Mohammad Yasin
MP for Bedford · Labour · United Kingdom
“I express my deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Shaun Burton. As a train driver, he carried enormous responsibility and we should remember his dedication and service. I also wish a full recovery to those who are injured.”
“Given that thousands of commuters rely on these services, can the Secretary of State confirm that replacement services are operating effectively, and can she tell me what support is being provided for rail staff who are working in challenging conditions during the rare red heat warning period, while also coping with the impact of this tra…”
“Earlier this month, an Israeli soldier shot dead a seven-month-old baby, Sam Fahd Abu Haikal, and wounded his parents in the occupied west bank. UNICEF reports that, far from being an accident, violence against Palestinian children has reached levels not seen in decades.”
“Bedfordshire police welcomes the Government’s plan to refer all child knife possession cases to youth justice services, building on its work with the NHS, schools, charities and community groups to discourage under-16s from carrying knives.”
“I commend the Prime Minister on his efforts to keep the UK out of Donald Trump’s latest dangerous attempt to end a blockade by creating another. I also commend Pakistan’s attempt to broker peace and the UK Government’s work with over 30 countries to pursue a diplomatic solution.”
“For as long as the UK depends on oil and gas, global conflicts will continue to drive price hikes for my constituents in Bedford and Kempston, who face soaring bills when the price cap ends in June.”
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Every one of 600 lines we hold for Mohammad Yasin, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 10 of 12.
“This year, the World Health Organisation is celebrating the first ever year of the nurse and the midwife, at a time when the spotlight is on the nursing profession across the globe. As their elected representatives, we must stand with them and celebrate this diverse and dynamic profession. I will do everything possible to ensure that our health services are staffed safely. It must be a priority for us all. The problems are well known. The evidence continues to mount. We need decisive action, but we are not getting it from a Government drowning in Brexit uncertainty. Nursing staff need action now, as do their patients. We cannot wait any longer.”
“Bedford Hospital had to recruit 237 nurses from Australia, India and elsewhere to fill vacancies left largely by EU nurses who left because of their fears for the future and the ill treatment they received in the UK. It is a testament to the hard work of the hospital’s chief executive, Stephen Conroy, that, despite those staffing difficulties, the hospital is projected to reach full recruitment of band 5 nurses for the first time in many years, but that will be achieved only by recruiting nurses from overseas. We also need to increase capacity in clinical placements, to support nursing students at universities. How will the Government achieve that? How many nurses do the Government expect to retain? When will the Government publish their plan in full? Will the Secretary of State report on progress made in this Parliament?”
“I hope the Minister will commit to safe staffing legislation for England and update us on what her Department is doing to ensure that the NHS long-term plan Bill is forthcoming. Will that Bill explicitly provide for accountability for workforce provision? I suspect the Minister will want to discuss the Government’s promise of 50,000 more nurses over five years. We have heard a lot about that commitment but not in detail. How will 50,000 more nurses be recruited, especially when the Government appear to be ramping up the hostile environment rhetoric and making the UK as unattractive a place as possible to come and work? The loss of many NHS workers from the EU is a tragedy.”
“In recent responses to parliamentary questions, the Government have considered the merits of safe staffing legislation and ways to close the workforce accountability gap. The Royal College of Nursing has been campaigning, along with several other health organisations, for accountability to be secured in legislation, so the Government’s consideration is welcome. The long-term plan Bill is the way to make progress on that agenda, but it must include an explicit framework for the role of and responsibility and accountability for workforce supply and planning at all levels at which decisions are made across the system, including the Government. Achieving accountability in law provides an opportunity to safely staff our health and care services in the future.”
“Nurses have no power to recruit more staff. That is true of all professionals in our taxpayer-funded health and care services, including nurses, medics, physiotherapists, psychologists, social workers, support workers and many others. The Government should be accountable for the provision of the labour market that staffs our health and care services. The taxpayer must be assured that the services they have paid for are safe and effective. The former MP for Wolverhampton South West, Eleanor Smith, who is also a nurse, was here last summer setting out the same concerns. This is the 37th debate on workforce issues in health and care services since 2017, and it will not be the last.”
“The Government must listen to nurses and the Royal College of Nursing. They are pleading for the Government to act now. Getting nursing bursaries back in action might help, but the problem is now so deep that we must take urgent action to tackle it. This problem has been around for a long time. It is not a short-term problem. It will affect us in the long term unless we act now. Who is responsible for the health and care workforce? It is shocking that no one is. There is no clarity in law on the role of and responsibility and accountability for growing and developing our health and care workforce, or the various layers that drive our health and care services. A nurse walking on to a short-staffed shift has no option but to carry on. The buck stops with them. They carry the professional, physical and emotional impact.”
