Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

The Prime Minister has given the United Kingdom the highest covid death rate in the world and the deepest economic recession of the G7 and given billions to Tory donors for procurement contracts. On top of that, we have a Brexit deal that will cut our economy by 4% and 1.4 million jobs. Now, we have a Queen’s Speech that attacks our fundamental values: democracy, human rights and the rule of law. His Bills in this Queen’s Speech will mean that he decides when the general election is called. They will make it harder for poorer people to vote, harder to challenge Government decisions and harder to protest against them. Alongside this, we have seen the weakening of the BBC, the civil service, the universities —our fundamental institutions. Meanwhile, as we loosen the ties with Europe, our biggest and closest market and friend, that will weaken both our economy and our values.

Millions of voters from poorer and more diverse communities will now be required to have voter ID, and that will reduce voter turnout. That is, in essence, voter suppression. In addition, the abolition of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 means that the Prime Minister can call the election when he likes. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill opens the door for right-wing intolerance in our universities. The judicial review Bill and the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill allow the Prime Minister to suspend our parliamentary democracy without the Supreme Court being able to intervene, as it had to in 2019 to safeguard us, and reduce the ability of the courts to challenge the Government’s decisions, which is fundamental to our democracy.

Our devolved democracy, in Wales, Scotland and elsewhere, is also under attack from the centralisation of economic and political decision making, which risks creating a divided economy in the name of the Union, despite the fact that, in last week’s elections, we saw a mandate for more, not less devolution. To top it all, we have the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which would undermine or stop peaceful protest. Such protests have been the lifeblood of our democracy, promoting democratic change whether through the suffragettes, peace campaigners, trade unionists, EU supporters or climate change activists. We have now seen in the Clapham Common vigil and the Bristol protests against the Bill that the police have enough power and there is an issue of accountability.

These changes are the hallmarks of an emerging authoritarian state, so let us remember that our Queen Elizabeth gave her first Queen’s Speech when Winston Churchill was Prime Minister and the architect of the Council of Europe to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Yet now, 70 years later, she must present an agenda that puts these fundamental British values at risk. It is for all of us and people across these lands to defend those values, and I hope in the weeks ahead Members will do just that. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The time limit is now reduced to three minutes.

Environment Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies [V]]

[Inaudible.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Something is wrong with the sound. [Interruption.] It is not possible to go to the next person until we stop the video link that is not working. Is somebody listening to me? I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for the system not working properly and for him not knowing that it was not working. We will now go to Kerry McCarthy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We will try to go back to Geraint Davies.

[Geraint Davies [V]]

Thank you so much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

New clause 6 is a necessary condition of delivering World Health Organisation air quality limits, or indeed any targets that the Government choose to set by 2022, as they plan. DEFRA alone simply cannot deliver the clean air targets that the Government want without the support of all other Departments. The new clause would create a duty for all Departments to work together to do that.

When I met the Environment Secretary, the Environment Minister and Rosamund, Ella’s mother, the Environment Secretary said that he had not ruled out WHO air quality limits and needed to understand how he would get to any such targets. I agree with that, but it requires a duty on all Government bodies and Departments to work together. DEFRA would work with Transport when Transport needs to deliver an integrated, electrified public transport system. Clearly, we would need a Treasury fiscal statutory mechanism to facilitate that with the right duties, incentives, scrappage schemes and investment. We would need a housing and planning scheme built into that so that we build around stations, not motorways. We would need Health at the centre of it, because 64,000 people a year are dying prematurely. We need an education system that allows people to walk to school safely, and a local government system so that people can take account of things and possibly reduce the speed of motorway traffic near urban centres. This all needs to be by joined-up design, rather than hope for the best.

The second part of the amendment is about indoor air quality. I thank the Government for belatedly including indoor air quality in the Bill. I thank the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health for their “Inside Story” report, which acknowledged that 90% of the time we are indoors we are subjected to all sorts of dangerous chemicals—formaldehyde and all sorts of other things—in our furniture. Professor Stephen Holgate, one of the architects of the report, mentioned that we will not get limits unless we have an interdisciplinary approach with academics, clinicians, industry and government working together. Indeed, the professor of environmental law at University College London, Eloise Scotford, mentioned that joined-up governance is critical in law to push ahead with progress.

