Covid-19 Support Schemes: Ineligible People

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I extend my congratulations to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). Two minutes does not give hon. Members much time to comment on the issues raised with them, but I thank the Chancellor, who took the time to speak to me last week specifically on the newly self-employed, who we know—it has been mentioned in the debate—have been among the hardest-hit groups.

I pay tribute to the Chilbolton and Wherwell small business group, which set up as a self-help group for many small businesses in those villages to find ways to support one another. It has come to me with tales of company directors who are not eligible for support, of microbusinesses set up from home that do not pay business rates and therefore are not eligible for those grants, and of very new businesses—the newly self-employed. I reiterate the pleas for help for them.

I will mention three cases from my constituency. First, Jo, from the events industry, tells me that she and her husband have been forced to sleep in friends’ spare rooms so that they can Airbnb their home. Secondly, there is the lady trying to live on child benefit because her husband earned more than £50,000 last year but nothing this year, giving them an income of just £25,000 a year over two years. Thirdly, I hesitate to use the word “pensioner”, but my constituent Susan is drawing a small pension of £11,000 a year and supplementing it with self-employment. However, because less than half her income comes from that, she is not eligible for the self-employment income support scheme. She says she needs to augment her pension, but she is really struggling to get by.

There are tales of real hardship where mortgage holidays have come to an end and loan repayments are having to be made again. These people are really struggling. I know that my neighbour the Minister, who will be familiar with many of the places I mentioned, will do his best to listen and respond, but the argument every Member has made is that people need help now. Christmas is coming; please give them some hope.

Lockdown: Economic Support

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I do find it somewhat surprising to be asked to have a meeting the day after I had a meeting with the First Minister of Scotland, who I assume spoke with the authority of the Scottish Finance Minister. I have regular meetings with the Scottish Finance Minister. I hope, and certainly feel from my point of view, that we have a very constructive dialogue. It is in part due to her representations that the Barnett guarantee—this unprecedented up-front guarantee—was put in place, and I look forward to further discussions with her in the weeks ahead.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

Pubs such as the Crown Inn in King’s Somborne are really concerned about how they will weather the coming lockdown. They make the not unreasonable point that if it is safe to sell takeaway food, it should also be safe to sell takeaway beer. Will my right hon. Friend look at this anomaly and see if he can throw a lifeline to these valuable community hubs?

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. She will know that in terms of the epidemiology and the guidance, that is for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, but she is right with these questions to point to the economic impact of the measures. That is something on which we continue to have close dialogue with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that she gets the clarification she seeks.

Covid-19: Disparate Impact

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

It does not appear to me that the hon. Lady has actually read the statement that I sent to her. She asks about what the Government are doing. I have just given a statement about what the Government have been doing over four months.

I think we need to restate this: we did not wait until today to say what we were going to do. As soon as we discovered this disproportionate impact, actions were put in place. The hon. Lady talks about us not issuing revised guidance to employers, but we did that in July and, as I said in my statement, we did it again in September, highlighting the findings of the PHE review and explaining how to make workplaces covid-secure. We required passengers to wear a face covering in taxis and private hire vehicles, and we asked this to be done for hospitality staff, many of whom are from ethnic minority backgrounds. We provided £4.3 million in funding for six new projects. We provided a range of guidance to support those living in multi-generational households. We spent an additional £4 million on reaching ethnic minority people through tailored messaging, strategically chosen channels and trusted voic-es.

The hon. Lady talks about the NHS guidance and risk assessments as though that was the only thing we have done. We have been implementing new payments for people in low-income areas with high rates of covid-19 who need to self-isolate and cannot work from home. What we are not going to do—it is clear what the hon. Lady and her party are expecting—is to implement segregated policies for people from ethnic minority backgrounds. What we are doing is looking at risk groups, but tailoring support for the whole population.

The hon. Lady talks about the IPPR report, and my answer is that I do not recognise those figures. Its methodology was not transparent, and our statisticians in the Cabinet Office could not understand where it got the numbers from. I found the presentation scaremongering and alarming. It is really important to me that we let people have trust and faith in the Government, and that we let them know what we are doing. That is why I am standing here in Parliament giving this oral statement, rather than just making a report to the Prime Minister.

