Olivia Blake

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1,125 held · 592 searchable for Olivia Blake. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 7 of 10.

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1. “According to the Local Government Association, 8,900 Ukrainian households have presented themselves as homeless across England, and recent research by the British Red Cross found that Ukrainians are around four times more likely than the general population to face homelessness—a staggering figure. With cost of living pressures continuing, it is imperative that the “thank you” payments to new or rematched sponsors are increased in order to widen the pool of new sponsors and to prevent the further escalation of homelessness. As the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire rightly highlighted, the importance of home status and student loans for those who need them should not be forgotten in this debate.”

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2. “Two years on, sadly, it is clear that the war is not coming to an end anytime soon, so why is there still so much uncertainty about the future of the scheme we are debating? That uncertainty needs to be addressed urgently, and the Government must act swiftly to provide longer-term leave to remain and to ensure that lasting protection of Homes for Ukraine is accompanied by free access to family reunification. Without longer-term plans to protect the scheme or a route to settlement, Ukrainians face integration challenges and mental health problems. The risk of homelessness for Ukrainian refugees, which has been discussed in the debate already, remains particularly concerning.”

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3. “It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) on securing this important debate on the schemes the UK introduced in response to the war in Ukraine. I point Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the help I receive from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project on this issue. I am also co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on migration. It has been almost two years since the war in Ukraine broke out, and since then thousands of households across the UK, including many in my constituency, have opened their homes and welcomed Ukrainian refugees who have sought sanctuary here.”

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4. “The immediate impact on air quality is obvious, but the burning also undermines our ability to address the twin climate and nature crises facing us by damaging the precious blanket peat bog habitats that would otherwise exist.”

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5. “The reason for the smoke was heather burning on the moorlands to the west of Sheffield. Natural England, which is investigating the burns, tells me that “the moorland estates located within SSSIs close to Sheffield usually have Agri-Environment Higher Level Stewardship agreements that contain burning plans.” I will not comment on the specifics of last year’s burn, because we do not know whether it was legal, but it is entirely possible that it was legal, despite the rocketing pollution levels and the damaging effects on my community. I started with that anecdote because the fact is that this could be perfectly lawful behaviour, which highlights some of the problems with the current regulations. Burns such as these are a regular occurrence in my constituency, often with similar, if not quite so dramatic, effects.”

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6. “I beg to move, That this House has considered the regulation of heather burning on peatlands. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. On 9 October last year, smoke, ash and air pollution engulfed the Sheffield, Hallam constituency and beyond. A great many people contacted me on that day and afterwards to complain about the air quality, which was four times over the legal limit for air pollution. It was a relatively still day, so the smoke took a while to dissipate, and the unique topography of my constituency meant that constituents were very much affected. Constituents contacted me to say that they had trouble breathing and that it caused coughing and eye irritation. It was particularly distressing for members of my community with respiratory conditions.”

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7. “We have been trying to contact certain landowners about this practice, to ensure we have a way to deal with the needs of peatland owners while balancing them against those of local communities. Where air pollution levels are breached, it is important that local authorities have the powers to stop that happening, to protect people’s health and the environment in the uplands, which is so important for those who live downstream.”

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8. “It was very difficult to find some in good condition, to show what I was talking about. That shows a wider issue than in my own constituency, where we do have a lot of burning. We know that the degradation of peatlands is of great importance to communities up and down the country. Heather burning is bad for the environment, bad for the climate crisis and, as the recent burns in my constituency have graphically illustrated, bad for the health of people in Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam in particular. I hope the Minister will consider a complete ban on burns and offer a comprehensive, joined-up plan to restore these habitats. I am proud to say that I have the support of our Mayor, Oliver Coppard, and the leader of Sheffield City Council, Tom Hunt, who have both been outspoken on their wish to see a further ban.”

