answer the question that her predecessor failed to answer on the Floor of the House on Second Reading of the Bill? Everybody agrees that it would be a good idea if all care workers were vaccinated, but why will it be effective to force reluctant care workers to either have it or lose their employment, when other people entering care homes—hairdressers, musicians and entertainers and such—would not be forced to? How is that an effective policy?”
“Before we begin, can I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking? This is in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room.”
“In calling the Minister, I ask her to leave a couple of minutes at the end for the Member who introduced the debate to make a winding-up speech.”
“It is often counterposed that the Liverpool-Hull railway, or HS3—it has been called many things—should be given priority over HS2. Both are required. One will feed into the other. If passengers are dispersed off HS2, they will need to go on to a line with capacity between Liverpool and Hull, and vice versa; we need to feed into that position.”
“In place of HS2 trains being put on the current railway lines to go to Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scottish and northern MPs should be demanding that HS2 goes directly to Scotland and be joined, as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) said, by HS1. That was part of the original plan. We have not been ambitious enough in our investment in infrastructure in the past and currently. Before I finish, I want to deal with two or three of the arguments that have been put forward. The most absurd is the covid argument. This project will last 100 years—or perhaps 200 years, like the current railway system. Hopefully, covid will be over much more quickly than that—over the next six to 12 months—and we will get back to a normal economy and transport system.”
“The arguments put forward against HS2 are very similar to those put forward by the stagecoach owners against the original investment in the railway system. That is relevant to this debate because one of our problems is that, although the stagecoach owners did not win the argument 200 years ago, over the years equivalent arguments have stopped investment in infrastructure in this country. We have the lowest motorway density in what used to be called western Europe. We are still relying on the railway system that the Victorians built for us, and because it is inadequate we have more cars on congested motorways, creating pollution and potentially many collisions. My constituents and most of northern England have supported HS2 because of the economic benefits that it brings. In fact, I do not believe it is ambitious enough.”
“My hon. Friend is right, of course, and she has expertise as a previous Chair of the Transport Committee. HS2 frees up capacity, not only for passengers but for freight. That will take pollution off our motorways in all sorts of ways. I am opposed to this petition. It will not have any impact. It allows MPs to voice their constituents’ concern, but an expanded HS2 is important for the future of this country.”
“The right hon. Gentleman makes perfectly reasonable and justified criticisms of the way the American Government came to a decision to leave in such haste, but like a number of other right hon. and hon. Members, he is implying that we somehow could have had an independent Afghan policy without the Americans. Can he explain how?”
“I commend the Committee for its thoughtful and thorough report. I listened carefully to what the hon. Lady just said about one of the recommendations, and I understand about learning lessons; that is often what Committees do. I would challenge any Member, particularly Members who have been in this House for a long time, to remember the lessons learned and recommendations from the mad cow disease inquiry; my guess is that nobody will. We already know that there have been heroes and villains over the last 18 months, and I would hope that any inquiry would identify those heroes and villains. Mistakes have been made in some cases because mistakes were bound to be made, but some mistakes have been made wilfully and we need to know who was responsible for them.”
“I apologise for missing the first few seconds of what is a very powerful speech. I agree with every word the hon. Gentleman has said. He is completely right that the Chinese Government intend to use these winter Olympics as a propaganda exercise. Does he agree that it should be possible to turn this around if we—I just put this forward as an example—start referring to these winter Olympics as something like the “Genocide Games”?”
“I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about universities being dependent on income from overseas students. What concerns me more, and it is not touched by this Bill, is that some universities are getting investment from companies such as Tencent, which is wholly owned by the Chinese Government and is deeply involved in the surveillance state. Tencent has put a huge amount of money into the Chinese centre at Cambridge University, and Professor Nolan is telling students not to criticise the People’s Republic of China. Is that not a much bigger concern? It is not covered by this Bill.”
“I will not be joining the Secretary of State in the Lobby later on, partly for civil liberties reasons, but I do agree with what he is saying about vaccination. About four years ago, the Science and Technology Committee looked at the level of flu vaccination in care homes, which at that time was about 20%. Flu, like covid, is a killer of elderly people. Will he be looking to make not only covid vaccination, but flu vaccination a condition of employment?”
“Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) that what we have here is the Government asking for emergency powers when there is no longer an emergency.”
“When it comes to looking at people untested and untreated for cancer, heart disease and other diseases, we will find that the figures are of a similar, if not greater, magnitude than the number of people who have died from covid. We should have transparency and open declarations of what really happened with the 26,000 deaths in care homes, where untested people were sent from hospital. We should have disclosure about all those people who were triaged by age and who were not treated, and all those people in care homes who were not allowed into hospitals because they were not taking people from care homes. There is a great deal more information that we require in order to make a rational decision about whether the lockdown should continue. I agree with the right hon.”
“As ever, it is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker). On his interesting point about SAGE, we could do with full disclosure from the Government about all the facts that they have available to them on covid. In the Science and Technology Committee this morning, we were told that vaccinations have saved 14,000 lives. I have no doubt that that is an accurate figure, but there are many figures that have not been given. As we said the last time we debated this issue, only one side of the equation is given. Let me ask this question: how many lives have been lost in order to save capacity in the NHS?”
“We live in a liberal democracy in which we pass laws that are enforced by the police, and then the courts make a decision if there is a prosecution, not one in which the Secretary of State acts like some kind of uniformed Minister of the Interior. I will vote against the regulations today. We need a more direct debate on the issue and we need what Members have searched for—a straightforward comparison, with real statistics, of what risks everybody faces.”
“They say that they have undermined their professional credibility by joining the campaign of fear. I wish that the Government would not only put out more information, but apologise for frightening people. They should not frighten the electorate, and they certainly should not frighten people in this Chamber into taking people’s liberties away. One of the things that has annoyed me most in the last 15 months is when the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care say, “We instruct you”—meaning the population—“to do various things,” when there is nothing in the legislation that would give the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister the ability to instruct individuals.”