The hon. Lady talks about what the Government have done. I wrote a letter to every single Member of Parliament asking them to share with ethnic minorities and their communities how they can join the national vaccine register, and I have been taking vaccines myself. Opposition Members have not been doing so. Especially when it comes to the hon. Lady, knowing that she has a large ethnic minority population in her community, what has she done to tell them to join the national vaccine register? We have not seen anything to that effect on her social media. It would be good if Opposition Members showed us that they are looking to help people, rather than looking for reasons to bash the Government. We must not politicise covid-19.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con) [V]]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for advance sight of her statement, which arrived while I was at a conference with Dr Tony Sewell, the chair of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities. His passion for ensuring that there is no stigma is equalled only by that of my hon. Friend. I welcome her commitment to mandatory recording of ethnicity data on death certificates, but could I ask her to give us a little more information about the commitment on new evidence relating to the clinically extremely vulnerable? Exactly how will that be incorporated into health policy, and by when?

Black History Month

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) on securing this important debate this afternoon.

I was pleased to attend earlier in the month, albeit virtually, the launch of Black History Month in Southampton. Our city has a proud tradition of celebrating the month, usually with a range of fantastic events in real life, but this year of course it is all virtual. I am reminded that back in 2018 I went, as immigration Minister then, to St Mary’s fire station, where there is a beautiful mural to celebrate the arrival of the Empire Windrush. I gently point out to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) that almost half of those of the Windrush generation who were wronged had either a deportation or a detention prior to 2010 under a Labour Government, albeit perhaps not a Labour Government particularly to his liking, and that it was, of course, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) who coined the phrase “a really hostile environment”. But I do not want this debate to degenerate into party politics; we have already heard, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) said, too much tetchiness this afternoon and this should be a celebration of Black History Month.

I would particularly like to pay tribute to those people like Lou Taylor from Southampton, and Don John and Stevina Southwell, all of whom have reached out to me over the past few years to make sure that I am better educated about the black history of my city, and I will now follow the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), who spoke about cricket, in talking about football, and particularly about a constituent of mine, Paul Williams, who was a professional footballer for Southampton. He had a great career: he moved around the country, but he chose to finish his playing days in Southampton and retired to the city. He can tell horrendous stories of racism in football. I pay tribute to the Premier League and the Football Association for their campaigns to Show Racism the Red Card and Kick It Out, but the reality is that these were not racist events that happened many decades ago; it was less than 20 years ago. It is really shocking to see a man of my age reduced to tears from the experiences he had on the pitch. I heard of his determination to ensure that future generations do not suffer the same. His real passion nowadays is not football, but education, and I met him at one of my local secondary schools to talk about how they could do better to ensure that young people understand the history of our country in the most holistic and rounded way.

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Islington North because he said this, too, but we should not be celebrating Black History Month. Perhaps we should not be focusing on history—perhaps it should be about culture, art, music, science and all those fantastic role models across the curriculum. We should not be doing it in a month, because we should be embedding it across the year. As Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, I am proud to be working hand in hand with the Petitions Committee to talk about how we can improve the black history curriculum and make sure that it is properly embedded.

I speak as the representative of a small town called Romsey, the birthplace of a fantastic woman called Florence Nightingale. Every time there is any discussion about removing Nightingale from the history curriculum, there is absolute uproar. The Nightingale Society comes and speaks to me and says, “You have to do everything you can. Of the great Victorians, Nightingale is right up there.” I often say, because sometimes I like to be a little provocative, “How about Mary Seacole?” We have the Seacole wing at the Royal South Hants Hospital, and we have the Nightingale ward in Romsey Hospital. I always say, “Can we not have both? Can we not ensure that the history of our country is properly represented, including all people, all faiths, all colours and all backgrounds?” It is crucial that we work very hard to do just that.