As we approach COP26, we have an opportunity to present a template of an integrated approach to help combat air pollution, which is killing 7 million people across the globe every year. I give my thanks to the Health Secretary and other members of the Government who are working together, but the point of the amendment is to provide a duty, so that we are required to work together to deliver cleaner air and save thousands of lives.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

What we should be doing in this Parliament is protecting our farmers, our food security, our food standards, our climate, our environment, our public health and our workers, but the Bill falls short on all those counts. The reality is that Britain is gripped by a once-in-100-years pandemic that has taken the lives of 33,000 people, yet this reckless Government refuse to extend the transition period in which we are required to get a deal with the EU, and indeed with the US. This puts all our interests at risk.

Members will know that something like 44% of our trade goes to the EU—in Wales three quarters of our food goes there—and that the United States is a very tough negotiator. It is interested in low-price, often substandard food that may be forced on us unless we ensure in this Bill that we secure the highest standards possible to limit what can be negotiated. The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has confirmed that chlorinated chicken must be part of a post-Brexit UK trade deal. We have heard talk about hormone-impregnated beef. Basically, we are at risk of importing food below the standards we currently enjoy and torpedoing the opportunity to have a meaningful EU trade deal, which is of much greater significance than the US trade deal—something like 60 times more. It is important that we ensure environmental standards are built into trade deals and into Bills such as this one. If we do not build those food and environmental standards into our law, and they are not subsequently in trade deals, then when we try to increase our environmental and food standards we will be taken to an international court by Trump and others, and we will be unable to move our standards upwards.

On climate change, there is great concern about nitrogen fertilisers producing nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas used in cattle feed for indoor intensive farming, particularly in the United States. We do not want that here. We should rule that out. We should put that into our trade deal and into the quality controls we put in the Bill. More trade further afield with the US will be bad for climate change in any case, and we know the US does not respect the Paris agreement. We need to use Bills such as this one to protect our food standards and ensure that those standards go into trade deals.

It is interesting that the Bill does not mention air quality, despite the fact that DEFRA argued that agriculture was a more important source of particulates for air pollution than diesel. We know that during the lockdown, PM2.5 and NOx have actually gone down: PM2.5 went down by 10% and NOx by 40%. We know that ammonia is a precursor of secondary particulate pollution; in other words, even though we are using our cars less, we still need to ask what we should do about delivering World Health Organisation standards, particularly as we now know there are significantly more covid deaths in areas with air pollution. That is a great big hole in the Agriculture Bill.

On migration, there are limits on the number of people who can come over here and pick our fruit and vegetables. The Agricultural Wages Board in Wales—it was abolished in England—should be extended to England to support rural workers’ wages. On protecting workers, it is critically important at this time that the workers in food production, abattoirs and food processing have proper PPE, testing and social distancing. We already know there are a massively disproportionate number of those people dying from covid. Again, the Government have neglected that situation.

In conclusion, we need to put food standards centre stage. I will be supporting the amendments. We need to ensure the EU deal is the right one, which means extending the transition period. We need to ensure that the environment and climate change are centre stage, and they need to be part of the trade deals. We need to protect our workers and all our interests in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I now call Daniel Zeichner to wind up for the Opposition and ask that he speaks for no more than eight minutes.

Wuhan Coronavirus

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

And the prize for perseverance and patience goes to Geraint Davies.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Figures issued yesterday—I appreciate that the Secretary of State has updated them today—showed that, out of 14,500 people diagnosed, 304 had died and 342 had recovered. What is of concern is the similarity of the number of people dying to the number of people recovering.

The Secretary of State has already mentioned that the transmission rate is doubling every five days. He will also know that, as well as introducing flight blocks, China has introduced road blocks, and has prevented people from going to work for 14 days in districts where there is no transmission at all. What does the Secretary of State plan to do if a number of cases emerge in cities up and down Britain? Has he any plans to reduce people’s movements, for instance, to contain the virus?

