Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Emma Lewell-Buck(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease in children and young people, with nearly 500 dying every single year, yet the Government continue to reject calls for a dedicated children’s cancer plan. Why is that?
Points of Order
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Emma Lewell-Buck(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for having given me notice of his point of order. I can answer his main question simply by saying that I have not received any notice from the Home Office that it intends to make a statement about this matter. That does not mean that Ministers will not possibly decide to come to the Chamber next week to address the matter.
The hon. Gentleman knows that Ministers’ appearances in the Chamber are not a matter for the Chair, but he also knows that there are many ways in which he can seek to require that a Minister comes to the Chamber, and I am sure that he will pursue those lines of inquiry. I also note that those on the Treasury Bench will have taken note of what he has said and what I have said, and that those matters will be conveyed to the appropriate Ministers.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On Monday at the Dispatch Box, the Secretary of State for Health stated:
The truth is that when we put Pakistan and Bangladesh on the red list, positivity among those arriving from those countries was three times higher than it was among those arriving from India.—[Official Report, 17 May 2021; Vol. 695, c. 430.]
However, the data he referred to, which he directed me to in the same debate, states that India’s positivity rate was 5%, Bangladesh’s was 4% and Pakistan’s was 6%, from 25 March to 7 April. It is during that two-week period that Bangladesh and Pakistan were put on the red list, so it is clear from that data that the positivity rates were not three times higher, and that in fact India’s positivity rate was higher that Bangladesh’s when Bangladesh was put on the red list. As the Secretary of State is here, Madam Deputy Speaker, can you urge him to clarify his comments?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The hon. Lady knows that that is not a matter for the Chair. She is seeking to continue a debate or an exchange of questions and answers that occurred earlier in the Chamber—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady must not interrupt when I am answering her question. She cannot answer back.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I accept her apology. I was about to say that we are about to have a debate, and that the right time for the hon. Lady to raise these matters will be during the debate. However, I notice that the Secretary of State is at the Dispatch Box, and if he would like to deal with the matter now, I will exceptionally allow that to take place. However, I do not encourage Members to raise points of order in this sequence of events.
Business of the House
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Emma Lewell-Buck(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab) [V]
In my constituency, there are a number of large developments that are at complete odds with many residents’ wishes—a pontoon at Market Dock, the destruction of fields and a popular playpark at Holborn Riverside, and the construction of an unnecessary flyover at Tilesheds. The planning system is completely failing them. Residents were not involved in the decisions at the outset, and now they are expressing concerns that they are being ignored, railroaded and, in some cases, treated with contempt. Can we have an urgent debate on reforming planning so that local people have a real say in what happens in their community?
Points of Order
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Emma Lewell-Buck(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, but he will not be surprised to know that it is not technically a point of order for the Chair. However, I appreciate—and I mean appreciate—that he is a great champion of the Scottish whisky industry, and so he should be. He and his colleagues have raised this matter in various ways in the Chamber over the last few weeks, so I fully appreciate how important it is and would like to give him whatever help I can. In the first instance, he may wish to seek the advice of the Table Office on how to pursue the matter, as he has tried to over the last few weeks. If he remains concerned about not receiving answers, or about not receiving them on time, he might wish to consider referring the matter to the Procedure Committee. I know that he will persist, and that he will have a lot of support in persisting on this subject.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. My constituent Robert Urwin has been held against his will in the Ukraine for over a year after an Interpol red notice was issued by HSBC for a historical bounced cheque in Dubai. Robert has been found innocent and a victim of forgery. Yesterday, it was confirmed that Interpol has removed the red notice, yet the warrant for his arrest and extradition to the United Arab Emirates remains. Robert is in deep despair. I have already raised this many times with Government Members, but he is still stuck in the Ukraine. Can you advise me on what on earth I can do next to help to force this Government to help me to get Robert home?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Once again, the hon. Lady is right to take the opportunity to raise the matter through a point of order in the Chamber. She has partially achieved what she wants to achieve, which is to bring the matter to the attention of the Chamber and of Ministers. I am sure that her points will have been noted by those on the Treasury Bench and that she will, like the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), persist in asking such questions and acting quite properly on behalf of her constituent, for whom we all have very great sympathy.
The Economy and Work
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Emma Lewell-Buck(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
After years of abandoning and punishing the most vulnerable people in society, we get a Queen’s Speech that talks about introducing legislation to tackle some of the deepest social problems and to improve life chances for the most disadvantaged. However, we all know the truth: this Government’s grand rhetoric is rarely matched by policy. In fact, their policies tend to be regressive and punitive, pushing more and more people into poverty. No one living in poverty is there as a result of their own doing; the perpetuation of poverty and the rise in child poverty since 2010 is a clear failing of Government.
A recent report from Sheffield Hallam University, also referred to by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), looks at the uneven impact of welfare reform, revealing that the north yet again takes the biggest hit on welfare reform while the south, outside London, remains largely unscathed. Some 83% of the overall financial losses fall on families with children. The north-east alone is set to lose £620 million a year by 2020-21, which is a loss per working-age adult of £380 a year. South Tyneside, the council which covers my constituency, is the sixth worst-affected local authority. Even the introduction of the living wage has left the lowest-paid workers little better off, if at all. One of my constituents, a carer, is now in a desperate financial situation because the new living wage has taken her over the threshold to be eligible for carer’s allowance. An extra £8 a week has cost her £62 in lost benefits.