“I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in this important debate, and thank the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), and the Minister, for their responses. To be honest, I am disappointed with the Minister’s response. We have heard it many times before. It is time to take solid action. I ask her to read the responses to the digital engagement team’s survey, because she will be shocked by people’s comments, which should be an eye-opener for the Government. We are in crisis when it comes to nursing vacancies and getting nurses into jobs. The Government need to take action now, before it is too late. We cannot afford any more delays. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the nursing workforce shortage in England.”
“As the BBC recently reported, the latest outbreak of violence in Delhi is very worrying, as there is evidence that the police are complicit in and, indeed, encouraging violence against Muslims. What are the Government doing to make sure that they are talking to their counterparts in Delhi to ensure that Muslim’s lives there are safe?”
“When the Minister visits HMP Bedford tomorrow, can she look the governor in the eye and say that she is doing all she can to ensure the health, safety and welfare of his staff when the last Independent Monitoring Board report on Bedford prison revealed chronic levels of sickness, with nearly a quarter of officers off sick at times?”
“Q8. For many years, Bedford has been promised a new in-patient mental health facility, especially since provision at Weller Wing was closed in 2017, yet patients are still travelling 20 miles to access services. Will the Prime Minister explain how that demonstrates the parity of esteem for mental health care that his party promised in 2012?”
“Q14. Last week I visited Grange Academy, a special school in Kempston. Its recent bid to the condition improvement fund, in order to make desperately needed school improvements, was turned down by the Government. Will the Prime Minister urgently review the funding formula for capital and revenue, so that schools for children with special educational needs and disability are not disadvantaged simply because they have fewer pupils?”
“The rise in the allowance from April under the Government’s new proposals will mean that only two more homes would be affordable. The allowance in my area is set to rise by just £10, but the report found that local housing allowance would need to increase by £225 a month to allow people to afford the cheapest 30% of homes in Bedford. These barriers must be removed, and the stigma attached to homelessness that leads to hostile policies must end if we are to stop such practices. We require a long-term, common-sense strategy, a radical and progressive approach to social housing, and an end to piecemeal funding to give children, families, individuals what is surely a basic human right: a safe and decent place to live.”
“While I am pleased that the number of people sleeping rough in Bedford has fallen thanks to a number of initiatives, including Bedford Borough Council’s “Assessment & Somewhere Safe to Stay” hub, the SMART Prebend Centre, the King’s Arms Project’s night centre, and the work of the Salvation Army and other charities, levels of homelessness continue to rise. From my constituency inbox, I know that the homelessness problem is not so much on the streets but hidden in temporary accommodation. More and more people and families are living in totally inadequate, unstable accommodation. This month’s brilliant report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that only five of the 200 two-bed homes in Bedford are affordable to rent on housing benefit.”
“Homelessness is the manifestation of a society that is not working. The soaring numbers of rough sleepers and people living in unstable accommodation should shame this Government, because it betrays a policy agenda that has utterly failed people. The housing crisis has made it difficult for anyone facing relationship breakdown to get a new home, and the crisis in social care has made it difficult for anyone with mental health problems to access services. People can wait months or even years to get help, by which point their health has deteriorated to such an extent that their problems are compounded and become even more difficult and costly to treat, or they lose their jobs and become unable to pay their mortgage or rent.”
“Q5. This week, the Cater Street surgery in Kempston was placed in special measures. Such is the extent of the GP crisis in our country that the surgery has had to rely on locums and was found to have a three-month backlog of new-patient files. Will the Prime Minister urgently increase the funding for primary care services, for the safety, health and wellbeing of the 4,000 of my constituents who are patients at the surgery?”
“It is clear that the Government must be more ambitious in their GP training plans, because right now, eight out of 10 GPs feel unable to deliver safe care. Patients are waiting weeks to get an appointment and are being put at risk. The investment promised by this Government may well keep our health service on life support, but the service needs real investment to meet the needs of the future and deliver the improvements we want to see to keep our patients safe.”
“The Prime Minister previously said that he had prepared a “clear plan” to fix the social care crisis. Now we know that there is no plan, let alone a clear one. Last year, 34,860 people died while waiting for a decision on their application for social care. To think that social care could be fobbed off for up to another five years is a disaster for the 1.5 million people who cannot get the care they need today, a disaster for those in my constituency who must travel tens of miles to access in-patient mental health care, and a disaster for patients in my constituency who struggle to access GP services. The NHS is seeing the first sustained fall in GP numbers in the UK for 50 years. Large workloads and feelings of demoralisation are behind a surge in the number of GPs wanting to quit.”
