Dame Angela Eagle
MP for Wallasey · Labour · United Kingdom
“The Kremlin increasingly relies on proxy organisations to pursue its objectives, seeking to undermine our security while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. The so-called GRU Volunteer Corps is a clear example of that approach. It is not an independent force or a loose collection of volunteers.”
“This Government have introduced support for the Jewish communities who have been threatened and directly targeted by IRGC proxies. Just a couple of days ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced an extra £250 million for policing to ensure that we can support and protect our Jewish communities.”
“I will move on to the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right. The IMCR has publicly claimed seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities and to Persian-language media, including the antisemitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March.”
“We expect platforms to act responsibly and not to provide space for state threat-linked activity, propaganda or recruitment. We will be keeping a close eye on that, as well as liaising with social media companies to tell them about how this law impacts them.”
“The IRGC Quds Force and the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, together with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, form the Iranian intelligence apparatus. As a key component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, the IRGC is answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader.”
“It provides a targeted and proportionate means of disrupting those involved in foreign power threat activity based on the recommendations of Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of state threat legislation. To answer the hon.”
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Every one of 5,924 lines we hold for Dame Angela Eagle, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 52 of 119.
“I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way. At least he has allowed someone from this side to make an intervention, which the Secretary of State did not have the decency to do. Will he explain what on earth a meaningful vote would mean if there was a Hobson’s choice Brexit—a choice between the deal we have done or no deal at all? Is not avoiding a Hobson’s choice Brexit what this entire debate is now about?”
“While I agree with the philosophy and approach behind health and personal care budgets, will the Secretary of State acknowledge that the 21% fall in social care funding between 2010 and 2015-16 has caused a catastrophe in this area? Will he acknowledge that if this approach is to work in future, the funding has to be there?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Will you confirm that where someone is named, as happened today, they have to leave the House for the remainder of the parliamentary business? I believe they also give up pay for the day. They certainly cannot vote in any proceedings that happen in the day, so the implication of what the leader of the SNP parliamentary group did today, apart from pull a stunt, is that he made it easier for the Government Chief Whip to get his business through.”
“My hon. Friend is making the points about a meaningful vote with a great deal of power. Does he agree that if we get to a stage—which I suspect some Eurosceptics want—where we are approaching a disorderly, no-deal, hardest-of-hard Brexits, this House has a right not to be given a fait accompli of a deal that is inadequate, or no deal at all? Is that not what this battle to have a meaningful vote on the deal is actually all about?”
“Does the Prime Minister agree that never since the war has the international rules-based system been more at risk following the outcome of the G7 summit and particularly President Trump’s behaviour, with his tweet deck on Air Force One after he left? How does she think we can shore up the international rules-based system? All of us who study history know what the consequences of its collapse may be.”
“The right hon. Lady is making a powerful case for change. What does she now believe to be the best course for her Government to take to facilitate a decision in this area?”
“But the Secretary of State has been dragged to the House by an urgent question to talk about her decision not to pursue the appeal in these cases concerning activity 3 of the daily living component. She has very coyly failed completely to answer the question of how many people her decision affects. We know that 165 million people receive the component —[Interruption.] I mean 1.65 million—it is still a lot. Will she now answer: how many people are affected directly by the decision she took in the recess to withdraw the appeal, when will these people get the right amount of money and when will they be assured that they have not been illegally underpaid?”
“My constituent of working age suffered two strokes and has now been diagnosed as suffering from vascular dementia. He has been found to be fit for work, even though he has major problems with his short-term memory. He will have to appeal the decision and faces a wait of up to 30 weeks before he gets any kind of hearing or has his benefit restored. How can this possibly be a system that is working or acceptable?”
“Does the Secretary of State accept that there is a real issue of enforcement here and that self-regulation, especially in competitive industries such as construction, simply will not work? I suspect that that is what Dame Judith Hackitt was getting at in her report. Given austerity cuts, can he assure the House that enforcement will be strengthened, so that as the regulations are changed, they bite and have an effect?”
“I do not think that there is anything anyone could object to about having a civil penalty as well as a criminal one, but the Minister implies that there have been some breaches that her inspectorate has not considered to be serious enough to bring criminal proceedings against. Therefore, the companies perpetrating them have been allowed to get away with it. What kinds of breaches does the Minister think the new civil penalties will enable her inspectorate to get a handle on? Such breaches have, by implication, gone by the board because of the inflexibility of the current arrangements.”
“I am just trying to find out how large this issue is, in terms of companies that have been in breach but whose actions the prosecuting authorities did not think serious enough to bring criminal charges against them. By implication, there has been a series of breaches that are not serious enough to merit criminal charges but which would fall under the Minister’s proposed civil prosecution structure. Will she give us an idea of how great an issue this is and what has been allowed to pass because we did not have flexibility for a civil rather than a criminal process?”