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9. “I know the Minister will point me to the Government’s England peat action plan, but the truth is we are not meeting the targets that we need to. We see a failure of delivery of Government policy on peatlands and, even worse, a failure of ambition. That needs to change, and change urgently. It is has been a pleasure to go out on the moors in my constituency and elsewhere in the country to see projects dedicated to rewetting and restoring peatlands. Instead of burning, we need more projects such as those, and for other degraded habitats, supported by concerted Government-led strategy to reverse the decline in nature. The Minister lives very close to where I grew up. I recently went for a walk with the family and I tried to show them some healthy sphagnum moss on the moorlands in his constituency.”

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10. “I hope that new leadership in the Department will produce a less disappointing and dismissive response, because it is important to get this issue right. Unfortunately, the Government are not getting it right or rising to the level of ambition required. The latest Climate Change Committee progress report on reducing UK emissions says that restoration of peatlands is already significantly off track compared with the CCC’s balanced pathway. In 2022-23, the overall amount of UK peatlands restored was a measly 12,700 hectares. Although that is an increase on the previous year, to meet next year’s target of 29,000 hectares will require more than a doubling of the current rate. Even if the Government match that target, the CCC recommends a UK-wide rate of 67,000 hectares per year by 2025.”

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11. “In 2023, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs successfully prosecuted two estate owners and issued a warning to a third, but that is only three cases. The level of enforcement action is not anywhere near the level of potential law breaking. The figures show that the new system is clearly not working and that the law needs to go much further to stop this damaging practice, rather than continue the partial prohibition we have seen. It is high time that there is an outright ban. I raised this issue in the Chamber with the previous Secretary of State for Environment and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). I am sorry to say that she told me not only that she was not considering a ban, but that my constituents should be happy with the air quality they have.”

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12. “The RSPB believes that 72, or 28%, of the 260 burns reported to itmay have breached the regulations by taking place on protected areas of peat over 40 cm in depth. The year before, the RSPB received 272 reports: one in three burns took place on peat likely to be deeper than 25 cm, and four out of five took place in SSSIs, special protected areas and special areas of conservation. Although the Government issued no licences for burns in 2021, 70 reported burns took place on peat likely to be deeper than 40 cm in protected sites, violating the regulations. In the last two years, without considering the current season, it is therefore likely that at least 142 burns were illegal.”

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13. “Licensing is required only on peatland of a depth of 40 cm or more, and we do not have an agreed national map of that. The Wildlife and Countryside Link estimates that the current law therefore leaves about 60% of UK peatlands without any protection. Three years on, it is useful to take stock of whether the new regulatory regime is working for the peatlands that it does include. Unfortunately, data from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds suggests that it is not. We are halfway through this burning season, so we do not have the full figures for this year, but during 2022-23, 260 records of burning in the English uplands were reported to the RSPB via its dedicated app, of which 87% took place in special areas of conservation and special protected areas.”

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14. “Is it not better to break that cycle by restoring the moorland monoculture back to its former health, rewetting the peat and reintroducing the more vibrant biodiversity that was there before the burns, and, in fact, before the draining of many of our peatlands? That is why I was pleased, in 2020, when the Government announced that they would introduce stronger regulations to control the burns. In fact, the current licensing regime was introduced shortly after a similar debate to this that I was lucky enough to secure, in which the Minister told me that the old system was clearly “not protecting every blanket bog site.” —[ Official Report, 18 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 216WH.] However, the details of the 2021 regulations left a lot to be desired.”

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15. “If we want to slow the flow, a good place to start would be by maintaining the sphagnum moss and making sure that it is in good condition to do the job that it has evolved to do. Global heating means that our winters are getting wetter, and we are already beginning to see the effects in floods up and down the country. Rather than destroying natural flood defences, we need to protect them to ensure that we mitigate the worst effects of the climate emergency. Some say that we need burning to control fuel loads on the moors, and that without it overgrown heather would cause wildfires, but the more heather is burned, the more it grows and the more we are locked into a cycle of burning.”

