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.”
The complete record
Every one of 605 lines we hold for Graham Stringer, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 9 of 13.
“Minister, before you start your speech, I ask that you save two or three minutes at the end for the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) to wind up the debate.”
“The Government claim that they want to rebalance the economy and have invested in new vaccine manufacturing capacity. Why was that not in the north of England or other regions, rather than in Braintree?”
“Members that there is less of an expectation that Members stay for the next two speeches once they have spoken. This is to help manage attendance in the room. Members may wish to stay beyond their speech, but they should be aware that doing so may prevent Members in the seats in the Public Gallery from moving to seats on the horseshoe. This room has capacity for 20 people. I ask Members to bear that in mind.”
“I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new call list system and to ensure that social distancing can be respected. Members should sanitise their microphones using the cleaning materials provided before they use them and respect the one-way system around the room. Members should speak only from the horseshoe and may speak only if they are on the call lists. This applies even if debates are under-subscribed. Members cannot join the debate if they are not on the call list. Members are not expected to remain for the wind-ups. Members in the latter stages of the call list should use the seats in the Public Gallery and move on to the horseshoe when seats become available. I remind hon.”
“Before I bring in Seema Malhotra, I have been asked whether Members who are not on the call list can intervene, as was the practice before covid-19. The answer is no, you have to be on the call list to speak. I understand there is one Member waiting outside to come into the room. The spare seat at the front is for the Opposition spokesperson—she has indicated that she is coming, but she is in the main Chamber at the present time. I hope that clarifies things. We have until 5.30 pm. I do not like imposing time limits, and I hope Members will do the divisions among themselves. If anybody goes over, I will impose a time limit, so I hope people will be disciplined. I call Seema Malhotra.”
“Before I call the SNP spokesperson, I have a small announcement to make. Members should be aware that the first nine minutes of this debate were not broadcast, due to technical problems, but there will of course be a full record of the debate in Hansard .”
“Greater Manchester police officers keep blowing the whistle to the Manchester Evening News about the failures of the new computer system, iOPs—the integrated operational policing system. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has said that the system is putting vulnerable people at risk of harm. The system released the details of victims’ names and addresses online earlier this year. The £27 million scheme is massively overspent. Has the Secretary of State made a recent assessment of the project?”
“The system does not work because it is centralised. The history of public health in this country is of decentralisation. Local people can find out where there is a problem, whether it is in a school, a factory or a street, and do something about it. They can test and get people to isolate. The central system will not work. If I believed that the Government were going to improve it over this period, I might be tempted to vote for these regulations, but they will not. They have failed to give us information not just about the economy and the other side of the equation—the damage to people’s health —but about what is happening in the health service, so I cannot join them in the Lobby.”
“If contracts are given out beforehand to private companies, which need to be nimble on their feet and act quickly in order to respond to a particular outbreak, the contracts often cannot respond to that. In one case in the centre of Manchester, workers from the central test and trace system walked off site because the contract said that they did not have to work after 10 o’clock. The central system simply will not work. It cannot pass on the information in time and the responses are taking more than three days to get back to the people who can do something about them in more than three days. I talked to the north-west regional health people earlier this week, and they said that their time for returning the information was more than three days. If people are going to infect other people, that time is lost.”
“People are undoubtedly dying of this dreadful disease, but we have not been given the other side of the equation. We have not been told how many people will die of cancer or need various other treatments. We have not been told how many people are likely to commit suicide. For us to take a decision in the round, we need both those figures. We need the figures on the economic catastrophe that is happening in my constituency and in other parts of the country because of the lockdown, and on the long-term consequences for the jobs of the people we all represent. That is one side: we simply do not have the information about that. In terms of improving the situation, we have a national test and trace system that does not work because the Government do not want it to work and because it is fundamentally flawed.”
“I will not be supporting the Government’s regulations in the Lobby later this afternoon. There are two reasons for a lockdown: to save lives, and to buy time to improve the situation. I do not believe that, when one looks at the details, the Government have provided the information necessary to vote on those issues, or that one can have any faith that they will improve the situation at the present time. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the Leader of the Opposition, made a devastating case for the Government’s incompetence over this period. If we look at saving lives, the problem is that we have had exaggerated claims, both by the Government and some scientific advisers, about the consequences of not having a lockdown.”
“Members that there is less expectation for them to stay for the next two speeches once they have spoken. That is to help manage attendance in the Chamber. Members may wish to stay beyond their speech but should be aware that, in doing so, they might prevent Members in the seats in the Public Gallery from moving to seats in the horseshoe—some of that is redundant, because no one is in the Public Gallery at the present time.”