She is no longer in her place, which is disappointing, but I was delighted to hear the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) talk about allyship, and that is such an important phrase. When I took over as Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, I came under fire from SOAS because I was not diverse enough. It appeared utterly ignorant of the process, which is now an election—it is hardly my fault that it was an uncontested election—and I said to it then as I say to it now, “You have got me wrong if you think I cannot be an ally of black communities, of Asian communities and of minority ethnic communities. You have got me absolutely wrong if you think that my Committee will not go after compulsory reporting of the ethnicity pay gap every bit as much as we care about the compulsory reporting of the gender pay gap.” I say to the Minister, gently, please can we have that reporting back? She should expect over the course of the coming months that my pleas will not be so gentle.

It is imperative that wherever we are from and from whatever background, we are determined, willing and happy to stand up and be counted. As the hon. Member for Brent Central said, we must be prepared to speak up and not just stand silent. By standing silent, we are not doing our part.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making a very good and passionate speech. She just mentioned that we now have a mandatory obligation to report on the gender pay gap, but not on the ethnicity pay gap. For that reason exactly, I introduced my private Member’s Bill about all ethnic minority shortlists, because local parties have the opportunity under the Equalities Act 2010 to have all women shortlists. Does she not agree that there is a gap in the Equalities Act in that sense?

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady makes an important point, but it is not just about shortlists. I am a big supporter of the work done under section 106 of the 2010 Act to make sure that we are identifying not just those who make it as candidates, but those who do not, because it is imperative that every party across the board looks carefully at how they are encouraging people to come forward and stand for election. They need to make sure that the barriers that do exist—they exist for women, for disabled people and for BAME people—are beaten down at every level, whether that be local councils or this place.

I always say that when I arrived here in 2010, there were massive celebrations on this side of the House, because finally we had more than 17 women elected to the Conservative Benches. We are now more than 80, and I always argue that that progress is too slow. While the Chamber looks very different from how it looked just 10 years ago, there remains a huge amount to do. I have absolutely no doubt that my hon. Friend the Minister will soon be in the Cabinet, but that is not enough. We need there to be more women. We need there to be more people from BAME backgrounds. We need there to be more people with disability. We need more LGBTQ people, and the list goes on.

I finish—almost promptly, but I was allowed an intervention—by saying that my Committee will undoubtedly look at the new commission that has been set up to look at racial disparities, but my message to the Government is that the time for reviews is done. We have done many reviews over the past two decades. What we need is action.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Barclay]

[Caroline Nokes]

[Steve Barclay]

Public Health Restrictions: Government Economic Support

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady is right to point to the fact that when the Government put in place the £10,000 and £25,000 grants of support linked to premises, market traders fell outside of that scheme because it was based on property. The specific issue of market traders was raised with us, and in response we put in place a further support scheme giving discretionary grants to local authorities in order that they could tailor that additional funding to local circumstances. I think she could raise this issue with her local council and ask why it has not used the discretionary grants to support those traders to whom she refers.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I hugely welcome the expanded jobs support scheme, which is so important, but what it does not do is help those businesses that supply the events industry—for example, the sound engineers and lighting engineers and, in my constituency, Beat the Street, which provides tour buses to the music industry. It has not been forced to shut down, but it has seen its trade wiped out. I urge my right hon. Friend to think of ways in which he can help companies such as that, which employ in excess of 150 people and can see no end in sight to their current financial woes.

[Steve Barclay]

My right hon. Friend rightly highlights an industry and a sector that have been particularly hit. Again, we have tried, through the package of measures such as the extension of the self-employed income support scheme, to help some of those within that sector. I think the business to which she is referring is more a pay-as-you-earn one, but it is often freelancers who work in, say, the lighting sector and the events sector, and they have been particularly impacted. That is why the self-employed scheme was introduced. To some extent, and given the over £200 million of support, the Chancellor has been very candid, as have I, about the fact that we were not in a position as a Government to save every single job. We are working with colleagues—I am always happy to work with my right hon. Friend—to look at what measures we can take, but it has to be balanced against the wider fiscal position.

