Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

Funding councils must be accountable for their own individual decisions. My hon. Friend no doubt reflects the concern of his constituents, who expect, in return for our record expenditure on research, the discovery of life-saving medicines, or groundbreaking technology; that is what they expect in return for hard-earned taxpayers’ money.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)]

T2. A representative of the World Economic Forum told the audience at Davos that “we own the science”. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that scientific research in the UK is impartial, objective and ethical, regardless of who is funding it?

[Andrew Griffith]

That is absolutely right. It is intrinsic to the scientific method that research is impartial, and that it is challenged, public, transparent and open. That is always our commitment, but it is also to fully fund research and to turn this country into the science and technology superpower that it deserves to be.

Infected Blood Compensation Scheme

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We have previously engaged on the British Steel matter and the unscrupulous exploitation of people moving from defined benefit to defined contribution schemes. That is at the top of my mind and I am applying it to my consideration of these matters.

The hon. Gentleman asked about his constituent David and bereaved children. The principle is that affected and infected individuals qualify in their own right. The passporting of affected individuals to qualify, based on the infected and the estates of infected, is clear. The details of how that process will happen will become very clear very quickly. We will make resources available through a website, and people can register for updates so that they can receive them as quickly as they wish. Forgive me, I cannot say more than that today, but I think I have set out the principles of how this will operate. The operationalisation needs to happen quickly, and I will provide updates on that in due course.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)]

I would like to pay tribute to my constituent Robert Angwin, who has campaigned for justice for himself and all others who have been affected by this scandal for decades.

Yesterday and today, from both sides of the House we have heard the line, “Lessons have been learned. Action will be taken.” I imagine that that is exactly what we would have heard if we were here in 1972 when the thalidomide scandal broke. Since then, we have had OxyContin, Vioxx and Primodos—the list goes on and on, all the way to the experimental covid-19 vaccines today.

Does the Minister agree that the only real lesson that has been learned has been learned by the public—that they cannot trust any Government to protect them from unsafe medicines and treatments? Crimes have been committed. It is a crime to cover up a crime. When are the arrests going to start? If they have to include current and former Members of this House, so be it.

[John Glen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. Sir Robert makes clear some very profound challenges to the British state that need a profound response from Government, and that will happen in due course.

Access to Redress Schemes

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord]

The hon. Member is right about time-barring. I have a similar case with a constituent of mine, which might chime with hers. Nigel Cairns is trapped in what he describes as a

“complete nightmare scenario, with no way of escape”

after egregious misconduct by a bank. In 2007, Nigel took out a loan of £350,000 from HSBC. He had his house demolished in readiness to rebuild. In preparation for the work, the bank declared the termination and return of the loan. That was in 2007, when the financial crisis was very much with us. The bank subsequently agreed to reinstate the loan, but altered some of the terms and conditions so that the interest rate became double what Nigel had originally agreed to. After 10 years of repayments, the bank declared that unless he could sell the property or repay the loan, it would have to foreclose on him. The Financial Ombudsman Service refused to look into the matter initially and subsequently Mr Cairns received only £1,500 for the stress and anxiety of the case.

The APPG’s review, looking across 12 compensation schemes, found that over the past 20 years, the number of people affected amounted to a little over 78,000 people. When we consider some of the harrowing cases we are describing today, that number is thankfully quite small, but it says to us that it is a small enough number that these people could have timely redress and compensation, if only we had a body that could sort it out. That brings me on to another example: infected blood. During business questions this morning, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), as she always does on a Thursday, drove home on behalf of her constituents the need to compensate promptly those people affected by the infected blood scandal. In the last 24 hours, we have heard of a proposed Government amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill to try to bring about compensation. I completely agree with the right hon. Member that by not setting a deadline for that compensation, we allow this issue to run and run. In the other place, the Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Brinton sought to take that up with the Government, and proposed an amendment that was much more vigorous in setting a timeframe for compensation, but the Government chose not to adopt it.

I have a constituent whose friend who has been affected by the infected blood scandal. Some of the tales that she has passed on are really harrowing. Her friend said:

“In my 20s I was planning my funeral and feeling like I was contaminated and filthy. I met and married someone prepared to date a woman with poisoned blood.”

She speaks of how it caused a

“host of long-term devastating side effects”.

She continued:

“I lost my career as an IT consultant, it made me infertile so I have been unable to have a family, and we had we had to stop IVF and surrogacy attempts because I became too ill to be a parent. I’ve had brain, body, psychological and emotional impacts from this virus. And then decades of exhausted fighting for an evasive and oft-denied justice, which caused its own damage, including most recently the end of my marriage.”

Such people deserve to be compensated promptly. They do not need the stress and worry of a scheme that always seems to roll out into the future, and of having to fight at every turn.

Mass redress schemes are set up on an ad hoc basis. They are voluntary, and established to tackle a specific scandal, following failure of a given organisation’s internal complaints procedures. How do we ensure that the victims of our largest and most damaging scandals, and any unfortunate future victims, are protected from unfair treatment and appropriately compensated? We need the framework for redress to be improved to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes again. This debate is a call to action for Ministers. The Government must establish a clear framework based on best practice.

The HBOS Reading compensation scheme is another example. In 2017, after 15 years, six individuals were sentenced to a cumulative 47 years in prison for their role in a fraud that left its victims, in the words of the sentencing judge, “cheated, defeated and penniless”. Eight years on, we have had more than two years of the discredited Griggs review, and a further two years reviewing the review and coming up with new recommendations. We are now in the fourth year of the Foskett panel. We would think that by now that we would have got it right, but all the perpetrators of the crime are out of prison, the victims have yet to be compensated, and serious questions remain about the panel.