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16. “Nationally, the damage means that our peatlands emit the equivalent CO 2 of 140,000 cars per year; the burns themselves release 260,000 tonnes of CO 2 annually. The burning also makes the effects of the climate crisis worse, because when the heather is burnt, the fire kills off the spongy sphagnum moss underneath that acts as a natural barrier to rain run-off. One expert described the moss to me as a Persian carpet—it is very absorbent; you can squeeze it, and if you jump up and down on a healthy bog, someone 20 metres away will be able to feel the vibration because of the water held in the moss. It is very rare to find that in the UK now. Losing the moss means that we often see down-valley flooding, which will become more and more likely if that environment is not protected and restored.”

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17. “They are essentially our rainforests, and I am proud to represent a constituency that includes some of that landscape. Unfortunately, as I have seen at first hand, the vast proportion of our peatland is degraded. It is hard to see the difference between a degraded peatland and one in good health, because there is damage to so much of our peatland, and part of that is due to the burning. Burning not only damages the ecosystem that supports an abundance of wildlife, but is bad for the climate. In the natural and rewetted state, peatlands have the potential to store carbon dioxide on a large scale and can be a vital asset for helping us decarbonise our country, but when they are degraded, they do the exact opposite.”

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18. “That is a good point. Yes, I have been out to various moorland owners in my constituency and beyond to see regenerative projects—for example, planting sphagnum moss plugs and other things that people are doing to try to improve the quality of the moors—but I still think that further Government intervention is needed. The immediate impact of burning is obvious, but the long-term impact should concern us all. As I was about to say, we have to make sure that we take into consideration the climate and nature crises as well as the health implications of burning, which is damaging our precious blanket bogs. The peatlands are so important. We have 13% of the Earth’s blanket peat bogs in the UK, which is the largest proportion in the world.”

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19. “May I ask the Minister how many licences have been granted? If it is truly an act of last resort, it would be interesting to know those figures, given that the number of burns on sites of special scientific interest and protected landscapes continues to be high, to determine whether the regulations are protecting and meeting the needs of those areas.”

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20. “Last year, the TUC found that one in three public sector workers—1.8 million workers—has attempted to leave their profession and get a job in another field. As alluded to earlier, the crisis in health and social care is even worse; there, the proportion rises to 50%. Of all the workers the TUC asked, 52% cited low pay as a cause of their wanting to leave the sector. The pay for our public servants reflects the esteem in which we hold our public services, and the value we place on supporting some of the most vulnerable members of our community. Given the Government’s measures on public services, those have clearly hit rock bottom. We should all reflect on that.”

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21. “It is ironic that we hear a lot about competition in the private sector, and yet do not see competitive pay in the public sector. The link between poor recruitment and pay is also abundantly clear in the health service. Nursing, which has already been mentioned, has a vacancy rate of 10.36%. The number of district nurses has decreased by 44.4%. School nurses are down by 32.6%, learning disability nurses by 46%, and health visitors by 31.1%. Just the other day, I was in the Chamber debating provision and funding for special educational needs and disabilities. All the nursing staff I have listed are critical to delivering that service, so it is no wonder that SEND provision in the UK is broken. Pay is at the core of a lot of these recruitment crises. It is the same story again and again.”

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22. “When they were asked about the conditions in their workplace, they said: “Every day felt like drowning, getting upwards of 60 messages from claimants to deal with, on top of all the other work. I’ve been in my role for several years and this was the worst it has gotten. It worsened my mental health to the point of severe burnout, with constant headaches when I am at work and bad anxiety. At its worst, it pushed me to self–harm and heavy contemplation of suicide.” That worker is not alone in those feelings. PCS recently published first-hand testimony from the workforce in the DWP. The reports in that document are shocking, and they almost all point to low pay as the source of the recruitment crisis in the DWP. No one wants to work for an employer that they feel undervalues them and the skilled job they do.”