Protection of Jobs and Businesses

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and that might mean some of the niceties go out of the window.

My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary is absolutely right to have identified the great long list of support that has gone to business, and I thank him for doing so because I now do not have to. I welcome the presence on the Front Bench of my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. I would like to pay particular tribute to him for the help he has given me with individual constituency cases, particularly, I note, with one small business and Lloyds Banking Group. The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) has just left—in time for me to make that point.

I want to put on record some local perspective of where businesses in Romsey and Southampton North have had assistance: over 10,000 jobs protected by the furlough scheme; £9.5 million to self-employed people; more than £42 million of bounce back loans; and £17.5 million in business grants. Those are very significant figures. The borough council has worked hand in hand with the Government in reaching out to small businesses, making sure all those who are eligible applied and received assistance. Some 47,000 meals have been eaten via eat out to help out. Could my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary pass on to the Chancellor the particular thanks of the lady I met in the Cromwell Arms in Romsey who wanted to talk about the “lovely local lad” who is of course my right hon. Friend the Chancellor?

Turning to the issue of ongoing support for local businesses, I was pleased to hear this week from Simon Parkes of Elumin8, a Romsey-based business making advanced lighting systems for the automotive industry. He is looking to recruit between three and five new employees—young employees—as soon as possible, and is keen to make the kickstart scheme work not just for his business, but for the benefit of such unemployed young people. Both he and the local council are working with the local enterprise partnership to bring together the minimum number of 30 needed so that more local businesses will be able to benefit. It is great to see the determination to make schemes work and get young people into real jobs who will then enable his business, even in difficult economic times, to thrive and grow.

I commend the support that has gone to hospitality. We know it is a sector that employs many young people and, indeed, many women—an interest I have particularly. I pay tribute to the Four Horseshoes in Nursling, which is continuing the scheme on its own terms, and I know across the country many are doing the same. However, it would be remiss of me not to return to a sector that I have raised many times in this House and will continue to champion. The beauty industry employs over 370,000 people, over 90% of whom are women. They have stayed locked down longer than other industries, and in some parts of the country they remain locked down, so I welcome the grants that my right hon. Friend has mentioned.

The green homes scheme is a great scheme and one that can provide energy efficiency and jobs, but please can we make it as wide as possible, so that companies such as Kelda Technology in my constituency, which makes showers, can also benefit from it, reducing energy costs through reducing water heating costs?

Finally, on those in the events industry, my right hon Friend the Chancellor is working really hard to rebalance the economy, but these are small businesses which, if allowed to thrive, will in turn be paying tax in years to come, enabling us to rebalance the economy.

The Economy

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to this afternoon’s debate. I pay tribute to the measures that the Chancellor announced. My right hon. Friend has worked incredibly hard to ensure that we get the economy moving again. I do not see an economy that is stalling; I see some real efforts to put drive behind it and make sure that we can come out of the pandemic in good shape.

However, we do need to build the economy for women as well as men; for young, as well as old; for those from all parts of the United Kingdom, all ethnicities and all religions. Surely part of levelling up means that we must make it better for absolutely everyone. If covid has taught us one thing, let it be that when we pull together, we can get real action and the strength of community that all of us have seen in our constituencies.

I absolutely welcome the news on apprenticeships, which are such a key part of making sure that young people get into their first job and develop a trade, and are able to progress in their lives. I absolutely endorse the measures that the Chancellor has announced. But this has to be about reaching across the age range and across the gender divide, so we need more to help those women who might come out of this pandemic in worse shape than they went into it. We need to help them retrain, upskill and find new parts of the economy that they can work in. I pay tribute to the Government’s record. We went into the pandemic with female employment at a record higher—higher than it had ever been in my lifetime—but we must not see that go backwards. We already know from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that woman were more likely to be furloughed during covid and are more likely to be in parts of the economy that remain shut down.