“Health and social care provision have been decimated by this Government. We hear the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary crowing about making the “biggest ever cash investment” in the NHS in England. It is too little, too late—and I do not believe that it is true. The Prime Minister announced that 40 new hospitals would be built, and then we found out that there would be only six. It is nowhere near the biggest funding injection in the NHS in real terms when inflation is taken into account. The truth is that, prior to 2010, the long-term funding increases in the NHS were 4% per year. The Tories’ commitment is an increase of just 3.1%, and there have been huge cuts to social care. We were promised a new plan for social care in December 2016, but still we have nothing.”
“It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow), who made important points about the need in our health and social care system. I look forward to working together to make this Government realise how important health and social care are for the people of this country. The NHS is in crisis. Trusts across the country are under considerable strain as they seek to absorb additional demands for care, caused largely by the cuts that this Government have made since 2010 and the more than 100,000 vacancies in the NHS workforce. In December, we learned that A&E performance had dropped to 79.8% against the four-hour standard—the worst figures since records began. The Government’s response was not to fix the problem but to scrap the target, which could lead to a near-catastrophic impact on patient safety.”
“Since October, the withdrawal agreement Bill has undergone major changes, including the stripping out of previous commitments to workers’ rights. Will the Secretary of State publish a revised impact assessment so that he can be honest with the public about what his Government have in store for them with their hard Brexit plan?”
“If there is no alternative to local authorities receiving out-of-area looked-after children, it is only right that they should be adequately funded so they can provide suitable, safe and secure accommodation. The Minister has admitted that the current system is “completely untenable”, so I hope that today we get action from the Government on the APPG inquiry’s excellent recommendations, not more excuses and delay.”
“The Centre for the Study of Missing Persons at the University of Portsmouth estimates that the average cost of investigating a missing person is £2,400. That is a financial cost to Bedfordshire police of about £1.9 million, caused by unregulated homes. It is the job of the Government, not the police, to ensure the safety of such settings. They must get a handle on the scale of the issue, and I urge them to improve the reporting systems on the number of children going missing from homes and hostels that are not subject to children’s homes regulations, to prevent more children from becoming unnecessarily and excessively criminalised or becoming victims of crime.”
“They have highlighted that vulnerable children are being placed in accommodation with known perpetrators of sexual and violent crimes, and they are at risk of becoming victims of sex trafficking, organised crime or serious violent crime, and of being lured into criminal activity. In Bedfordshire, the number of incidents for the 12-month period ending in September involving looked-after children missing from unregulated homes was 1,333, involving 173 children. I am very worried about the fate of those missing children, who are at risk of criminal or sexual exploitation and other aspects of modem slavery. Although Bedfordshire police are doing tremendous work in this area and have a sympathetic understanding of those who go missing, policing such settings is a significant strain on an already under-resourced force.”
“I first met the Minister in March to call for urgent action to protect those children and ensure the most basic of requirements—that all care settings for 16 and 17-year-olds are safe and of a reasonable standard. Seven months and a change of Government personnel later, I am afraid we are no further forward. I know that the hon. Member for Stockport has been asking for that for a lot longer. It is the state’s responsibility to look after children in care, but it is clearly failing. Bedfordshire police have raised concerns about the number of teenagers reported missing from care homes.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I thank the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) for securing this important debate and for the excellent inquiry that the all-party group for runaway and missing children and adults, under her chairmanship, conducted into this issue. As the hon. Lady knows, my constituency of Bedford has been identified as a hotspot for out-of-area placements for looked-after 16 and 17-year-olds. It featured in the diligent reporting done by “Newsnight” into the crisis in care for the most vulnerable children in society. Many of us in this Chamber have repeatedly called for the regulation of semi-supported care settings.”
“Recently, the Secretary of State said she would be “unapologetic in fighting the forces of protectionism, in favour of genuinely free trade.” Will she put this into action now for one of my constituents, a specialist publisher of historical aviation books, who from tomorrow will pay 25% tariffs on his materials, a large proportion of which are shipped to the US?”
“The Child Maintenance Service is failing receiving claimants, most of whom are women. Will the Minister introduce tighter monitoring of direct pay compliance, stop collect and pay charges for receiving parents, and finally introduce a service that ensures effective enforcement of late payments?”
“The Prime Minister may want to distract us from Brexit by trying to focus on fixing the public services that his Government decimated, but it is his Government who are making a mess of everything.”
