Wes Streeting
MP for Ilford North · Labour · United Kingdom
“We hope for the best and plan for the worst in terms of the continuation of this war, but we are also actively working to prepare for conditions in which a ceasefire has been agreed by Ukraine, with Ukraine and, from our perspective, for Ukraine.”
“The threats we face are not only evolving; they are getting closer to home. Every day, the UK and our allies encounter espionage, cyber-attacks and military posturing by hostile states.”
“One discipline I have to bring to the Ministry of Defence, drawing on my experience at the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS, is to ensure there is no culture of routine overspending, that we are improving productivity, that we deliver value for money and that we recognise that the money we are investing in defence comes wi…”
“With permission, I will make my first statement to the House as Secretary of State for Defence on Ukraine, the ongoing threat from Russia and the Government’s approach. It is not yet clear whether freedom or tyranny will define the 21st century. What is clear is that the United Kingdom will not be a bystander in that struggle.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that very serious and important issue. She will understand that, as a matter of policy, I will not comment on intelligence, but I will address the reports she has raised.”
“We know that this Prime Minister and this Chancellor are both fully committed to funding our nation’s defence, including meeting our NATO commitment of 3.5% by 2035 and setting out an earlier 3% commitment at the next spending review.”
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“Friend the shadow Secretary of State said, the market rules supreme and which seeks to reduce higher education to a commodity for students to purchase as consumers and trade in for future success in the workplace. We were promised that the Office for Students would be this great champion of consumers, but we have seen precious little evidence of that so far. The tragedy is that the Government managed to find a well-respected chair of the Office for Students, who was the architect of the system and who believes in their vision of a consumer-driven higher education system.”
“It is not in place today, yet the higher education sector still seems to manage to function. If they expect us to pass any old rubbish on the basis that we have to pass it or there will be calamity, I have to tell them that, unfortunately for the Conservative party, they did not win a majority at the last election, and they have to get used to winning arguments and to parliamentary scrutiny. Presumably, that is why they bring forward so little legislation; they realise that this House of Commons will not pass any old rubbish. That brings me to the statutory instrument we are dealing with this evening. The Office for Students is the logical conclusion of a vision of a higher education system in which, as my hon.”
“As the first person in my family to go to university and to have made it from free school meals in an inner-city state school to the University of Cambridge, I am not taking any lectures from the Conservative party about being anti-aspiration. It is because so many of my constituents have high aspirations for their children to go on to high-quality technical education or high-quality higher education that I am so concerned about the direction of Government policy. As much as Conservative Members come here this evening to accuse the Labour party of trying to bring down the OfS by daring to vote against the statutory instrument, they neglect to notice that this SI was not in place yesterday and yet the architecture of the higher education sector has not fallen apart.”
“If we are serious about a further and higher education system that is well placed not just to serve the needs of our future economy, but to champion social justice, the Government need to do a damn sight better than they have done with the creation of the Office for Students. They cannot expect an effective Opposition to wade through statutory instruments like this when the work beneath it is so shabby and poor.”
“I also tabled an amendment that would have required universities to publish the ratios of the highest-paid to the lowest-paid at their institutions, to allow students, staff and the public to better hold them to account. That modest proposal was rejected as well. As my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said, the truth is that, when it comes to championing the interests of students and making our higher education sector better, fairer and more equitable, the Government do not listen and do not act. I agree strongly with what the Chair of the Education Committee said about the lack of further education representation.”
“Finally, let me gently say, without apology or any humility whatsoever, that many of the issues that have confronted the Government, particularly vice-chancellor pay and scrutiny and accountability, would easily have been dealt with had they accepted more amendments from me and my party’s Front Bench during the Higher Education and Research Bill Committee. I warned them that vice-chancellor pay was soaring out of control, and I proposed a modest amendment that would have put student and staff representatives on remuneration committees to better hold vice-chancellors’ pay to account, but that modest proposal was rejected by the Minister’s predecessor. The Government must be regretting that now.”
“Recent events, particularly in the pensions dispute, have shown that the lack of effective dialogue between staff representatives and university leaders leads to students being severely disadvantaged, but we have barely heard a peep from the Government about that crisis. They seem to have their heads in the sand. It is deeply regrettable that the Office for Students has been so deeply damaged by politicisation in the run-up to its creation, and the Government should not be surprised that we wish to oppose this statutory instrument.”
“If the Government had listened a bit more to what students were saying, perhaps they would not be in the political mess they are in, not just with students but with their parents and grandparents, who are horrified that tuition fees have been trebled, that student grants for the poorest were abolished and that the education maintenance allowance for students in further education was scrapped. The Government have got themselves into a real mess by failing to listen to people who know best about higher education, which is the people who work in it and the people who learn from it. It is a disgrace that there is no NUS representative on the board of the Office for Students. It is also a disgrace that there is no staff representative from the University and College Union.”
