Ukraine

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

I speak to my Ukrainian counterpart each week—often numerous times a week—as does the Secretary of State. At the military level, we are speaking all the time. We have a good understanding of what the Ukrainians need, and in reality, it is all those things. There is a sort of baseline of ammunition to keep them in the fight tomorrow, the day after and the day after that. Then there are the things they need to build a force capable of retaking territory. We are working on delivering it all, not just by ourselves but with our partners around Europe. Ukraine will continue to get all the support that it needs as it seeks to mount a counter-offensive this autumn and beyond.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

It is very important to the war effort in Ukraine that Ukrainian culture is seen and appreciated in the UK. Earlier this year, I raised with the previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), the support needed to allow musicians from Ukraine, such as the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, to perform at the BBC Proms. That performance by the musicians who had fled the war in Ukraine was made possible by a visa fee waiver and support with visa processing. As there is now uncertainty, will the Minister discuss the issue with the Home Secretary so that she can confirm that that essential support will be extended to other Ukrainians who are looking to enter and perform in the UK?

[James Heappey]

I am grateful to have been asked to speak to the Home Secretary, because although I have some expertise on where in the world 152 mm ammunition is manufactured, that is something I had not heard of. I will speak to the Home Secretary and come back to the hon. Lady as quickly as I can.

Ukraine Update

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I will protect the Secretary of State from the temptation to stray outwith his own territory.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I, too, give my thanks to the Defence Secretary for his work and that of his team and for his compassion. I am afraid that I am going to raise another visa issue with him. My constituent is trying to get his young niece to the UK after she fled her home in Ukraine. After endless bureaucratic checks and delays, they have been told today that she has to travel nearly 300 km across Poland to get the decision on her visa. The Defence Secretary will understand that refugees such as my constituent’s niece have already made long and challenging journeys from Ukraine to Poland and now have to make more journeys just to get the decision. My constituent calls the Government’s approach to people fleeing the war in Ukraine “inhumane”. Given the meeting on the visa process that the Secretary of State mentioned, can he press on the Home Secretary the need to offer a compassionate and human response to refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine?

[Mr Wallace]

I do not want to run the risk of making you angry, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will say that I would be delighted to pass that case to my Parliamentary Private Secretary and press the Home Office to resolve it. If I indulge myself here, Madam Deputy Speaker will rule me out of order, because this is a question about the Ukraine situation through Defence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. The Big Lottery Fund effectively provides the funding and has worked with the Royal British Legion to make sure that the money available will include, most notably, the high cost of insurance. If there is any difficulty, I am sure that my hon. Friend will come to see me about that, because it is imperative that there are no bars to our great veterans being able to attend these D-day commemorations.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

19. This 70th anniversary might be the last chance to celebrate with veterans what they did in fighting on D-day, given that there are fewer of them and it is harder for them to travel. As it is so vital to recognise the service and sacrifice given on D-day, can more be done to support veterans and their families in attending various events in this country? So many of them will find it hard to travel to Normandy.

[Anna Soubry]

I am absolutely assured that everything has been done with all the relevant authorities that one would expect to be done to ensure that our veterans can attend. The funding allows family members, carers and supporters, not just the veterans, to attend. That is presumably why 500 veterans have already told us that they are attending, with 4,000 of their carers and friends. There has been some publicity about a form that people have to fill in. They do have to fill in a form, of which I have seen a copy, and it is very sensible. It is not lengthy or complicated, and it will provide us with excellent information so that we can ensure that our veterans take a full part in the commemorations. Unfortunately, as we know, for many of them this may be their last opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Burstow]

Listening to the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), it struck me that the Care Bill could be described as a Bill that was full of ideas that were proposed by the Labour party when it was in government, but was a modest measure. In some ways, I find those two positions contradictory, unless of course the last Government were not the bold, revolutionary Administration whom they often told us they were when they were in office. If we are indeed in a zombie Parliament, that is characteristic of the languid nature of opposition offered by the Labour party.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Paul Burstow]

I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me, but I will make some progress, just as the hon. Gentleman did earlier.