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23. “I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) for securing this debate. It is always brilliant to hear her talking about the important issue of low pay. I echo her comments about Tony Lloyd. He was a very principled public servant, not only as an MP for many years, but as a police and crime commissioner. My thoughts are with his family. He will be sadly missed. The statistics on public sector pay and the associated graphs and figures all starkly outline the dire state of pay for those who dutifully work to serve our communities, but nothing paints a better picture than the experience of frontline workers themselves. I want to read an anonymised quote from a DWP worker.”

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24. “Let me begin by declaring my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which refers to the help that I receive from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy project, and my position as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on migration. I agree with much of what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) about the process involved in the Bill and the way in which we are debating it today. This is our third immigration Bill in less than two years, and throughout that time Ministers and Back Benchers alike have engaged in progressively more inflammatory rhetoric about refugees without addressing any of the real problems in our asylum and migration system.”

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25. “This Bill is another example of Ministers’ doubling down on that approach, and the amendments tabled by Conservative Back Benchers—I believe they are amendments 10, 19, 20, 21, 22, 56 and 57—take it even further.”

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26. “I entirely agree. That is an important point, and we are struggling to get much sense out of the Government on it. I have asked repeatedly whether safe and legal routes are available to people trying to flee from parts of the world where genocide has been declared, but unfortunately the answer has always been “The safe and legal routes that exist are all that we will offer.” I do not think that that is good enough, and I think we need to have that conversation about safe and legal routes. The problems that I have listed are the real, human problems. That is the real cost to human life and wellbeing that the Government’s “hostile environment” policy brings.”

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27. “We need the safe and legal routes first. The rates at which people are accepted as having a reasonable claim and are given a form of leave to remain in the UK are very high: in recent years, the rates at which applications are accepted have been as high as 67%. I do not believe that a large number of people are coming here illegally without good claims. Indeed, I think the opposite is true, given the evidence from our own systems.”

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28. “Rather than chasing headlines, it is time they thought again and built an asylum system that puts respect for international law and basic human dignity first.”

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29. “The country has a continued history of breaching obligations under the refugee convention, and between 2020 and 2022 the UNHCR found that Afghan, Syrian and Yemeni asylum seekers had 100% rejection rate in Rwanda. Those are statistics that I am sure people would find shocking given our granting rate. It is common for discrimination and abuse to be faced by LGBTQ+ people in Rwanda. Same-sex marriage is prohibited, and LGBTQ+ people are not protected from discrimination by any specific legislation there. All this makes a mockery of clause 2 of the Bill. Ministers can continue to use ad hoc Bills such as this one to paper over the cracks in their asylum policy, but the truth is that the foundations of their approach are completely rotten.”

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30. “It is no wonder that they are recklessly declaring Rwanda as safe, despite the known risks. As the shadow Minister pointed out, since the Government signed their deportation deal, six people from Rwanda have been granted asylum here in the UK. Torture persists there, along with continued risks of refoulement to third countries, which is the reason I support amendments 35 and 37. Human Rights Watch’s reports on Rwanda as part of its World Report series published in 2021, 2022 and 2023 all include examples of torture in Rwanda. In the UN Human Rights Council’s periodic review of Rwanda published in January 2021, it was the UK Government who criticised Rwanda for “extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances and torture”.”

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31. “That does not take away from the fact that it is not necessarily about the nation those people come from and that it is also about their individual circumstances. I have spoken a lot about the rights of LGBT people and disabled people seeking asylum and how we need to make sure that any system maintains that individual view of an individual going through our system. That is a lesson that should be learned from the Windrush review. At its core, the hostile environment is a policy designed to make life as uncomfortable as possible for everyone who comes here and to prevent anyone from accessing the support that international law says is rightfully theirs, and now the Government are proposing to outsource what little responsibility they have taken by offloading their obligations and offshoring refugees against their will.”

