Passport e-Gates Network Outage

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the SNP spokesman.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

As was said by the Labour shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), this is the third e-gate failure in a year, and just weeks ago, travellers in Edinburgh, Manchester and Bristol faced hour-long queues. It sounds like the Minister is conducting a thorough investigation; could he confirm that, and also confirm that he will report his findings to the House in a future statement?

This time, the problem appeared to affect not just e-gates. Belfast international airport, which does not have e-gates, said that the Border Force systems had been impacted. Could the Minister please clarify that issue? Finally, the Home Office has been talking for a long time about introducing other technological innovations in order to carry out its business. What lessons does the Minister think this example provides?

Illegal Migration

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the SNP spokesman.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

The Minister will know that Mears has recently signed a contract with a hotel in Glasgow South West, so perhaps he can update us on the status of that contract. He has mentioned the backlog. Not everyone in a hotel in asylum accommodation is illegal; some will be successful in being granted refugee status. Can he tell us what discussions he is having with local authorities—I am thinking of Glasgow City Council in particular—on supporting and providing financial support for those successful refugees who will have to leave their hotel or asylum accommodation following a decision? Will he meet me and my Glasgow colleagues to discuss this issue?

Can the Minister tell us the estimated total operational and associated costs of this new system that he is creating, including barges, military sites, detention facilities and removal centres, alongside the proposed Rwanda deportations? Finally, an investigation by “The News Agents” has found that people traffickers say they are having an easier time sending small boats across the channel because of Brexit, which removed biometric system sharing and pan-European co-operation. What steps is he taking to create a returns agreement with the European Union, binding closer alignment with the EU and system sharing?

Employment Agencies and Trade Unions

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

Monday 11th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens]

That is absolutely true. There is a suggestion that the rail industry could bust the current rail dispute by hiring agency workers. Where are the unemployed signalmen who are sitting at home saying, “I cannot wait for the railway workers to go on strike so I can get a shift”? Those people do not exist. This is completely wrongheaded, and utterly impractical. In the gig economy, so-called key workers fighting for better employment terms and pay seem to be expendable under a Tory Government who do not care. Where is the employment Bill that the Government have been promising us since 2015?

There is another point that I forgot to make at the beginning of my speech. Last week, after his resignation, the Prime Minister made a commitment not to introduce legislation that was not in the Government’s manifesto, and not to introduce controversial legislation. Well, by any measure, this is controversial legislation, and, crucially, it was not in the Conservative party manifesto, and therefore it should not be introduced.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the compatibility of the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2022—which we are discussing today—with the Human Rights Act, the trade and co-operation agreement with the European Union, and the UK’s commitment to the International Labour Organisation’s fundamental conventions, including convention 87, article 3?

We have heard about the impact assessment, but what consultation have the Government had with the rail industry employers, rail industry unions and rail industry regulators, including the Rail Safety and Standards Board, about the risk assessment of the use of agency workers in safety-critical parts of the rail industry? What consultations have the Government had with devolved Administrations, local authorities, health boards and other public services? I am guessing that they have not had such consultations, because if they had, they would have been told that these proposals were not workable. And what consultation have the Government had with the employment agencies themselves? We have already heard that the agencies do not support this legislation.

We in the SNP will certainly be opposing this statutory instrument and supporting the Labour prayer. My friend on the Labour Front Bench, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne, is a good Unison comrade and I have known her for 15 years. I know that the trade union is proud of her working here, as well as of other hon. Members.

It is madness to say that no impact assessment has been produced for this SI because no significant impact on the private, voluntary or public sectors is foreseen. Fining trade unions for pursuing strike action that is deemed unlawful is a deliberate Tory attack to undermine the ability of trade union members and working people to pursue their aims. Instead, the Transport Minister should be negotiating with the trade unions—sitting down with them and seeing if he can help to resolve this dispute. It is quite incredible how this Government do not understand working people or how modern trade-unionised workplaces operate. This statutory instrument that they are proposing should therefore be placed in the bin.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am going to impose a time limit of four minutes.

DWP Office Closures

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because I have family members in his constituency, as he knows, so I am well aware of his constituency. He raises a very important point about satellite offices, but there is also homeworking. We were told that homeworking was a suggestion, but it seems now that the Government want to force people away from working at home into offices—only the Government are now closing these offices, so there do seem to be some mixed messages from the Government. I do thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He makes a very important point, and I hope the Minister will respond to it.