“I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, one of the things about the appointments process that has deeply damaged the standing of the OfS in the eyes of students was the insistence by Government political advisers that there should be no representatives from students unions or the National Union of Students on the board. The Government did not say, “We’re going to cast the net wide, and if we find a student who is more capable than an elected officer of the NUS or a students union, we’ll appoint them,” but instead effectively blacklisted the NUS and students unions. As a former president of the NUS, I think that is an absolute disgrace, not least because students who are elected have the confidence of the student body. They present manifestos about the issues that those they represent care about.”
“It was, in fact, the case that the president of the National Union of Students sat around the board table of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, so it is not true to say that what we have now is an improvement. We have a token student on the board of the OfS with no representative background whatever, and a talking shop that has no real teeth. That is not the same as having a board member.”
“I understand the ethical dilemmas, particularly where experimental treatment is concerned, but we have to place greater trust in patients and parents who are willing to take risks.”
“Not in the future, but now? Without funding we have no treatment. Overnight we have been forced to become an expert on DIPG, a carer, a fundraiser, a counsellor, an adviser, a leader, a beggar. But ultimately we need help from our government to take the burden off us so that we can focus on Kaleigh.” There are just a few things that I want to say to Ministers in the short time I have left. We need to become a global leader in tackling DIPG, which has already taken over 200,000 children. We can do this through research, spearheading clinical trials and ensuring earlier access to treatment. We need to do more to ensure financial support to access experimental treatment.”
“Scott has a full-time job and is a full-time dad. He is an utterly selfless human being, to such an extent that every time I call him back, without fail his first words are always, “Thanks for calling. I know you must be busy.” I am nowhere near as busy as Scott is, as a father trying to look after and care for his family on top of everything else that they are dealing with. This is why I address my remarks to Ministers. I thank successive Ministers—most recently Lord O’Shaughnessy—for engaging with Kaleigh’s case, but they will understand the family’s frustration. After three meetings with the Department of Health, two online petition campaigns and a huge fundraising effort to pay for Kaleigh’s treatment, they do not feel that things are really moving forwards. As Scott says: “How is the UK government going to help Kaleigh now?”
“Today is also an important day for the family because things changed a year ago today when Kaleigh began experimental treatment in Mexico. By her second treatment, she had regained all her functions. Five other UK families followed her to Mexico. Kaleigh was the first European to receive this treatment. More than 50 people around the world have now undergone the same treatment. None of this has been easy and we do not yet know whether this experimental treatment will be successful, but we know one thing for sure: if Kaleigh had stayed in the UK, she would not be with us today. Kaleigh’s family have spent over £250,000 to fund her treatment so far, and her ongoing treatment costs them £15,000 every four to six weeks. I pay tribute to Kaleigh’s remarkably resilient family, particularly her father Scott, with whom I speak regularly.”
“I have followed the family through their tremendous ups and downs: the 30 radiotherapy sessions that young Kaleigh experienced between April and June 2016; that awful moment in December that year when Kaleigh was in progression, eight months in; the closeness with which Kaleigh almost got on to the convection enhanced delivery treatment programme through the compassionate treatment route, only to be told at the eleventh hour that the tumour had spread and CED would no longer be possible; the 10 more radiotherapy sessions that she underwent in January and February 2017; and the moment when Kaleigh’s condition declined to such an extent that the family took her on what they thought would be her last holiday, in March 2017.”
“Today is a very special day for Kaleigh and her family—her father Scott, her mum Yang and her brother Carson. Two years ago today, Kaleigh was diagnosed with a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, or DIPG, which is a brain tumour located in the pons of the brainstem, for which there is currently no cure. At the time, Kaleigh and her family were told that life expectancy with DIPG was just nine months and that they should focus on making memories. Well, last month, Kaleigh celebrated her eighth birthday, and two years on from that awful day Kaleigh, her family and her huge band of friends and supporters are determined to make history, not memories, as they battle to defeat DIPG. Their journey during the past two years has not been easy.”
“What was so remarkable when I shared the video of Tessa Jowell speaking in the House of Lords in that powerful debate on cancer was just how many of my constituents responded, not just with great love and affection, but with strong memories of meeting Tessa during that by-election 40 years ago. That speaks so strongly of the warmth, empathy and infectious personality that Tessa has brought to her politics. As so many people have said, that certainly made its mark in so many ways on public policy in this country, but anyone who has ever met Tessa has been personally affected by her, and that is why we are all here today, determined to carry forward her legacy in such an important area. I also want to talk about my constituent Kaleigh Lau.”