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32. “I would hope that our system has the trust of its politicians and is robust enough to ensure that we are making the right decisions whenever possible, although I still believe that there should be an appeals process within that system. I cannot say that the system always gets it right, and that is certainly borne out by the casework that I have seen. It is more complicated than saying, “This action will reduce this and that action will increase that.” It is a very complicated system, and the most obvious thing to say about it is that in the past few years and months the second or third highest number of people arriving here in small boats has been people from Afghanistan. We are also seeing people fleeing from Syria and from all sorts of other complex and difficult situations at the moment.”

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33. “I welcome the Minister’s statement. However, what lessons will be learned from previous and current projects on value for money? The National Audit Office was scathing about some of the decisions that had been taken on those projects. What more can be done to support manufacturing in this area right across the UK?”

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34. “There is no good reason why children with SEND should not flourish, but that means rethinking how we approach behaviour in classrooms, training and supporting teachers to understand that all behaviour is a form of communication, not off-rolling young people because they do not fit into a certain box or just to cheat the figures. I will finish with the point that Ofsted should not be rating any school excellent if it does not have good-quality SEND provision.”

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35. “If we take ADHD, we know that the referral rates are going up, and there are some shocking statistics of people waiting up to three years for a referral—the wait is up to a decade in some adult services. We need to cut down the waiting times for all forms of assessment and diagnosis. To do that will require looking at those backlogs as we would any other backlog and taking seriously the staffing shortages we are suffering. We should be promoting strength-based approaches to SEND. In the education system, we should be looking to create inclusive spaces where young people can truly be themselves.”

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36. “We need more healthcare visitors, with visits on day one of a child’s life; we need more early years support for families and young people; and we need a professionalised early years workforce that knows how to identify the SEND needs of our children. Those problems are systemic. They are also about how services integrate. It is no good identifying needs if there is not enough capacity to give a timely referral. In March 2023 the waiting list for speech and language therapy had gone up by 42% since 2021, from 51,000 to 73,000—and no wonder. Last year, the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists found that almost one in four jobs were vacant across the UK.”

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37. “A recent survey by the Fair Foundation found that people overestimated early years pay by 47%. People value this workforce, but their pay does not value them. Nearly three quarters of the survey participants thought that people working in early years should be paid more, and I agree. We need to invest in the workforce charged with looking after our children and properly value the work they do, as well as training and upskilling them where necessary. On all these points of early intervention—the crisis in the health visitor workforce, cuts to Sure Start and the undervaluing of early years staff, the lack of multi-sensory teaching workforce and speech and language therapists, and the difficulties accessing physio—we are moving in the wrong direction.”

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38. “Only 6% were working within the recommended ratio of 250 children per visitor, and 28% —more than a quarter of the workforce—were servicing the needs of 750 children. That is a terrible statistic. The institute estimates a shortfall of 5,000 health visitors in England, and 48% say they will leave the profession in the next five years. We have also seen dramatic cuts in Sure Start services, with 1,416 centre closures since the onset of austerity in 2010. As an aside, the scale of those closures throws yesterday’s inadequate announcement of 75 new family hubs into stark relief. As has been said, early identification of SEND also requires having trained early years staff who know what they are looking for. To most people, that seems like common sense.”

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39. “Behind those numbers are families and young people who are struggling. The measure of a policy is not a falling statistic or the amount of money it saves, but the extent to which it addresses the needs of young people trying to access the education that is their right. I strongly believe that our approach to the issue should start with treating SEND young people and their families with the dignity and respect that all people deserve. That should mean a supporting hand from day one, but we lack the infrastructure for that kind of early intervention. A survey last year by the Institute of Health Visiting found that only 37% of health visitors in England felt that they were delivering a good or outstanding service. That is too low.”

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40. “Fixing the investment gap is critical to addressing the issue, but I want to make a plea that we cannot see this as simply a numbers problem. We have seen that approach recently from Ministers, for example with the revelations reported in The Observer last October of a target to cut EHCPs by 20% in a contract to develop the delivering better value programme. It is not just about the target; it is about the method of getting there, through early intervention and through making our education system more inclusive. However, we should also be clear about the reality that, although hard-fought and hard-won, in a heavily under-resourced system, an EHCP is a lifeline for young people and families in advocating for the provision they need. For many SEND families, the 20% target will be a source of alarm.”