“I remind Members that there have been some changes to normal practice in order to support the new call-list system and to ensure that social distancing can be respected. Members should sanitise their microphones using the cleaning materials provided before they use them, and should respect the one-way system around the Chamber. Members should speak only from the horseshoe. Members may speak only if they are on the call lists, and that applies even if debates are undersubscribed; Members may not join the debate if they are not on the call list. Members are not expected to remain for wind-ups. When there are more than 10 speakers, Members in the latter stages of the call list should use the seats in the Public Gallery and move on to the horseshoe when seats become available. I also remind hon.”
“There is no SNP spokesperson, so I intend to call the two Front-Bench speakers 20 minutes before the end, at 5.40 pm. They will get 10 minutes. There are 10 other speakers, so you can divide that up yourselves.”
“Minister, we have marginally more time than we expected. I would ask you to ensure that there are two or three minutes left at the end for winding-up remarks.”
“My hon. Friend mentions that many of these lockdowns have been in the north of England and the midlands. Does he agree that the figures for Chorley, Wyre, Lancaster, Oadby and Wigston, Wolverhampton, and West Lancashire, where there is lockdown, hardly vary from those in areas where there is no lockdown that have Conservative MPs, such as Barrow, Darlington, Craven and Newark? It reeks of political bias rather than objective decision making.”
“We can have sensible local test and trace systems that immediately get things into the system and allow local people to take action. I said that the cure is worse than the disease. On 8 April, the Government were given a paper that showed that more than 200,000 people were likely to die because of the health service being switched off. At present, hospital beds are empty and people cannot get tested for cancer and other diseases very easily. We need to get the health service working, and one way to do so is to ensure that the test and trace system works effectively so that people can be treated immediately. I hope that the Minister will take this back to the Secretary of State and the Government and decentralise their policies immediately.”
“The Government have made 18 U-turns. It is not surprising that people have not followed those things. Let me give the House an example of the incompetence as it has affected Salford. Of the 15,841 test cases that went missing, 200 were in Salford, and the results for a third of those took more than a week to arrive. The incubation period of the disease is gone in that time. Some of those people who had been tested and were waiting for results that did not come were in care homes. Some of them were over 90, the most vulnerable group possible. The Government need to get rid of the centralisation and do what has been the history of public health in this country, which is to move decisions down to the local level, where people can work on a granular level.”
“This House and the other place gave the Government enormous powers in March when the country was faced with the pandemic and a crisis. I believe the Government have abused those powers. They have taken arbitrary decisions and they have taken politically biased and prejudiced decisions. Most of all, as the Leader of the Opposition said at Prime Minister’s Question Time, they have shown “intergalactic incompetence” in what they have done—just sheer incompetence. It turns out that the Government’s incompetence means that the massively overcentralised cure they have provided with the lockdowns is turning out to be worse than the disease itself. They have made more than 200 announcements, according to The Daily Telegraph . How many people can follow that number of announcements? People just ignore them, as colleagues have said.”
“I will give an example: it took about 18 years for the EU to change the clinical trials directive, and lot of jobs went out of Europe because it was so slow. In order to build our economy after covid and to deal with it now, we need to be completely in charge of our rules and regulations.”
“Regarding Vote Leave, the Electoral Commission gave Vote Leave bad advice, and it ended up in breach of the rules, and it has paid a fine for that. I do not believe any of that affected the outcome. The single biggest factor in cash terms was that the Government paid £9 million effectively to put out a remain leaflet, which dwarfed all the rest of the expenditure. I will finish by swiftly dealing with the petitions. There is the petition that cites covid as a reason for delaying the implementation. I understand at least one motivation behind that. The fact is that if we can control our own laws and regulations, we are in a better position to respond to any crisis immediately and not to be bound by the European Union’s bureaucracy.”
“In the Kadi I and Kadi II decisions—a complicated case adjudicated on by the European Court of Justice—the Court came to the conclusion that “the obligations imposed by an international agreement cannot have the effect of prejudicing the constitutional principles of the EC Treaty”. So the legal action is not only absurd in its first terms; it also goes against the way that the EU deals with its own policy. I think it was mentioned that several court cases found that actions taken by parties on both sides have been in breach of the law. That is wrong; it should not happen. There is no general election or local election that I have ever been involved in where there have not been problems; that is just what happens in the heat of the campaign.”
“The EU has exploited that situation and weaponised the historical situation in Ireland to try and keep control over our laws, so I hope the Government can get an agreement that does not lead to the splitting-up of the United Kingdom in those terms. In introducing the three petitions, my hon. Friend referred to the legal action that is being taken. It is the most curious legal action. I am not a lawyer, but who has ever taken legal action against a Bill passing through this House that is yet to become law? It is extraordinary. Indeed, it is not only extraordinary in that sense; it is extraordinary in that it goes against the EU policy itself.”