“Does she think giving that impression, perhaps because of cuts to the prosecutorial and judicial authorities, sends the right message to people who may not have the best interests of their workforce or the environment at the forefront of their mind and may be more interested in profits than in doing things correctly? I would be pleased to hear the Minister’s response to those questions, and to be reassured that the proposed changes will not send the wrong messages.”
“Why are we moving to a civil penalty with a criminal burden of proof, which looks like a watering down? Does that not give the impression that environmental breaches will not be taken as seriously as they were before? Will she reassure us about that, too? Will the Minister also make an unequivocal declaration that the draft regulations are not an admission by the Government that enforcement of criminal law has become so expensive and bureaucratic that they have had to switch to much easier civil penalties to get anything done? As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test said, there are very few criminal prosecutions.”
“Is moving from criminal to civil sanctions that are taken less seriously sending the right message to the companies that are operating in this complex environment? The companies have to be prevented from cutting corners. In complex, competitive environments, the worst corner cutters can often put pressure on the better companies to cut corners to keep profitability. It is important to send the right message in that context. Is the Minister convinced that these changes do not give the wrong message? Why is the burden of proof unchanged? If we are moving from a criminal penalty to a civil penalty, why is the burden of proof not less onerous? That would look like a tightening of the regulations to make certain that everything was being watched carefully.”
“That could be quite serious, not only for health and safety but pollution. For such things, the variable monetary penalties go up to £50,000. Issues such as that—which could have an impact on health and safety and maybe even the lives of the people on the rigs doing the work—are important and serious. Being able to enforce strict regulations in those dangerous contexts, sometimes in marine environments that are quite fragile, is also key. Does the Minister think it gives the right message on enforcement to move from criminal prosecutions to civil prosecutions but use the same level of criminal evidence requirements? It looks like we are watering down the implications of ignoring the regulations.”
“In order to maintain the safety records out in the North sea, with that change in context, it is important that there is a regime that companies take seriously, that has teeth and is enabled to enforce the regulations as they are. Looking at the result of the consultation published by the Minister’s Department there is a list in answer to question 4. I suspect it is the same list, though I am not sure, as the table the Minister said she would make available to the Committee. It is about the regulations and the level of sanctions. It ranges from failure to comply with enforcement notices to making false and misleading statements or obstructing inspectors in their work. Those all would attract £1,000 fixed-term penalties. That rises to much larger penalties of £50,000-plus for unauthorised discharges into the marine environment.”
“Because the oil and gas fields are closer to the end than the beginning of their lives, we have seen a range of new expert companies come in that are good at extracting the final drops of oil from existing facilities. Quite a few of the big boys have moved on to easier pastures and left these different companies, which are generally much smaller, more buccaneering and newer to the industry, in charge of seeing whether they can squeeze the last few drops of energy out of existing wells. Clearly, we are dealing with a range of different people, very different from the companies that we see on petrol forecourt stations. That is one thing: it is a more complex group of companies in different circumstances from how it used to be.”
“It is a pleasure to serve, for the first time, I think, under your chairmanship in this Committee, Ms McDonagh. I want to take a little of the Committee’s time to tease out a bit more information from the Minister about what is behind the changes she has put before us. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test pointed out, there is an existing system of civil penalties in operation. I have a few questions for the Minister, which I would appreciate her dealing with in her response. As someone who used to be the Treasury Minister responsible for taxing oil and gas, I have not only fond memories but some personal experience of how well regulated the industry is in general.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his generosity in giving way. Does he agree that, although this is progress, it will be effective only if we have the light of transparency and these registers are available publicly, and not just to law enforcement authorities?”
“My hon. Friend is making an extremely good speech. Does she agree that the time for secrecy in all these jurisdictions is now over? We need transparency so that we can minimise the abuse—whether tax evasion, tax avoidance, or the laundering of criminal money—that is becoming more and more of a feature in these jurisdictions. Does my hon. Friend agree that once we have our own house in order, we can then campaign internationally to close down all tax havens?”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place. Does his Department have any targets for the number of affordable houses? Will he promise to take a look at the definition of affordable, which is at far too high a price under this Government?”
“The Minister is making a pretty poor job of defending the indefensible. Is it not the case that what she is setting out today is not only a huge hammer to crack a nut but actually, in disguise, a blatant attempt at voter suppression, by making it very difficult indeed for those who already have difficulties to vote? Many of those people come to visit me in my advice surgery because they cannot prove their identity to access benefits; she now wants to take their democratic rights off them.”