“I rise today to talk about some very special people with an Ilford North connection. Perhaps even more impressive than crossing the party political divide in this debate, Tessa Jowell crosses an even greater political divide in London— the River Thames. I say respectfully to my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and her constituents that we actually had Tessa first, because, in 1978, a fresh-faced Tessa Jowell embarked on a by-election campaign there. She was defeated, obviously, by the great tides of national politics of the day but, undeterred, she persisted in 1979.”
“I am so grateful to my hon. Friend for that additional time. If Ministers cannot fund treatment, let us at least look at funding the flights, accommodation and all the additional costs that families face. It was remarkable listening to the comparison between what Tessa has been through and what Kaleigh’s family have been through in this respect. We need better care plans, advice and guidance. Scott has to do it all himself, to such an extent that he has become an adviser to families around the world on top of looking after his own children. We need to do a lot more to ensure consistency.”
“I want to say to Kaleigh’s family, to Tessa, and to other families who have been affected by childhood brain tumours that their strength, their courage and their resilience, but most remarkably of all, their enormous generosity of spirit in seeking to help others while they go through an enormous struggle themselves should be an example to us all. Tessa, that is the example that we are following today, and we are determined to make sure that our country gets this right for you.”
“That is absolutely right. I pay tribute to Great Ormond Street Hospital and other great NHS services that have supported the family. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) said when she opened the debate, we have all been affected by cancer in some way. The worst experience of my life was losing my nan to cancer when I was aged 10. It is a great source of regret to me that I do not still have that great left-wing firebrand who occupied County Hall when Mrs Thatcher decided to shut it down, and allegedly threw a brick at the trucks as they rolled into Wapping. Some of that has rubbed off on me. I hope that, in looking at what we can practically do to support families, Ministers have heard the powerful contributions made today.”
“I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way and allowing me, as co-chair of the all-party group on British Jews, to pay tribute to the work of the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council. Let there be no doubt in any quarter of this Chamber that in Jewish schools, Jewish community centres and shuls in my constituency, it is the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council who speak for the vast majority of British Jews, who are horrified by what they have seen in the Labour party and who I fear will be horrified by the response from our Front Benchers to this debate today.”
“Young people who have in effect been groomed into county lines are themselves victims of serious and organised crime, but so too are their families indirect victims. One thing that all the families affected by this issue in my constituency have in common is that they provide loving homes for their children, but they feel they have very little support from agencies in going through what must be a very traumatic process. What do Ministers plan to do not just to tackle the causes and symptoms of county lines and this kind of organised crime, but to provide adequate support to families who suffer enormous distress as a result?”
“We have a responsibility to protect Syrian civilians, whether they are in Syria, in surrounding countries or making their way to this country, and we have not stepped up to the mark, not nearly enough.”
“We all know that the Syrian civil war will end only through diplomatic means, which is why this evening’s Stop the War demonstration should be taking place outside the Russian embassy and not outside this Parliament. The truth is that, had the UN Security Council fulfilled its obligations, we would not be facing the scenario that the Prime Minister described this afternoon. However, can I ask her to look again, with the same degree of urgency and same scale of response that she has provided in the last week, at the humanitarian crisis? This country has taken only 11,000 refugees. Syria’s neighbours, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan, are bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am very proud of my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) for that powerful speech. Earlier today, my constituent Richard Angell arrived in Parliament wearing a rainbow flag to support the campaign, but was asked by House security to remove it. It was confiscated until he left. I am sure the individual officers of the House were just following the rules, but I wonder whether you can clarify whether that was the appropriate course of action. If they were following the rules, can you give us some advice on how the rules might be revised, so that this powerful symbol of equality can be worn throughout our Parliament?”
“In May, I will cease to be a councillor after eight years as a member of Redbridge London Borough Council. In my borough and, I suspect, every other Labour authority up for election this year, Conservative candidates will be out there attacking them for council tax increases that have been forced on them to protect public services from the savage cuts of this Tory Government. Is that not an example of the utter hypocrisy of the Conservative party: anti-cuts campaigners locally, while in this place cheering those cuts and voting them through?”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. This is obviously a rehearsal for the local election campaign. As he knows, people on these Benches have held a mirror up to our party over the issue of anti-Semitism. The Secretary of State does not need any lectures about Islamophobia, not least given his recent experiences. However, I ask him to hold a mirror up to his party, given the disgraceful campaign in London two years ago and because of the dog-whistle politics already being seen in the London election campaign. Islamophobic material has even been shared by Conservative Members of Parliament. We all have to root out prejudice in our politics, and that includes the uncomfortable experience of holding a mirror up to our own parties and our own values.”