“Bedford Hospital had to recruit 237 nurses from the other side of the world to fill vacancies that were largely left by EU nurses leaving because they feared for their future in the UK. The Prime Minister’s hints at rail reforms also have a hollow ring for my constituents, who have experienced a severe reduction in services. Thousands of my constituents who moved to Bedford because of the fast train services to London and the north have been let down. Commuters from Bedford face almost daily misery because of unreliable services. Rail privatisation has failed completely. No one is fooled by a commercial model. What is needed is an integrated system run by the people for the people. The Queen’s Speech is a sham. Much of it is not even new policy. There is no plan, no vision and no honesty about the state of crisis in our public services.”
“Social care services cannot continue to be the victim of political turbulence. Hundreds of thousands of older people, many living in poverty and loneliness, have already suffered years of inaction and broken promises. The Prime Minister cannot be trusted on the NHS. His grand announcements collapse under scrutiny. The Prime Minister promised 40 new hospitals but will deliver only six new buildings or refurbs—and that is only if they win not just this election but the one to follow. It is totally unclear what criteria were used for which hospitals would receive extra funding, but in the Bedford, Luton and Dunstable merger Bedford Hospital got nothing from the £99.5 million proposed investment. Next to nothing is being done to address the severe staffing crisis at all levels of the NHS.”
“They will see only 54 new officers in the next two years, but that will not even replace those lost or those who will soon be retiring. It falls very short of the 440 police officers and 80 detectives that the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Bedfordshire says our county force needs. It is a similar story with the hollow promises for our NHS. NHS England has made it clear that core treatment targets cannot be met within the funding settlement offered by the Government. How many more times will this Tory Government promise to bring forward proposals to improve social care and then produce absolutely nothing? We need urgent action, not empty words, reviews or vague proposals. The Tory cuts have hit funding by an average of 9% per person since 2010, leaving the social care system close to collapse.”
“That is where the Government’s focus needs to be in order to keep the public safe, not on vanity projects that appeal to populist sentiment. For years, Bedfordshire police begged the Government for more funding. I will not forget that only a year ago the former chief constable of Bedfordshire police told me and this Government that in his 35 years as a police officer he had never seen such high demand on his force, yet he had to deal with a surge in serious violent crime with fewer officers than he had in 2010 and with a £47 million budget cut. He simply could not find enough officers to attend all 999 calls. Since then the Bedfordshire police force has received more funding, the brunt of the cost of which will be shouldered by taxpayers through the council tax precept.”
“Under the austerity agenda, for the last decade, his party has systematically under-resourced the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and legal aid. It has also closed courtrooms, including in my constituency, Bedford, leading to delays of years in cases coming to trial. The Home Secretary claims that a law billed as a crackdown on foreign criminals would make the UK safer, but this dog-whistle policy, which is estimated to cost the taxpayer about £100 million a year once it kicks in, would apply to only about 10 people a year. Terrorism, cyber-crime and other serious and organised forms of crime have no borders. We rely on working with our European counterparts and joint working with EU police forces to keep our country safe.”
“It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher). Never has a Government agenda looked so hollow. Everything on this Prime Minister’s wish list, masquerading as a Conservative party broadcast, being read out by Her Majesty in Westminster, was utterly dependent on what was happening in Brussels with Brexit. Brexit, not this Government, will dictate fiscal strategy. It is clear to me that the Prime Minister is refusing to listen to the voices of those on the frontline of public services who are telling him and all of us how damaging his Government’s reckless strategy will be. The Prime Minister is pretending and telling us that his Government are the guardians of law and order when it was his party that slashed police officer numbers.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important issue to the House for consideration. Does he agree that one of the major concerns is how 16 and 17-year-olds in care regularly go missing? Does he also agree that local authorities and the Department for Education should reform how data on the number of young children is collected, and that the figures should be made available and published on a quarterly basis?”
“This week, the Nuffield Trust joined 11 union leaders to warn that no deal would disrupt the supply of life-saving medicine and exacerbate the largest staffing crisis in our NHS’s history. What level of mortality rate is acceptable to the Secretary of State as the price to pay for this devastating no-deal Brexit?”
“I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to invest in frontline healthcare. Bedford Hospital urgently needs funds in order to expand and meet the needs of our growing population. Will he give our hospital the money it needs?”
“I have pledged my support for the council’s bid to the future high street fund, but in reality the fund is insufficient to cover the urgent investment needed for long-term sustainable urban regeneration. I hope that the next Prime Minister understands that investing in our high streets and creating a level playing field for online and urban retail will pay dividends for businesses and communities.”
“I share the report’s vision for activity-based community gathering places where retail is a smaller part of a wider offering and where green space, leisure, arts and culture, and health and social care services combine with housing to create a space based on social and community interactions. It is important that we remember, however, that not everyone can adapt. Recent changes present a big loss to those who are less mobile. Older customers who do not shop online or have access to out-of-town outlets have suffered. Vulnerable people must not be forgotten in regeneration plans. We must focus on better, affordable, greener, wheelchair and family-friendly public transport and spaces.”