“That is why people voted to leave the EU, so we need the final leaving agreement to be sovereign-compliant. And we must not have overhanging liabilities that are unaccounted for, to be determined by some future decisions that the EU might make to give us more financial commitments. Finally, regarding the conditions for leaving, we must not be subject to the European Court of Justice. Otherwise, we will not be a truly independent country. I have supported the decision to leave the EU in many votes in the House of Commons. I did not support the final withdrawal agreement, because I never believed that there should be the possibility of Great Britain being separated from Northern Ireland.”
“Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) has said, but we are still in the transition period and subject to the withdrawal agreement. I hope that we get a Canada-plus style of free trade agreement, which was on offer at the beginning of this process, and it is another element of bad faith from the EU that that has been taken off the table, as has giving this country third-country status, which is real bad faith. I hope that we can get that type of arrangement, but it is vital that the final leaving agreement is sovereign-compliant. We need control over our fishing and over how we subsidise our industry, if that is what we choose to do. This country subsidises industry, providing so-called “state aid”, at about half the rate of the rest of the EU, so it is not a big problem. However, it is vital that we have control of our own laws.”
“Most people in this country would be absolutely horrified if President Trump challenged a victory by the Democrats in the United States and it went to the courts, but that is exactly what has happened in this country. Many of my hon. Friends who care passionately about this and wanted to stay in the EU simply do not see it in those terms. That two-pronged attack on democracy has come from hon. Members, both from my party and from others, who want to overturn the decision, and from the EU itself, which is less surprising, because it is a non-democratic body that has used many tactics to make it painful for this country to leave, as a warning to other countries that might want to leave. So, I will start with that point. I will also say that we have left the EU, as my hon.”
“It is delightful to see you in the Chair, Sir David, and to be back in Westminster Hall. I agree with most of the comments made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton). First, I would like to declare three unremunerated interests: I am a board member for the Centre for Brexit Policy; I am on the advisory board for the Foundation for Independence; and I was, until just after the referendum, a board member of Vote Leave. I ask hon. Members inside and outside this Hall a simple question. We have seen a two-pronged attack on democracy since the decision in 2016, which, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South said, was the single largest vote in our history.”
“I do agree. I will not get into a debate about covid, but we need to be spritelier than we have been in response to this crisis, and being in charge of ourselves is the best way to do it. I have previously said that both sides have been found to have been in breach of the regulations. My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool mentioned foreign interference. Did the biggest interference in terms of publicity—when President Obama came over and asked people to vote remain—make any difference? I suspect in many cases that boosted the leave side of the debate. This country has decided to leave the EU, and we have to get the best deal possible. We have to ensure that we get it to be sovereign-compliant, and not let the EU carry on with what are effectively imperialistic policies. It wants to carry on controlling our laws and regulations.”
“Does the hon. Lady agree that it is a fundamental of democracy that the losing side accepts the overall result and the winners? That is how democracy works. One does not have to change one’s view, but one has to recognise the result.”
“Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the points that he is putting on behalf of the petitioners were actually put to the courts in this country on judicial review, and that the courts threw the case out and said it lacked all merit?”
“In previous debates during this long discussion, my hon. Friend and I have disagreed. Today, I essentially agree with the approach that he has taken, but is he not being a little asymmetric? It is his job to attack the Government and criticise and analyse what they do, but does he not feel that one reason why there is not an agreement now is that the EU has withdrawn what it offered right at the beginning—a Canada-style agreement—and has also withdrawn the recognition of this country as a third country, which was previously on offer?”
“Through you, Mr Speaker, may I say to the Secretary of State that I voted against him last night not because I want the virus to rip through the country? Quite the reverse, I want him to get decisions right, and I do not think he is getting them right at present. The 10 o’clock curfew is bad for jobs and bad for the economy, and it is not controlling the spread of the virus. There is no scientific justification that he has been able to give for it. I believe he would make better and more correct decisions if he consulted Parliament, and the House of Commons in particular, particularly on local lockdowns. Today, Merseyside is being locked down and the Merseyside MPs cannot talk about that. Will he agree, before taking further measures, to bring every new restriction back to this House?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way so early in the debate. My intervention is relevant to the first point that she made. Paragraph 3.1 of the explanatory memorandum says that the order was laid on 23 July “by reason of urgency”. What was the urgency at that time, when this matter had been under debate for at least three months?”
“I am grateful to the Minister, who is as ever being generous. I think she is reading directly from the explanatory memorandum. I wonder if she would be good enough to point the Committee to the evidence she is referring to.”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.]”