“16. The Government of Sri Lanka continue to flout the obligations that they signed up to under a UN Human Rights Council resolution that they co-sponsored regarding truth, justice and reconciliation in that country. Given that our trade with Sri Lanka is currently conducted on preferential terms under the generalised scheme of preferences plus arrangements agreed with the European Union, will the Secretary of State make it clear to the Government of Sri Lanka that that preferential trade arrangement may not apply after we leave the European Union, and that certainly the Government will not be minded to give such preferential access to our markets unless and until Sri Lanka fulfils the obligations that it has made to its own people and the international community?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that the people in Sri Lanka who do not want the resolution to be implemented are, in effect, engaged in a war of attrition—both with more progressive elements in their own Government and with the wider international community? They hope that, as time passes, as personnel such as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights move on or Governments change, we will just forget about it. They think that they will be able to move on with impunity. That is exactly why the international community needs to keep up external pressure on the Sri Lankan Government to ensure that they sign up to the commitments they made, alongside the rest of the international community, in that important UN Human Rights Council resolution.”
“The GP-patient ratio in my constituency is unacceptably high, meaning that many people cannot get a GP appointment when they need it and they are turning up at the A&E—not only creating additional pressure but costing more in the process. What is the Secretary of State going to do to make sure that outer-London boroughs such as mine get the GP support that they need, because frankly, the assurances that he has already given are not manifesting themselves on the ground in terms of practical results for patients?”
“Taking into account the rising cost pressures on schools, whether on temporary and agency staff or on salaries, virtually every school in my constituency will face real-terms cuts to their funding by 2020. Is that not the truth of the Government’s policy, or does the Secretary of State for Education think he knows more about school budgets than headteachers?”
“An unacceptably large number of the Minister’s answers have involved being redirected to other agencies—people might wonder why the Government are so unaccountable on these issues—but perhaps he can answer a question about tier one investment visas. Many such visas were issued to Russians during a period when almost no background checks were carried out. What are the Government doing to look retrospectively at those cases to make sure that individuals with wealth obtained through dubious means cannot operate freely in our city and country?”
“The clock is counting down, yet the agreement reached today is clear that the thorny issue of the future of the borders surrounding Northern Ireland is being kicked into the not-so-long grass. I want to pick up two things with the Minister, based on his answers this afternoon. First, we are hearing lots about technology. Does it even exist? If so, what is it and how quickly can it be implemented? Secondly, he talks about the facilitation of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Will he say a bit more about what this facilitation is? It is not very clear, and the clock is ticking?”
“I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing this Bill. Time is short, and we know how Friday shenanigans can sometimes work. Given the high level of public and cross-party support, it is incumbent on the Government and, in particular, Conservative Back Benchers, to make sure that this Bill passes its Second Reading before we adjourn.”
“It is astonishing that Brexit, the single biggest risk to the economy, merited only two sentences in the Chancellor’s otherwise uneventful spring statement. If the economy and economic outlook are so rosy, perhaps he can explain why almost every school in my constituency is facing budget cuts, why my local NHS trust is in special measures, and why, when my constituents are crying out in the face of one of the worst waves of burglaries we have ever seen, the police are not responding because the Metropolitan police is subject to real-terms budget cuts. Is that not the grim reality facing our country, and is it not set to get worse because of the hard Brexit course his Government are following?”
“Will the Minister make a commitment to the House that the Government will not only take action on online publishers of this kind of extremism, but, in the weeks leading up to the first week of April, ensure that every mosque and Muslim community centre in the country receives a visit from their police to give them adequate security advice, to ensure that the Muslim community know that the authorities are 100% with them and on their side?”
“These appalling letters have to be seen in the context of the flames of prejudice being fanned in mainstream newspapers and in the comments made by mainstream politicians against their Muslim opponents, as well as by bystanders, who are just as complicit when they see prejudice, either in person or online on Facebook or other social media platforms, and instead of tackling it, they choose to look the other way.”
“My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Is this not the greatest tragedy of the way in which the Brexit negotiations are unfolding? The people who voted leave were not being given the Brexit for which they voted on the timescale for which they voted, but the biggest losers will be the people throughout the country—especially the young—whose opportunities will become far more limited because of the type of Brexit that is being pursued. Furthermore, every parent and grandparent in the country should reflect on the damage that is being done to the prospects of their children and grandchildren.”