“It is astonishing that, faced with one of the largest scandals we have seen in the way in which a specific group of British citizens have been treated by the Home Secretary’s Department, she has not seen fit to take proper responsibility and resign. Will she tell us, in the light of her failure to resign, what on earth is her concept of ministerial responsibility?”
“It is now over 40 years since a heroine of mine, Barbara Castle, introduced the Equal Pay Act. She did so with great support from the labour and trade union movement, because the principle that women should be paid the same for doing the same job as men was believed then. Forty years later, we are really no nearer to achieving that pay equality. Although it is important that we have seen transparency, it has laid bare the size of the task. Allowing enforcement mechanisms so that the existing law can actually be enforced is crucial, so that women who are illegally sacked for being pregnant can use the law to get proper redress and so that we can drive out this direct discrimination, which has been illegal for years. Does the Minister understand that?”
“Does my right hon. Friend share my astonishment that it took the Information Commissioner so long to get a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica’s premises, given that Facebook got in there in a minute and a half?”
“Given that the Prime Minister’s political secretary, Stephen Parkinson, is the person responsible for outing the Vote Leave whistleblower, using No. 10 paper and documents, what is she going to do? Prime Minister, you should sack him!”
“Such marketing—along with the operation of websites that send people to dubious places when they search, tempting them to buy dubious things that are not what they think they are—happens far more widely than lotteries, although in gambling it is clearly a difficult issue and could lead to problem gambling. Would the Minister say more about the good precedent set by her and her Department in taking this draconian but welcome legislative action, tipped off by evidence that customers are confused?”
“It is a pleasure, Mr Davies, to see you siting in the Chair for today’s proceedings. I welcome this statutory instrument, which does an important job. I am interested to see whether the Minister will tell us a bit more about the customer confusion caused by the marketing of foreign lotteries and bets on the outcome of foreign lotteries. What she has said today sets an interesting and good precedent regarding customer confusion about advertising leading to more regulation of lotteries and much wider measures. Would she say more about that? There are some anecdotes in the impact assessment about people who confuse betting on the outcome of the EuroMillions lottery with the buying of tickets for our lottery.”
“I am interested in the level of confusion caused by advertising the presence of gambling websites—the way in which one goes through a search engine on to a gambling website, which gives confusing information— and what assessment the Government have made of the standards that are acceptable on those websites and those that are unacceptable because they are actively misleading. Can the Minister give us more information about the way in which she and her Department have reached decisions on that? We support the decisions, but there is a much bigger issue about confusion and sales issues on all kinds of websites, for which she may be setting a good precedent. That is what I am interested in.”
“Is the Minister saying that the Government might be mandating changes to algorithms so that there is a proper choice when one uses a search engine?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he recognise that my constituency contains Vauxhall workers as well? Their economic future is reliant on the Government’s decisions in the Brexit negotiations, particularly given that they have decided to leave the single market, which puts those jobs at risk.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. All of us who have an interest in this issue welcome his interest in the automotive plant, but we want a little more from him than that, since he is the Minister. Can he give us an answer on the issue of rate relief? Will the entire area be given the special status that my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) asked for?”
“My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) asked an extremely important question, to which she did not get an answer from the Minister. I wonder if we can try again. What changes are the Government planning to make to the due diligence for the golden visa, which establishes that someone must have £2 million they are investing in the UK before they get access to free movement here? What changes are the Government going to make to check that that money is clean? He did not answer—answer now.”
“We all want self-employment to grow, but we also want to crack down on apparent self-employment, where people are forced to become self-employed by exploitative employers who then save on national insurance contributions while putting all the risk of that employment on often vulnerable individuals. What are the Government doing about that?”
“The Chancellor has been very upbeat today, but why is he so upbeat when the growth figures show that we have gone from being near the top of the G7 and the G20 growth lists to the bottom of both?”
“The Foreign Secretary has rightly said that trying to sort this out will involve getting the Russians to bring their clients, the Syrians, to the peace negotiation table, and we seem a very long way from that. Given its importance, will he tell the House whether the Prime Minister has talked to President Putin to express our strong wish in this country that that should happen?”
“Zero-hours contract carers get paid for face-to-face work, so they get paid for every 15-minute visit, but none of the travelling time in between. They often have fragmented contracts and have to be available for work throughout the seven days of the week, and they do not have proper time off. That is one example. Then we have couriers, who have to deliver more than 100 packages a day for 48p a package. They often have to keep driving 15 hours a day, six days a week, and they are called self-employed. Surely the Minister has got to end that appalling practice by properly defining and enforcing employment law. Nothing he has said today has reassured me that he is going to help the 3.2 million people who are missing out on their basic employment rights.”
“But will the Secretary of State admit that he made a basic error by scrapping nurse bursaries, which has led to a 23% fall in the number of people applying to nurse courses? Why does he not look at that if he wants to widen the entrance into nursing?”