Amendment 11B concerns the Human Rights Act, and I thank Ministers for keeping an open mind and for listening seriously to the concerns raised by Lord Low and others, and to me and other hon. Members who were concerned that an opportunity was being missed to close a gap. Legislation under the previous Government partially but not completely closed the gap, as a result of which those cared for in their own homes did not have the benefit of Human Rights Act protection. The amendment, which was agreed without a vote in the other place, gives that protection. It is the end of a story of seven years of dealing with a gap in the law that was opened by a court judgment. I am grateful that, notwithstanding the difficulties of our bicameral parliamentary process, it has worked at its best on this occasion, because it has meant that concerns raised through the Joint Committee that I chaired, through the Joint Human Rights Committee’s report and by Members in the other place, have now been comprehensively addressed.

Having said that, will the Minister confirm that a person who avails themselves of provisions in the Bill that allow them, as a self-funder, to ask their local authority to arrange their care at the point at which they start to benefit from the means-testing arrangements, and therefore have some support from the local authority, will then be covered by the Human Rights Act?

I would also like to thank the Minister for listening carefully to what has been said at each stage in the passage of the Bill, in both Houses, in respect of the trust special administration regime. It is important to emphasise that the approach set out by the previous Labour Government recognised that trust special administration was a last resort. Earl Howe has emphasised that in the other place. He was very clear that there are powers available to the Trust Development Authority and to Monitor to intervene as necessary in order to avoid trust special administration ever being triggered in the first place. I commend to Members the passage in House of Lords Hansard in which he sets out clearly all the steps that would need to be taken:

“Trust special administrators would be appointed—and I make this point emphatically—only when all other suitable processes to develop sustainable, good healthcare have been exhausted.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 May 2014; Vol. 753, c. 1496.]

It is worth picking up on the point made by the hon. Member for Copeland. Having been given the opportunity to chair a committee looking at the guidance, I think that some of the points he made in his amendments today are exactly the sort that ought to be given proper consideration in the guidance. I hope that he, other Front Benchers, and indeed other hon. Members who have experience of the only two trust special administration processes that have taken place to date, will offer the committee their views and insights so that we can ensure that the advice we give the Government on guidance is as good and as clear as possible.

As was made very clear in the other place, we are not talking about a power that will effectively enable a wholesale reorganisation of the health economy. The Bill is very clear that this is about those matters that might require necessary and consequential changes. The amendments that were agreed in the other place, without a vote, make it clear that the essential services of trusts that find themselves drawn into a trust special administration process will be a proper consideration in the decision-making process.

It is curious that the Labour party now seems to want us to look at access in a different way from the way in which the trust special administration process that it put in place provided for. In other words, why was there no test on access with regard to the trust that was in special administration under its arrangements? Why did that not matter then but does matter now?

I think that the Government have listened very closely to what has been said and changed the Bill in a way that reflects the concerns that I described on Report. We will have the chance to comment further on the guidance—I hope that the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) and others will offer input into that—which will give us another opportunity to ensure that it is as tight and effective as possible on those very rare occasions when it is used.

I hope that consideration of the Bill will be concluded today and that it will make the difference to well-being, as a central principle, and to parity between those who receive care and those who give it. That is what the Bill does, and they are great things, and it is about time that they were on the statute book.

2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers

Baroness Keeley Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on securing this debate and on the way he opened it.

I spoke in the pre-recess Adjournment debate on 17 July about the anger felt in Salford and across Greater Manchester about the Government’s decision to axe 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. The Manchester Evening News has run a strong campaign urging the Government to rethink their plans. The campaign has attracted 15,000 people to sign petitions, including the petition of 10,000 handed in today to Downing street. Many former Fusiliers from Greater Manchester, including those from Salford whom I am pleased to have met, were on the march today. There is great strength of feeling in our area and today I shall talk about what the battalion means to people in Salford, and to one family in particular.

We have heard, but it bears repeating, that the 2nd Battalion has a long and distinguished service history dating back to the Lancashire Fusiliers—indeed, Fusiliers first took that title in 1685 and have fought in every major engagement since. In 1968, when the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was formed from the four English Fusilier regiments, they inherited from the Lancashire Fusiliers a regimental history steeped in tradition. As the hon. and gallant Gentlemen said, the regiment won more Victoria Crosses in the great war than any other regiment: 19 of the heroes of the Lancashire Fusiliers were awarded the VC, including the six the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) just described who won the VC in the action at Gallipoli. Many of the regiment’s soldiers have given their lives fighting for this country.