There is a set of underlying principles that would establish a common-sense bedrock for any compensation scheme and how it should be built.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)]

On the composition of the Foskett panel and the huge delays in the compensation due to those defrauded in the HBOS scandal, there have been allegations that Lloyds bank had a big part in deciding who was appointed to the panel. Would that not explain the delays, and why people are not being paid the compensation that they believe they deserve?

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

In the spring statement in March 2022, the review of public bodies was announced, as the hon. Lady knows. That will give us significant savings. There are 125 arm’s length body reviews, covering 90% of arm’s length body expenditure. Honestly, I am not familiar with the exact protocols around publication, but I am happy to look into it, and I will come back to her.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)]

In 2012, the Cabinet Office rejected my request that it fund the forensic investigation into the Horizon IT system by Second Sight. Indeed, the Cabinet Office insisted that the Post Office pay for its own investigation, which ultimately allowed the Post Office to try to control and coerce the lead investigator Ron Warmington, thus delaying justice for the sub-postmasters. Will the Minister look into the reasoning behind this historic decision and write to me about it, please?

[Alex Burghart]

I am happy to do that.

Security Update

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend has a great deal of experience from his time as a Minister, and we worked together on these issues. Telecoms security is precisely an example of the approach. First, we put national security before economic security. On a purely economic interest basis, we should not have removed Huawei’s equipment from our networks. We put national security first, and I was transparent with the House about that. We also took the powers in the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021, which is the legislation required to provide that protection of our national security. That is yet more evidence of how the Government are taking a more robust approach and increasing the amount of activity with every passing month and year.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Reclaim)]

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his statement. I am sensitive to the restrictions on both the questions and the answers, but we know—these facts are in the public domain—that two individuals have been arrested on suspicion of working for a hostile power and that they were parliamentary passholders. Their passes will have been sponsored by individuals who are probably in this Chamber, and they passed the security vetting for a parliamentary pass. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that in due course—not today—an important question will have to be answered: were they recruited by the hostile power before or after they became passholders?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We must be careful what detail we go into, and I know the Deputy Prime Minister is aware of that.

Departure of Previous Home Secretary

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

That is not information I am privy to and nor should it necessarily be in the public domain. It has been made very clear, from the statement at the start, that we are dealing with sensitive Government matters. It is important that sensitive Government documents are kept sensitive, and that is the reason the Home Secretary tendered her resignation. She recognises that the ministerial code was breached and that is why, as outlined in her letter, she resigned.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

For the avoidance of doubt, will the Minister outline the Government’s current policy on immigration, and will he tell the House whether it is under review at the moment?

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, and I refer him to the previous answers given. Again, it is not for me to discuss policy today as much as it is to discuss the reasons for the resignation of the Home Secretary. However, I am sure that the new Home Secretary will come to the House at a future date to discuss that in line with the growth plan and our commitments to tackle immigration.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

We are working in partnership with the food industry—indeed, only yesterday I chaired a roundtable with industry representatives—and also working in partnership across the United Kingdom. We had representatives from the devolved Administrations there yesterday for what is a common purpose. We all want to see resilience, given the pressure on food prices, and we are working in partnership with industry representatives to take that strategy forward.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend outline what steps his Department is taking to mitigate the effects of the war in Ukraine on world supplies of food?

[Steve Barclay]

One specific area is working with international partners as to how we get the grain out of Ukraine. There is a pressing timescale on that—a four-week window—so the matter is urgent. Indeed, when I met the US ambassador who has newly arrived in her post, that was one of the issues we discussed, as we do with other international partners.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Lady. As she knows, we will assess the question of the applicability of the Sewel convention, quite rightly, when the full Bill of Rights text is provided. This reform will strengthen free speech, but curb the ability of, for example, criminals to take advantage of and abuse the system. I believe that that will be welcomed in all four nations.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that reform of our human rights framework will help to prevent foreign national offenders from avoiding deportation and help to restore some public confidence in our human rights legislation?

[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend is right. The still high volume—around 70%—of successful challenges, on human rights grounds, of deportation orders by foreign national offenders is on article 8 grounds. That is exactly the kind of thing that our reforms will address and the public across the UK will welcome.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I do not think that anybody should doubt that we have the measures in place. Our sanctions regime is bold and we have taken swift, comprehensive measures. I also remind the hon. Lady that only last week the Deputy Prime Minister announced further measures on strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs. When we talk about powerful oligarchs in this country, that is important. Judge us by the actions. I am sure we all agree that these measures are swift and comprehensive and, most importantly, will have an impact on the Putin regime.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the international sanctions causing such hardship to the Russian people are totally the responsibility of one man, and his name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin?

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend puts it perfectly. Of course, the sanctions will have and are having an economic impact. We have no quarrel with the Russian people. The blame for that impact lies squarely at the door of the Kremlin, and I think the whole world knows that.

Ukraine

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Food security is an important consideration. One of the many things that our fantastic Ukrainian community has done in the last few years is to help us in that very sector.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that western Europe’s ongoing reliance on Russian oil and gas has been a major factor in emboldening President Putin in the mistaken belief that he can invade his peaceful neighbour with relative impunity? In the UK, should we not refocus our energy policy on maximising the use of our own natural resources and look again at fracking while we invest in low carbon alternatives?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is totally right when he talks about the excessive dependence on hydrocarbons. We are moving away from it in this country. I think he and I might agree that there is merit, during a transitional phase, in continuing with the use of hydrocarbons in this country rather than pointlessly importing them from abroad.