On 16 June, a voluntary redundancy scheme was offered to those staff at the 25 sites identified as being at risk of redundancy. Most of these closures are based on plans originally drawn up in 2016 and announced in 2017, and they are seriously out of date. The sites chosen for closure have, according to the Department, been selected after not just looking at the condition and suitability of buildings, but considering the potential impact of taking work out of locations that score more highly for economic deprivation.

However, many of these closures do not seem to make a lot of sense if their impact on the local economy has been taken into account. Many of these closures are in areas of economic deprivation that can hardly afford to lose good-quality public sector jobs. For example, 29 of the 41 processing sites are in constituencies that have higher than the national average claimant rates, and 18 of the 33 England office closures are in constituencies rated in the top 100 most deprived constituencies in the country. I do not call that levelling up.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) has done a survey of businesses near the Springburn site, which is earmarked for closure. It makes interesting reading, and I will take a moment to mention what has been identified in that community impact assessment. There are many businesses that staff at the Springburn site use. The off-sales, where people may perhaps buy a bottle of wine before they go home for the evening, and the Chinese restaurant next door, have concerns about the closure of that office.

The local florist is very concerned because the staff use that service, the local pharmacy has concerns about the closure and the local butcher has made representations about the closure of the Springburn office. That is the very real impact, just in Springburn alone, that such office closures will have on the local economy. It seems—perhaps the Minister can confirm this—that the overriding reason for many of these closures is that the Department for Work and Pensions has itself let the buildings in which it is located fall into major disrepair.

Let me now turn to concerns about the lack of opportunities to redeploy staff. When offices have been closing, Ministers have sought to reassure Members that staff will be redeployed elsewhere in the DWP or in other Departments whenever possible. However, the potential for redeployment elsewhere in the civil service has become less likely following the Government’s announcement on 13 May, through the press and without consultation with staff or trade unions, of their plan to cut 91,000 civil service jobs. The DWP’s decision not to make permanent thousands of staff on fixed-term appointments will, I believe, have come as a blow to staff as well as service delivery.

Under the recent permanency exercise for 12,000 work coaches who joined the Department on fixed-term contracts, only 9,300 have been offered permanent posts. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us whether those who are not among the 9,300 will be offered permanent employment in the DWP. Not all the posts have been offered to staff in their preferred workplaces, so they face making significant journeys if they want to continue their employment with the DWP.

The current position is that 1,400 full-time equivalent staff are on a waiting list but are being told that their contracts will end on 30 June 2022. Other FTEs have not been put on the waiting list and have been selected out of the process, despite having joined the DWP on the basis of fair and open competition. If this position does not change, it will lead to significant shortfalls in staff in jobcentres and DWP offices, which face staff reductions of up to 5,000. That will lead to increased workloads, place greater pressure on existing staff, and have a detrimental impact on the services that the public receive from the DWP. We believe that it makes no sense to threaten experienced staff with redundancies when the Department needs more staff, not fewer, to deal with higher workloads. If these closures and job cuts are allowed to go ahead, we will face the absurd prospect of staff being made redundant in one area while new staff are recruited in another to do the same job. That would be both costly and inefficient.

There is also the issue of the buildings. I understand that the Department aims to rationalise its estate, taking into account matters such as hybrid working, making offices fit for the future, and considering the green agenda as it reviews existing offices. I am told that all offices will be looked at, including jobcentres, and that the Department wants to ensure that everyone is working in an office that is of good quality.

The employers seem to believe that much of the DWP’s existing estate is no longer fit for purpose. They will seek to leave sites that are no longer suitable and relocate in new premises in the vicinity where they want to maintain a presence, overhauling some sites and closing others where they believe the DWP no longer needs to be located. They also seem to believe that having fewer, bigger buildings is a more efficient way of running the Department, although, as we heard earlier from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), that will not necessarily always be the case.

However, many of the processing sites are based in buildings from which the DWP will still operate. For example, jobcentres remain in the same location in Doncaster, a site that could easily accommodate the 300-plus staff that the DWP considers to be the minimum number to make a building viable. It will not be possible to sub-let parts of the buildings that it will be vacating, so we question the sense in making experienced staff redundant only for the part of the empty office space that they have vacated to—potentially—become unused. One such example is the Gloucester jobcentre at Cedar House, where only one part of one floor is being vacated and more than 40 staff who are unable to move to Worcester have now been identified as being at risk of redundancy.

The Department and Ministers have claimed that the estate programme is in support of the Government’s commitments on sustainability and net zero carbon. However, these plans are likely to lead to staff having to travel further to work as a result, which in turn would lead to more carbon emissions. No doubt the hon. Member for Strangford would agree with that, given his earlier intervention. It is also worth considering that the DWP is not totally vacating many of the buildings in question but has not said whether it plans to invest in making these buildings more energy-efficient in future. There is little evidence that the DWP is doing anything to improve the rest of its estate. Much of the remaining estate is similarly unsuitable and unsustainable. We also have concerns that not all the buildings the DWP proposes to move staff to will be able to accommodate the numbers.