“T3. Uniformed cadets, like 241 Squadron air cadets in my constituency, do an amazing job of producing well-rounded, empowered young people. I invite the Minister to look at the funding provided across government to our uniformed cadets, which clearly offer much better value for money than some other Government-funded youth programmes.”
“At the time of the referendum, both Tony Blair and Sir John Major warned of exactly the scenario faced by the Prime Minister now in relation to the Northern Ireland-Republic border, which is presumably why a majority of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union. If everything is as plain sailing as the Prime Minister suggests, why has the Foreign Secretary written her a memo entertaining the prospect of a hard border? Given that he has undertaken to publish that memo but has not found time to do so, perhaps the Prime Minister could prod him—or even jab him as hard as necessary—to get that memo out of him as soon as possible.”
“If the Foreign Secretary says he is going to publish the memo, when is he going to do it? If the Minister cannot answer those questions, should the Foreign Secretary not have had the guts to come here to answer for himself and clean up his own mess?”
“Sir John Major and Tony Blair warned during the EU referendum campaign that this would be an issue, and I am sorry to say that what the Minister for the Cabinet Office, who is a serious person, has said today at the Dispatch Box is simply implausible. We are not talking about a Back Bencher or the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for paper clips; we are talking about the Foreign Secretary, who has a central role at the heart of the Brexit negotiations. He is entertaining, in memos to the Prime Minister, the prospect of a hard border, which the Minister for the Cabinet Office says has been ruled out. So the only question, which he has not answered, is: if what he says is the settled position of the Government, why is the Foreign Secretary setting this out in the memo?”
“The simple fact is that the Treasury does publish the distributional analysis alongside the Budget. To the Chancellor’s credit, he brought that back in after his predecessor had decided that it was not politically convenient. The Treasury does not, however, do a breakdown of the Budget’s impact along a whole range of protected characteristics defined by the Equality Act 2010. New clause 9 would address that. The Government do not currently do this analysis, but as Conservative Members seem to be saying that the Government do already do it, they will have no trouble voting for the new clause, will they?”
“They may choose to do something about it, or they may not, but at least their policy making would be better informed. In the debate on this Bill, someone has to stand up and make the case for reasoned, evidence-based public policy making. It is a total disgrace that in the democratic discourse of this country, we now see the trashing of experts. We are warned that if we adopt new clause 9, academics may debate it—God forbid that people with some degree of expertise should debate the laws that we pass, because goodness knows it does not happen in this Chamber often enough. What is it about expertise and data that the Government are so afraid of? What it is about information that they find so terrifying?”
“If, as local authorities do, the Government looked at the equality impact of their decision, they might seek to take steps to mitigate the impact on disabled people. Instead, nationally and locally, disabled people have too often had the books balanced on their backs, which is totally unjustifiable. If the Government looked at the impact of their Budget measures on black and minority ethnic people, they might well take a different approach to the provision of resources in education to address the imbalances. They might also find, through analysis and research—words that have become anathema to this Government in their approach to public policy making—some surprises, such as the fact that detrimental changes to small businesses have a disproportionate impact on BME communities.”
“As a result of the Government’s refusal to listen to argument, evidence and reason, I see constituents in my surgery on a Friday afternoon—women in their 50s—who tell me that they have lost their job and are not able to access their pension when they expected. They had planned for retirement, and as a result, they can no longer make ends meet. There is nothing they can do about it at that stage. Had the Government considered the evidence, they might have made a different decision. Had the Government assessed the equality impact of their Budget, we might not be in a position where disabled people have been consistently and repeatedly clobbered by changes to welfare and other areas of public policy.”
“It informs Ministers when they are making decisions, but it does not cover the measures that new clause 9 addresses. The fact is that the Government’s Budget and the Finance Bill are a reflection of their political priorities and tell the country about the problems the Government want to address and how they intend to do so through sufficient provision of resources. The simple fact is that if the Government made an equality impact assessment of their Budget measures, we may not be in a position where women in their 50s are being clobbered by changes to their state pension age at a time in their life when they have little time or opportunity to address it.”
“The speeches from Conservative Members have been so rousing that I have been moved to speak to take on the sheer absurdity of the arguments we have heard this afternoon. Member after Member has told us that they oppose new clause 9 because the Government already do this. If the Government already do this, why do they not support new clause 9? The fact is that the Government do not already do this. What the Government do is publish an impact assessment with a distributional analysis of Budget measures by households depending on income. That measure was introduced by a previous Chancellor, until the current Chancellor’s predecessor decided it was politically inconvenient and got rid of it. The present Chancellor, to his credit, decided to bring it back. That assessment is interesting and useful.”
“We would also have a better quality of debate in the House about what our priorities are, the challenges facing the country and how to tackle them.”