It would be remiss of me, after a week of discussing this subject, if I did not draw the Minister’s attention to the beauty industry, a sector that remain shut down. It employs 370,000 people, the vast majority of whom are women. They have asked me to point out, time and again, that they are the entrepreneurs. They are the women who have learnt a trade, built their own businesses and gone on to employ others. They have taken risk by renting premises, and in some instances they are still having to pay rent while those premises remain shut down. I do not speak just for beauticians; I speak for those practising complementary therapies, and for yoga instructors, dance instructors and those working in sectors that help our wellbeing, ones that we may well want to turn to when lockdown is finally relaxed in its entirety. I was cheered by the comments of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister earlier today when he gave some indication that we might expect an announcement—we hope, fingers crossed—later this week. It is high time that these people were given something to work for—an opportunity to start building their client list back up and an opportunity to make appointments. If not, I respectfully ask the Minister that he make some representation asking for additional fiscal support for them, because they are really struggling and want some hope.

In the 45 seconds I have left, I wish to echo the comments of the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on childcare. I lobbied Treasury Ministers before this statement to say that we needed help for that sector. I appreciate that the sector has had support from the 33 hours offer, but the sector goes into the relaxation of lockdown having to make social distancing changes in premises and possibly having to reduce the number of spaces that can be provided. That means women may well not be able to go back to work if they cannot find the childcare they need. With schools not open until September, this industry is close to crisis. I just leave that thought with the Economic Secretary.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

After the next speaker, I will reduce the time limit to three minutes, but Emma Hardy has four minutes.

Public Health England Review: Covid-19 Disparities

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

It is imperative that we understand the key drivers of those disparities, the relationships between different risk factors, and what we can do to close the gap. That way, we will ensure that we do not take action that is not warranted by the evidence. The hon. Lady is right: Public Health England did not make recommendations, because it was not able to do so. Some of the data needed is not routinely collected, but acquiring it would be extremely beneficial. As I said earlier, I will be taking forward work to fill the gaps in our understanding, and review existing policies or develop new ones where needed. It is important to remind ourselves that this review was conducted in a short period, and it sets out firm conclusions. As the author of the report said on Tuesday night, there is a great deal of background and detailed information that we think will be helpful. It is not easy to go directly from analysis to making recommendations, and we must widely disseminate and discuss the report before deciding what needs to be done.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

The Race Disparity Unit is now in the Cabinet Office and at the heart of Government. My hon. Friend is right to say that it needs all the available data to make the correct recommendations. Will she reassure me, from the heart of Government, that this will not just be a matter for the Equalities Office or for the Department of Health and Social Care, but that it will include the Departments for Work and Pensions, for Transport and for Education? In all those areas we might expect to see real commitment to action that will make lives better for our BAME communities.

[Kemi Badenoch]

My right hon. Friend is right, and I thank her for that question. Equalities are not something that happens in the Equalities Office; equalities happen across Whitehall. Every Department has responsibility to ensure that it makes the right policies for all the people who are impacted by the activities that are carried out, and I will continue to work with them on that.

Self-employed Persons: Financial Support

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I am very happy to make it a six-word slogan, if the hon. Gentleman prefers: “Help is coming”, and we will do, “Whatever it takes”. As to whether the House will sit, that is not an issue for the Government, as he well knows as an experienced Member of the House. Whether the House sits—whether Ministers are called to answer questions—is a matter for the Chair, and not for Ministers. In fact, we had an urgent question last week, and we have one here, so that suggests that Mr Speaker is keen to ensure, quite properly, that Ministers are held to account.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

Many self-employed have already taken the right decision and socially distanced themselves—the hairdressers who have not gone into care homes, the taxi drivers, the driving instructors—but they are looking for some reassurance from my right hon. Friend that they have done the right thing and will not be penalised for it.

[Steve Barclay]

Again, that is quite right in terms of the self-employed, which includes many hairdressers, but my right hon. Friend will also be aware of measures we have already taken—they will support many hairdressing businesses—such as the business rate relief and the grants. The £10,000 grants targeted at the 700,000 smaller businesses are, again, part of the package of measures to apply to some of that population. However, it is clear from many of the questions that populations are not tightly set, and that there is a degree of overlap and underlap, which is what we are working through.