That brings me to the issue of equality impact assessments. The restrictions on the equality impact assessments have been lifted by the Department and they are now available in the House of Commons Library. However, there are concerns that the equality impact assessments have identified that there will be groups disadvantaged by the closures but said very little about what is being done to mitigate those impacts. The assessments were produced before the one-to-one interviews were conducted with staff facing closure of their offices. It is likely that this process would further confirm the impact on people with protected characteristics.

Women form a significant majority of the DWP’s workforce, on some sites constituting over 75%. There are no tangible mitigations offered in these documents that are likely to compensate for the clear detriment that women face from this office closure programme. People with disabilities, particularly if they impair their ability to travel to work, are likely to face disproportionate impact from office closures as they will have to travel, in some cases by making significant journeys, further to work.

The DWP aims to mitigate the impact on disabled staff by exploring reasonable adjustments and flexible working arrangements. However, this is unlikely to provide sufficient mitigation as the Department is currently not prepared to fully embrace working from home as a redundancy avoidance. I am sure that people in Strangford and other rural parts of these islands have benefited, and Departments have benefited, from staff working from home, particularly those in the DWP, where there was a huge increase in the number of universal credit claimants, for example. DWP staff should be congratulated on the work that they did during that period and should not now have to face their offices being closed and the prospect of redundancy.

In some sites—for example, Hackney—there is a high percentage of staff from ethnic minority backgrounds. The proposed solution inevitably means longer travel at greater expense if they are able to relocate, which is a clear detriment for those impacted. In Blackburn, 36% of staff have been identified as being ethnic minority. Despite this, the DWP’s analysis is that there is no evidence to suggest that they will be negatively impacted. We believe that that analysis is flawed. There are high proportions of part-time workers, who are more likely to be carers, in many of these sites. Again, there is little by way of mitigation offered to those workers.

We are aware that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the permanent secretary invited a limited number of staff to attend a meeting on 26 May 2022 that they addressed with a presentation of the departmental plan for 2022-25. Once again, the DWP and Ministers have gone to staff without proper engagement with the trade unions. I would suggest that there should be full and proper consultation with the trade unions on the detail of a plan that has huge implications for trade union members, DWP staff and the public they serve. The plan identifies a cut in funding for staffing resources while at the same time introducing more work. It suggests a 12% cut in funding for staff over the three-year period. It also suggests a 16% increase in payments for universal credit, legacy benefits and pensions. This can only mean more work for less staff.

We want to see the Department take a realistic approach to a likely surge in demand for services as the impact of the war in Ukraine and the fall-out from the pandemic devastate the economy. I hope that the Minister will be able to answer many of the points that have been raised on this office closure programme and the concerns that we have for DWP staff, who deliver a great service. I hope that she will be able to confirm that there are no redundancies for those staff.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am checking whether anyone else present wishes to speak; there being time, I cannot stop that. Excellent; no Member has risen to their feet, so I call Minister Mims Davies.

Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (Accession)

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

If we go a bit faster, we will be able to get everybody in.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

We all want the highest standards. Can the Secretary of State explain a bit more the road map to ensure the highest food standards? Will the Government look again at setting up a food standards commission when it comes to trade deals?

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point, but it is a point of debate, not a point of order for the Chair. It is, I am very glad to tell the House, not my responsibility to adjudicate between Members who sit on the Government Benches and Members who sit on the Opposition Benches on particular points of fact. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) is in order in the eloquent speech he is making.

[Chris Stephens]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. Hon. Members can read Hansard tomorrow and come to their own conclusions.

Scottish Conservatives were complaining earlier about office closures. I find that fascinating from a political party that has put a meat cleaver to the jobcentre network and a meat cleaver to HMRC offices across the UK. You really could not make it up.

Benefit Claimants Sanctions (Required Assessment) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I appreciate that it is the hon. Lady’s first point of order, but it is not properly a point of order. It is not for the Chair to decide what any particular Member can say, but I am quite sure that the hon. Lady for Glasgow North East will temper her speech so as to reflect what has been said, not what might be said, but the hon. Lady has the right to say whatever she likes, within reason, and she is speaking within perfect reason in this House.