“Our local business improvement district is investing in promotional activities throughout the year, and the shopping centre, which has had an impressive facelift, now offers a soft play area. Local businesses are fighting back, and it is initiatives like those that give me great hope that our towns will survive. However, it will be an uphill struggle as long as the Government’s austerity agenda continues. Over recent years they have actively created a hostile environment for retail, and I am concerned that several prominent Tory leadership candidates seem determined to disregard all the evidence about the catastrophic impact of a no-deal Brexit on businesses, many of which have no plan for an economic shock.”
“The loss of such stores is a big blow to our town, but the fact is that more of us are shopping online and prefer the convenience of free parking and more choice offered outside the town centre. I agree with the report’s overall realism and its recognition that we will have to be creative and think of ways to transform our high streets, making them attractive as community hubs. I am encouraged to see such an initiative already taking place and blossoming in Bedford. From next week, in collaboration with WH Smith, a Marks & Spencer food offering will be available from the Harpur shopping centre in the town centre. Last weekend 74 independent traders in Bedford joined forces to promote “fiver fest,” with offers in each store for £5.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to be here as the newest member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on the excellent report, which was published before I joined the Committee. The plight of our high streets is an issue for every MP in the country. Only a few high streets have escaped the pressures on the retail industry that have affected our towns and cities in recent years. Only yesterday came the announcement that Bedford will lose its Topshop and Topman store. We have already lost our Marks & Spencer store, which was in Bedford for more than 100 years.”
“Whoever is appointed to become our next Prime Minister, there will be more of the same for the majority—“Know your place and pay for the mistakes of the wealthy and powerful.” Rather than helping a few people up the social mobility ladder, we need to construct a framework of social justice, so that everyone can climb, not just a few.”
“The out-of-control housing market prevents children from leading independent lives or from moving to bigger cities where job prospects are better. “Know your place and stay in it”—that is the result of Tory austerity. It is a shameful record, and it is set to get worse under this shambolic Government. The front runner to be the next Prime Minister has already found £10 billion to fund a tax cut benefiting only the richest 12% of taxpayers. The Foreign Secretary wants to cut corporation tax even further than the Government already have to 12.5%, making the UK’s tax rate by far the lowest in the G20 and turning the country into a tax haven for rich people.”
“What could be more telling of a policy failure than the fact that a quarter of children are growing up in poverty? The privileged have become wealthier, while people from disadvantaged backgrounds have had their opportunities to get on and move up cut off. That is the Conservative way. Big businesses and the super-rich get tax cuts, while children grow up in poverty and schools struggle to pay for basic resources, struggling even to stay open for a full working week. A hungry child cannot learn, which is why poorer children are falling behind their peers by the age of five. Teenagers who cannot afford university tuition fees and increased debt have their life chances cut off at 18, with children from better-off backgrounds almost twice as likely to go to university than those from low-income families.”
“That happened within a year of the new Prime Minister delivering a mission statement to the nation, promising to make Britain a country that works not for the privileged few, but for every one of us, and to tackle “the burning injustice that, if you’re born poor, you will die on average 9 years earlier than others.” Of all the Government’s failures—on Brexit, schools, public services, and children’s and adult social care—this is the most shameful, because not only have they utterly failed to improve the lives of the less fortunate but they have made those lives much more difficult. Homelessness, food bank usage and in-work poverty have soared, and the Government’s own data shows that the number of children in absolute poverty has risen to nearly 4 million.”
“It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). So bad is this Government’s failure on social mobility that in December 2017 the Social Mobility Commission walked out in protest, warning that “nothing” was being done to deal with inequalities and social division.”
“Most of those set to lose the TV licence will not qualify for pension credit but still struggle to make ends meet, including 4,470 from Bedford and Kempston. Does the Secretary of State agree that his party has broken another manifesto pledge and cut a lifeline to the outside world for many older people, who suffer most from loneliness and social isolation?”
“Publicly run HMP Bedford has been deprived of adequate funding, while public investment has been given to the notorious blacklisting construction firm Kier to build a new supersized prison nearby in Wellingborough, which will be handed straight to the private sector to run. Will the Minister explain why the public sector was banned from bidding for the new prison?”
“Parents and patients are being criminalised, forced to go abroad or to order off the dark web to get hold of the life-saving medicines they were promised they would be able to access legally. I realise the importance of a proper regulatory development process to coincide with the new policy, but why is it taking so long?”