Afghan Refugees: Deportation from Pakistan
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Catherine West(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on presenting the urgent question, and on her work across the House in relation to, in particular, the women who are suffering in these circumstances.
Although Afghanistan no longer occupies the headlines, all of us—on both sides of the House—know that the situation in the country is stark. Women are living under a gender apartheid, and the men and women who fought bravely for a better Afghanistan alongside British armed services are often targeted and killed by the Taliban, as has been confirmed by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. Labour has always been clear that we owe many Afghans a debt of gratitude for supporting British aims in Afghanistan. The Minister mentioned the figure of 5,500, but how many people does she estimate now require protection so that they are not repatriated back across the border?
Will the Minister also answer three other brief questions for the information of the House? First, could she detail the discussions she has had with the Pakistani Government to halt or at least limit the returns to Afghanistan? Secondly, what steps is she taking to belatedly bring to safety at-risk Afghans, particularly former members of the Afghan security force, especially now that certain members are no longer in the Government and may not be there to make the case for these vulnerable individuals? Thirdly, what steps are being taken to commit to a strategy across the board to support women and girls in Afghanistan, to give them hope that they have not been forgotten, and to recognise the important work done in these Houses of Parliament by Baroness Kennedy and others on gender apartheid?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Catherine West(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. You won’t get your turn if you shout from there.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
Points of Order
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Catherine West
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving me notice of her point of order. No, the Chair does not have the power—nor has it ever in the whole of our constitutional development—to require the Government to place any document in the Library, and certainly not legal advice. The hon. Lady, who is well versed in these matters, has rightly used the opportunity of a point of order to put her opinion on the record, and I am sure that it will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench. As I say, she is well versed in these matters, and she will know it has been the long-standing practice of Governments of every political persuasion not to publish their legal advice. That is the normal course, and I certainly have no power from the Chair to compel the Government to do otherwise.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last week in Justice questions, the Justice Secretary conflated the conviction rate and the charging rate for sex offenders and alleged rapists in the UK. Every day 300 women will be raped, and only three of those rapes will end in a charge. What can the House do to emphasise to Ministers that conflating the conviction rate with the charging rate in the courts is a basic error? The Secretary of State should know better and not repeat the sloppy practice of mixing up the two, especially on the very sensitive question of rape convictions.
Madam Deputy Speaker
As Mr Speaker and the Deputy Speakers have said many times from this Chair, the interpretation of statistics is not a matter for the Chair. One person looks at statistics and comes to one conclusion, while someone else looks at those statistics and comes to a different conclusion. The hon. Lady has made her point well and I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard it.
Evacuations from Afghanistan
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Catherine WestUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The report of the Foreign Affairs Committee on the UK’s botched evacuation from Afghanistan is one of the most damning reports that I have ever read. At a time when the UK can be proud of our support for the Ukrainian mission, this report drags us back to a dark period when we turned our back on our allies. It details a disastrous tragedy of errors that fundamentally undermines the 20 years of progress that Britain and its allies helped to bring to the Afghan people.
When Kabul fell, political and senior leaders were all on holiday, despite repeated warnings from US intelligence agencies that the Taliban were in the ascendant. People who supported the allied mission or were especially vulnerable to the Taliban were left behind. Sensitive documents were abandoned in the embassy because the evacuation was rushed and under-rehearsed. There was no plan. Consular staff were withdrawn before replacements were ready to be deployed, which led to a crucial delay in processing cases. Visa schemes were led by three separate Government Departments, which utterly failed to co-ordinate, and—a year on—these problems endure, including the problem of the British Council staff. National security decisions were taken with potentially life-and-death consequences, with no clarity and with no record of which Ministers authorised what. As my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) made clear at the time, the Government were asleep at the wheel at this moment of acute crisis, putting British lives at risk to clean up their mess.
The effects on the UK’s international standing are immensely damaging. Shaky senior leadership in Government not only had disastrous consequences in the short term, but has damaged the trust that others have in us in the long term. The lack of leadership and the repeated mistakes make a mockery of the notion of “global Britain”, betraying the good work of our armed services and diplomats and signalling a strategic incoherence at the heart of the Government’s foreign policy.
I will be blunt in asking two questions of the Minister. First, who has been held accountable for the clear failures in our handling of a situation in which incompetence was promoted and negligence rewarded? Secondly, will the Government get a grip and commit themselves to working with the international community to ensure that there is a coherent strategy to engage with Afghanistan in the medium to long term? In the light of impending famine in the country, we cannot afford to turn our back on the Afghan people forever. The Government must make amends for this sorry episode, and improve.
James Cleverly
In my opening comments, I made the point that the Government had reserved the Baron hotel. Apart from the United States, we were the only country in the world to have that physical presence at the airport. We had made arrangements at Dubai to have an airhead there to facilitate the evacuation and onward passage. The report from the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), is an important document and we will pay it the attention it deserves and respond to it in the timescale requested of us by his Committee.
Education Route Map: Covid-19
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Catherine West(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab) [V]
I would like to pick up the point that the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) introduced about anxiety and childhood mental health. First, drawing on the work done by the excellent Professor Michael Marmot, covid-19 has exposed deep health inequalities, and I see this every day in my constituency work. Some 80% of young people say their mental health has deteriorated during the covid crisis. Before the first lockdown, about 10% of LGBT young people reported feeling depressed every day, which rose to 25% during the first lockdown. One in five young people experiences a mental health problem dropping out of education, due to stigma, and we know that, in our alternative provision for children who cannot remain in mainstream school, there is a huge mental health burden.
Today, I want to talk briefly about the mental health problems associated with eating disorders. First, I would like to put on record my respect for the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), who has spoken very movingly about having an eating disorder as a teenager, and for the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), who leads the all-party group on eating disorders. Obviously, the Government have done some important work in response to the Marmot review and have developed the wellbeing for education return scheme and the mental health support teams, together with the designated senior lead and in schools and colleges.
However, Mind—and I should say that I am a patron of Mind in Haringey—and its partner YoungMinds have briefed me about how there is a lack of awareness in schools and colleges of the wellbeing for education return scheme. I would like the Minister to respond in her closing remarks on what will be done by the Government to develop awareness in schools and colleges of the wellbeing for education return scheme. In addition, the mental health support teams and the designated senior lead are both good innovations. What is being done to put them in place on the ground?
Next week is Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Hope Virgo, who leads the campaign for people to understand eating disorders and do something about them, has emphasised the importance of more funding for primary and secondary care, and enhanced counselling sessions, really addressing the wider mental health problems associated with eating disorders. I hope that next week all Members of Parliament can get in touch with their local services and promote locally the stopping of eating disorders.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
We will now go back to Harlow, but sadly only via audio link and with a limit of five minutes. I call the Chairman of the Education Committee, Rob Halfon.