[Chris Stephens]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Would it be in order to remind Members of the House, including the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), that they should not shout across the Chamber at each other when an hon. Member is speaking?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Again, the hon. Gentleman has made his point. It is not a point of order as such, but I am well aware, and I have already said a few times in this debate, that we must not have sedentary interventions, that people must not shout when they are not taking part in the debate, and I will make sure that they do not do so. At the same time, this is a heated debate on an important subject and I cannot reasonably expect everyone to sit in silence—that would be uncharacteristic.

Also, I have every confidence in the hon. Lady for Glasgow North East being able to conduct this part of the debate with perfect precision and indeed rhetoric.

Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. As much as I am enjoying the right hon. Gentleman’s dissertation on the Brexit vote, it has been some time since we have spoken about workers’ rights. Is there anything that we can do about that?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing that to my attention. I am listening carefully to the speech of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) and he began by speaking about workers’ rights. The title of this debate is “Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights” and I know that the right hon. Gentleman will strike a balance between the two parts of the motion. I am quite sure that he will remain in order, but I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) for ensuring that I am paying attention.

Points of Order

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

Thursday 24th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a matter for the Chair, and that I would not dream of encouraging him to express, or of forbidding him from expressing, that hope over and over again.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I raised a point of order on 9 February about the Government’s attitude to the Trade Union Bill and Lords amendments. That point of order got much publicity, because it led to a discussion of the Speaker’s reading habits in relation to the Socialist Worker. The Speaker on 9 February advised me to submit a written question to try to get clarity on the matter, and written question 26990 is the named day question that I submitted on 11 February. I have not had a response. Can you advise me, Madam Deputy Speaker, how I can get an answer, on behalf of 6 million workers who are trade union members, as to the Government’s attitude to the Trade Union Bill and Lords amendments?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

As the hon. Gentleman is well aware, and as I am sure Mr Speaker has made clear, Mr Speaker will have given the hon. Gentleman that advice about tabling a written question because the answers to questions are not a matter for the Chair. However, the fact that a question has been submitted and, several weeks later, has not been answered is a matter that Mr Speaker would most certainly deprecate. I am quite sure that those on the Treasury Bench have heard what the hon. Gentleman has said, and that the message will go to the appropriate Department that the hon. Gentleman should have received an answer. Whether it is the answer that he would like to receive is another matter, and not one that I can address, but he ought to receive an answer. I am quite sure that if he does not receive such an answer in the near future, he will be perfectly justified in raising the matter again on the Floor of the House.

Universal Credit Work Allowance

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Chris Stephens

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

“A guid new year tae yin and a’ and mony may ye see.” I thank the Labour Front Bench—[Interruption.] It is okay; I will send that up to Hansard. I thank the Labour Front Bench and particularly—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is using perfectly good language and most of us understand it perfectly.

[Chris Stephens]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

May I thank the Labour party and the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) for bringing this motion to the House? I want to start, as he did, by discussing the parliamentary procedures and the concerns I had about how this change was made. My view is that the Statutory Instruments Committee should be used to address technical changes to legislation and amendments. This was not a technical amendment; this was a policy change, and this was a procedural vehicle to sneak in the most damaging legislation and avoid public scrutiny. At the SIC we were subjected to the usual sunshine and cheerful rhetoric from the Government members, so much so that if we were playing Tory buzzphrase bingo we would have won the snowball after a couple of minutes, because the reality of this change is that a lone parent who currently earns the national minimum wage can work up to 22 hours, but with this cut to working allowance they would lose that support after 12 hours.

I am still waiting for the answers to many of the questions I asked at the SIC, and I hope that those on the Government Front Bench will answer some of them. First, what assessment has been made of the effect of the changes to working families and their ability to take on part-time work? Does this disincentivise work and lead to workers reducing their hours? It seems to me that it is human nature that if there is a chance of someone losing benefit payments and they can save that benefit only by cutting their working hours, that is exactly what they will do. Will there be any mitigation of the effects on their benefits? How will carers be affected, in particular young carers? Talking about young workers, what about those aged under 25, who will not get access to the national living wage?

I also ask this question again: what impact assessment has been done in respect of Department for Work and Pensions staff, who are the lowest paid civil servants in the country—so much so that when staff from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are merged into the DWP, they earn £2,000 more than those in the DWP? These are staff who are subjected to a 1% pay cap, and who are paying, and have had to pay, increased pension and national insurance contributions; and 40% of DWP staff are currently on tax credits.

We have heard so much again today about aspiration. What message does the cut to working allowance send to those who aspire? The reality is that people are increasingly aware that the ladder of social mobility is being systematically pulled up ahead of them, and that no matter how hard they work or how much they aspire to a better life for their children and themselves, they will be punished for not being born into the right sort of family. That is the reality of this cut to UC work allowance.