If this Government really care about life chances, they would not be running into the ground the services people that people rely on the most. They would not have closed over 800 Sure Start centres. They would not be presiding over a crisis in teacher recruitment. They would not be focusing resources on adoption to the detriment of social work that can keep families together. They would not be presiding over the collapse of the NHS and social care. They would not have made such a mess of the benefits system to the extent that more than 1 million food parcels have been handed out. Disabled people would not be losing more than £1,500 a year. The terminally ill would not be being declared fit for work and having their income slashed. Homelessness would not have doubled since 2010. We would not have rising wealth inequality in areas blighted by high unemployment. The Children’s Society has reported that children and young people in Britain are among the unhappiest, unhealthiest, poorest and least educated in the developed world.
This Queen’s Speech identifies an impotent and careless Government whose numerous U-turns reveal deep problems at the core of their policy making. Of the 30 announcements, we have heard 28 of them before, because we have for the past year had to put up with a Government obsessed with internal politics. We all know that the EU referendum has nothing at all to do with whether or not we are better off in or out of Europe. The Government have taken up precious parliamentary time with a prolonged, unedifying fight between—[Interruption.] You can have your say later. It is a fight between two middle-aged public school chums over who is going to run the country.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Even though that was said from a sedentary position, it is not “you” who has had your say—it is “he” who has had his say.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am going to end by saying that if this is the Prime Minister’s last Queen’s Speech, I am sure it is not a legacy that he or anyone on the Government Benches should be proud of.
Several hon. Members rose—
Food Banks
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Emma Lewell-Buck(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Mrs Lewell-Buck
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister referred to the all-party group and said we were all in agreement on various matters relating to food poverty. He is wrong. We were not in agreement; I certainly was not. I was very clear that it is problems in the Department for Work and Pensions that are driving people to food banks.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I appreciate the point that the hon. Lady is making, but it is a point of debate, and I am quite sure that she will have an opportunity during the debate to make it.
Health
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Emma Lewell-Buck(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Our national health service is undisputedly one of the greatest achievements of any Government, yet the crisis that the NHS has experienced under the Government’s disastrous privatisation, threatens the survival of services and the quality of patient care. I am proud that it was a Labour Government who created the NHS, and I am proud it is a Labour Government who will reverse the damage done by the Health and Social Care Act 2012. In our health service, more than 4,000 senior nursing posts have been lost since 2010. Accident and emergency performances in the year following the Government’s reorganisation were the worst in a decade. Last year, South Tyneside hospital in my constituency had to cancel operations because of unprecedented demand for A and E services. Only two weeks ago, it emerged that the NHS in England had failed to meet a performance target for cancer waiting times for the first time ever.
The Government’s failed reorganisation has increased wasteful spending. The NHS now spends more on senior managers and management consultants than ever before, and it is increasingly bogged down in competition law, forcing it to spend money on lawyers that could have gone towards patient care. The pressures on our health service stretch well beyond hospital waiting rooms, as demand for NHS services is affected by trends in public health and the quality of social care. In those areas, we have seen massive cuts to local authority budgets of £2.7 billion. Faced with cuts of that scale, local authorities have been left with impossible decisions and have been forced to cut services, knowing that in doing so they would increase pressure on the health service.
Those who are lucky enough to be entitled to care find that their care worker can only stay with them for 15 minutes. These workers are poorly paid, with over 300,000 on zero-hours contracts. A third do not receive proper training. Unsurprisingly, staff turnover is high, so many clients do not manage to build a relationship with their carer. The Care Act 2014, which was passed in the last Session, presented an opportunity to address some of those issues, but unfortunately it was an opportunity that the coalition parties did not take. They rejected Labour amendments on low pay and zero-hours contracts that would have improved the standard of care that people receive. They also ignored charities that warned that the new eligibility criteria for support would exclude hundreds of thousands of people from the care system.
Of course, there are challenges facing social care, but we do not solve the problem by cutting support for those with moderate needs, only for them to end up in hospital. Last year’s QualityWatch report showed that about one in five hospital admissions could be prevented by better social care. The ultimate goal should be an integrated system like the one argued for by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). The Government at least pay lip service to that idea, but in practical terms they have done very little. The better care fund announced last June was meant for that purpose, but it was actually just money diverted from existing NHS services, proving that the Government are not serious about promoting integration.
Underlying all of that are broader questions about public health. Poverty and ill health often go hand in hand, and malnutrition in particular has become a frighteningly normal part of life in Britain today. I know parents who skip meals so that their children can eat, and people for whom food banks are the only thing standing between them and starvation. Malnutrition affects an estimated 3 million people in the UK, which is a scandal in the fourth richest country in the world.
The previous Government left office with fewer people in poverty than when they arrived. Child and pensioner poverty fell even after the financial crisis took hold, and we were well on our way to eliminating child poverty by 2020. But under the coalition, this trend has been reversed, and instead of eliminating poverty by the end of this decade the Child Poverty Action Group estimates that the number in poverty will have risen to 4.7 million.
The coalition has allowed this crisis to develop, and the Queen’s Speech needed to recognise families’ desperation by delivering help with living costs such as food, energy and rent. Poverty, and food poverty especially, has a knock-on effect for our health system. Experts have warned that there is a public health emergency. We are beginning to see diseases such as rickets returning as children no longer receive the balanced diet they need. The symptoms of poverty pose serious challenges to our health service in the long term.
Our national health service survives in spite of this Government, not because of them. It is strong because of its work force and because of a public who resolutely believe in it and value it. In communities around the country, families are fed not because their country’s Government have helped them to find decent work, but because their fellow citizens give up their time to lend a helping hand. Our country faces some of its biggest challenges for generations, and people feel that Britain is no longer working for them. Worse yet, people feel that politics has no answers to the difficult questions of our time. All these challenges need a Government who are willing to be bold, but this Queen’s Speech gave no hope of that. It was more of the same from a coalition that has long outstayed its welcome.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
And the prize for patience goes to Nic Dakin.