“There is nobody more partisan than I am, but today is no time to be partisan. It is a time to be proud that we are all lucky enough to be in this place on such an auspicious day, when we welcome and celebrate 100 years of women’s enfranchisement. When I first came here, there were only 60 women MPs and today we celebrate comprising nearly a third of all Members, but it is still not enough. While we do not have the representation we want here, there is also an issue outside this place for the women who form 51% of the population: enforcement of the laws to protect them is very bad, particularly in the employment sphere. Will the Home Secretary take this opportunity to say how we can improve the enforcement of employment law to ensure that all women in every workplace up and down this country are properly protected?”
“The Fawcett Society recently published a report stating that violence and harassment against women was endemic in our country, with two thirds of women over 16 reporting that they have suffered sexual harassment. Does the Minister note that the employment contracts and notes for the women attending the event as hostesses asked them to be “tall, thin and pretty” and that they had to deal with what was expected to be harassment? That is surely against the law. Will she look at employment law protections and make it certain that the law is enforced, that the Equality and Human Rights Commission looks at the event and that we get some protection for vulnerable women?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this really important subject. In Wallasey we have a very similar result. Well over half the people who have to use the food bank—and it is large numbers now—report to the Trussell Trust that they are doing so because of either benefit sanctions or delays to their benefits. Does he agree that this is a Government-made problem?”
“Does my hon. Friend recognise that, even though the Government do not do any research, the Trussell Trust and those people who actually provide food and collect food for food banks do. Their research proves conclusively that benefit delays, changes to benefits and low pay are the main reasons why people resort to food banks. Will she acknowledge that, as universal credit comes to my constituency and is introduced into the Wirral, my local food bank has said it will have to collect an extra 15 tonnes of food to deal with the 30% increase in food bank use that its research suggests accompanies the introduction of full universal credit in any area?”
“The Minister speaks about the income tax threshold, but does he realise that most of the people we are talking about are on zero-hours contracts and really low pay, and they do not pay income tax? None of those tax giveaways have any effect on their weekly income.”
“Does my hon. Friend recognise the pressure across the system? At Arrowe Park on the Wirral, staff made 48 extra beds available for the winter crisis and over Christmas, and in the event they had to make 40 more extra beds available by cancelling all elective surgery. Does he believe that this is the way to plan for the winter, and does he believe that the Department of Health made robust and appropriate plans?”
“On admissions to hospital for malnutrition, will the Minister tell me what has been happening at Wirral University Teaching Hospital? Admissions for malnutrition went up from 21 in 2009-10 to 707 in 2014-15. They went up again to 728 and this year currently stand at 586. That seems very, very high. Can anyone tell me what is going on? If not, will Ministers write to me to explain these huge figures?”
“Yesterday, our Prime Minister was humiliated by having the rug pulled from under her by the DUP. Was she not naive even to attempt to do a deal of the sort she tried to do, knowing that the DUP would inevitably veto it? With the negotiations in such fantastic hands, will the Secretary of State now admit that the only way to move forward without a hard border in Northern Ireland, to protect the jobs of my constituents, is for us to stay in the customs union and the single market?”
“The Minister is doing his best to ignore the fact that the entire board of the social mobility commission has resigned. Why does he think that is? Can he give us an answer?”
“Has it done any planning on ensuring that our legal arrangements enable us to go on with, and not disrupt, the setting up of this extremely important institution as we leave the European Union? Finally, can the Minister give us a definite guarantee? His Government do not believe in the jurisdiction of the European Court, but areas of patent law, particularly in the directives, are currently subject to that jurisdiction. Can the Minister explain to us how on earth we are going to be part of this institution, but not subject to the oversight of the European Court? For the life of me, I cannot work out how that would work.”
“Does the Minister think that we need to come back to this, and change the law and international agreements so that we can proceed smoothly with what we all agree is a desirable outcome? Would that hold up the implementation of what is a wholly good thing? I also note that there are some issues in Germany that are holding up the final ratification of the court. Does the Minister feel that events in Germany will assist us in getting the timing right regarding our desire to enter into new international agreements, or does he think that they will slow down this wholly welcome development? If we do need new international agreements to move forward in the event of our coming out of the European Union by 2019, is his Department geared up to negotiate them?”
“I suspect that that may have some implications for the way in which such a pragmatic and important issue will be dealt with in future. Will the Minister give us the benefit of his observations on that and its implications? I also note that there are experts who feel that the UK will need to take several steps to remain within the ambit of this institution after Brexit, including entering into new international agreements with the other signatories of the agreement on the unified patent court. Those signatories will all, of course, remain in the single market and the EU. We are in the middle of trying to set up this institution, which is what the order is about, just as we are leaving the EU.”