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41. “I thank the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) for securing this important debate. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for special educational needs and disabilities—everyone is very welcome to get involved in that—and as one of the few openly neurodiverse MPs: I have dyspraxia, dyslexia and ADHD. Across the sector it is a truism that SEND provision in the UK is chronically underfunded. Others have already alluded to the f40 estimate of £4.6 billion. While additional funds delivered through the delivering better value programme and the additional £2.6 billion on capital funding are welcome, it is clear that they just do not meet the funds needed to stand still, let alone the additional demand for services, which is growing every year.”

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42. “T2. I have received a host of emails from constituents, many with respiratory problems, who are rightly complaining about poor air quality. The smoke in the air was caused by heather burning on the moors, which resulted in a spike in poor air quality to levels that were four times the legal limit. Will the Government finally do the right thing and bring in an outright ban on these practices, which are affecting not only my constituents’ health, but the natural environment and the climate?”

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43. “We must get the hate crime action plan back and ensure that we bring in a total ban on conversion therapy. It is incredibly important that this issue is taken as seriously as it can be. We should stamp out hate as much as we can.”

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44. “Instead of taking steps to address the crisis, reduce hate and ensure that those who experience it can access all the support they need, our politics is focused on fuelling it: “Transgender issues have been heavily discussed by politicians, the media and on social media over the last year, which may have led to an increase in these offences”. Those are not my words, but the words of the Home Office. Filling the public domain with toxic language that dehumanises LGBTQ people has real, life-threatening consequences, and it is telling that those in this place who often spread hate are not here to listen to those consequences. When the Prime Minister suggests to his Conservative conference that transgender identities are not valid, his words do not go into a void: they have repercussions. What must we do?”

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45. “In the Government’s national LGBT survey, more than 91% of respondents said that the most serious incidents they had experienced in the preceding 12 months had not been reported. Those incidents included sexual assault and physical violence. That evidence is supported by Galop, which has said so much in the last year. It has seen a 65% increase in LGBT victims coming forward for its support. As mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, we have slipped down the charts in terms of being LGBTQ+ friendly, and that should shame us all.”

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46. “It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) for securing this important debate and for the words he put so well. In just over a month, on 20 November, we will mark Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is a moment for communities around the world to honour the memory of transgender people whose lives have been lost in acts of anti-transgender violence. In 2021, that was 375 people. We are facing a crisis. As we have heard today, LGBTQ+ hate crime is rising at a terrifying rate. The figures are startling, but what is worse is that they do not even represent the full picture.”

    House of Commons18 October 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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47. “Evacuation orders in the past week have included hospitals, but many vulnerable people are unable to move because of their disabilities or illness. What conversations has the Foreign Secretary had directly with UK aid agencies and non-governmental organisations about that situation? What more can the UK do to ensure that civilian populations, including medical and aid workers, are protected?”

    House of Commons18 October 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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48. “This is an embarrassment for the Government and shows that we are falling further and further behind in the race for green jobs internationally. We have the lowest growth in these industries among the eight biggest economies. Should the Government not be focusing much more on broadening and increasing the capacity of offshore wind, rather than not listening to industry and making fatal errors?”

    House of Commons12 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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49. “I am a biomedical scientist by background, and having read that review, what I find important is the way the researchers interrogated all the subsequent research that had been done, to ensure that there was no bias in any of the studies they included, and they excluded any studies that they felt were biased, using stringent statistical analysis. That makes the review all the more important to listen to.”

    House of Commons7 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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50. “I want to know what assurance the Secretary of State has received that the 600-odd schools awaiting inspections or that have been inspected is the upper limit of those at risk of RAAC. What assurances does she, and the Department for Education, have about the quality of the surveys being conducted?”

    House of Commons6 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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