In 2009, the 2nd Battalion completed a tour in Afghanistan in which it lost seven men killed in action; others were wounded, some very seriously. Three of the seven died together in an explosion while on patrol near Sangin in Helmand province on 16 August 2009. One of them was Fusilier Simon Annis, from Salford. Simon and fellow Fusilier Louis Carter were trying to drag their injured comrade, Lance Corporal James Fullarton, to safety after a roadside bomb blast. As the pair lifted Lance Corporal Fullarton on to a stretcher, they triggered a second device, causing an explosion. All three soldiers died at the scene.

Simon Annis was on his first operational tour. He was described by his commanding officer as follows:

“Always at the heart of whatever was going on, it was no surprise to me that he died whilst trying to save his mortally wounded Section Commander. He should be seen as a shining example to the nation of what selfless commitment really means.”

Simon was 22 years old and had been married for just one month before he deployed to Afghanistan. I met his parents, my constituents Ann and Peter Annis, when the 2nd Battalion had its homecoming parade from Afghanistan later in 2009. Salford people lined the streets to give the returning soldiers a warm welcome, and I was so proud to be at that parade and to meet Mr and Mrs Annis. When the news came through about the axing of the battalion in which her son had served, Simon’s mother commented:

“Simon was so proud to serve in the battalion and now this feels like a smack in the face… Lads are still in Afghanistan and dying out in Afghanistan and the Army are talking about cuts and job losses. Morale must be at rock bottom.

I look at Simon’s headstone at his grave and it says ‘2nd Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers’. He was so proud to serve in the battalion.”

This week, Mrs Annis told me her thoughts:

“As the mother of a Fusilier who paid the ultimate sacrifice for his Queen, his country and his battalion, I can only see this decision as a betrayal of trust for the soldiers still serving and to the memory of the brave men who have given their lives while serving in this historically proud regiment.”

She said that this is

“a decision that surely cannot be justified with the recruitment figures for the battalion. This can only be seen as cost-cutting rather than restructuring.

When I read the names on the Wall of Remembrance at the National Arboretum, I was immensely proud to be the mother of a young lad whose name appears alongside the names of such brave men from the 2nd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.

Over and over again I have heard government excuses and reasons why this battalion should be axed, yet I still see no valid reason.”

She added:

“I urge you to think and reconsider the decision.”

I strongly support Mrs Annis’s views and, together with hon. Members across the House, am asking the Government to reconsider. As Mrs Annis said, the decision to axe the battalion feels like a betrayal of the memory of her son Simon and the other soldiers who have given their lives.

There is a deep attachment in Salford and across Greater Manchester to the 2nd Battalion, which was formed from the Lancashire Fusiliers and has such a long and proud history of service to this country. It is linked to Salford and, as we have heard, to Bury, Rochdale and Manchester. The loss of the battalion at this time of higher unemployment in our area of Greater Manchester would significantly reduce the opportunities for local people who want to enter a career serving their country, as young Simon Annis did, and it would of course put 600 soldiers and officers at risk of being made redundant.

I probably do not need to rehearse the key issue in the matter. As we have heard, the 2nd Battalion currently has a very good record on recruitment; it has 523 trained soldiers out of a maximum strength of 532. Brigadier David Paterson, the battalion’s honorary colonel, has described it as

“the strongest in raw manning and deployable strength”.

Surely that is a key factor. He also pointed out that the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is the only regiment set to grow over the next six months. Brigadier Paterson has questioned the criteria being used to single out the unit for cuts when it is actually in such a strong position for recruitment. It seems that officers who understand the situation do not agree with the reasoning behind the decision to axe the battalion. The previous Labour Government’s plans meant that the Army would not have ended up with single-battalion regiments. This Government’s plans leave regiments such as the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in a weaker position. When the hon. and gallant Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) spoke about that earlier, he called it a disgrace.

I urge Ministers to reconsider the decision to axe the 2nd battalion. I hope that they will respect its proud history and valour, its current strong recruiting position and, most of all, the sacrifice of fallen Fusiliers such as Simon Annis. The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers has had the freedom of the city of Salford since 1974. I and the people of Salford and Greater Manchester are very proud of the 2nd Battalion. Losing it would be a great loss to us. They are England’s finest.