[Matt Hancock]

Let me make it absolutely clear that I do not recognise, and the Government do not recognise, the figure that the hon. Gentleman has given for the number of people who have recovered. The mortality rate is estimated to be about 2%. Of course we will revise that figure as more information comes to light, but the figure that he gave for the number who have recovered from the disease appears to be very low in comparison with the information that we have.

Of course we have plans in case the disease becomes widespread globally and widespread here, and we are constantly working on those plans to ensure that we are as ready as possible. We have plans in place, and we had them before the virus arrived here. We are working through those plans, and I will endeavour to update the House whenever I possibly can.

I began by paying tribute to the shadow Secretary of State. Normally when I am nice about the shadow Secretary of State, he thinks that I am doing it to damage his political career. There may be some truth in that, but in this case he is acting in the most responsible and high-minded way, and I think that the whole House should pay tribute to him.

The National Health Service

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Secretary of State has been talking now for nearly half an hour, yet he has not really referred to the amendment in respect of the relationship between public health and trade, particularly the ability of tribunals and companies to sue.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. That is not a point of order; it is a point of debate. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s frustration, so I will repeat what I said earlier: the Secretary of State has been, as was the Opposition spokesman, most dutiful in taking lots of interventions. I have allowed those interventions because I recognise that Members want to refer to particular hospitals and other things in their own constituencies. I allowed them, but I now encourage the Secretary of State to cease—

[Geraint Davies]

It is a point of order.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

No, it is not a point of order if I say it is not a point of order.

I encourage the Secretary of State to make progress. I appreciate his generosity to his colleagues, but we will have to make some progress.

Universal Credit

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 17th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Member who just spoke has only just come in. There is very limited time—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We are not wasting time on spurious points of order, because I want to try to get as many people in as possible. I call Richard Graham.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

On a point of order, Mrs Laing. We have had insufficient time for the debate, certainly to hear from me and others who wanted to speak at greater length about these very important constitutional and environmental issues.

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means]

Order. That is not a point of order. We have had three hours on this group and I did beg the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues not to speak for so long so that he could have a chance. I do not know why they spoke as they did in order to stop him.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Points of Order

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Thursday 20th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Hon. Members know that the matter of when a Minister comes to the House is not for me, Mr Speaker or any other occupant of the Chair. The matters that were just raised in three points of order were raised many times during today’s business questions and answered by the Leader of the House, who is once again in her place. I am sure that she will have conveyed the feelings of the House to the Secretary of State. The hon. Gentlemen know very well the methods by which Members can try to insist on a Secretary of State coming to the House, and I am sure that they will pursue the matter in that way. I can do nothing further from the Chair, but I am certain that the Secretary of State for Transport knows the opinion of hon. Members.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Government are required by the High Court to publish an air quality strategy next week because they are in breach of European Union air quality standards, which has led to 40,000 premature deaths and costs £20 billion a year. Yesterday some 60 MPs wrote to me in support of a clean air Bill asking the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to incorporate those provisions in such a strategy. When will we have a chance to debate those matters, and why has a statement not been made today on the issue, given that the House will not have an opportunity to debate it before the deadline imposed by the Court? We knew this would happen and it has such deadly consequences for British people.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Again, the hon. Gentleman knows that I cannot require someone to come to the House on the back of a point of order. Of course, if the hon. Gentleman wished to ask a question about the timetabling of business matters, he should have asked the Leader of the House when she was at the Dispatch Box earlier.

[Geraint Davies]

I asked her about another matter.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I know that and have every sympathy for the hon. Gentleman. He has drawn his concerns to the attention of the Leader of the House, who is in her place. It is not a matter for me.

The Government's Plan for Brexit

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 7th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

As the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) knows, the content of an hon. Member’s speech is not a matter for me. However, it would be a matter for me if the hon. Member for Swansea West said something in the course of his speech that implied wrongdoing on the part of any other Member or member of the Government. I am sure that he will confirm, as I call him to recommence his speech, that he did not mean to say anything of the kind.

[Geraint Davies]

There was certainly no wrongdoing. What I was suggesting is that huge amounts of public money are being pushed towards foreign companies to get them to stay here and that the Government have pointedly refused to tell the Office for Budget Responsibility, when asked, how much money was involved so that the OBR could factor it into its forecasts. The Government have refused to give those figures. These are enormous amounts of money; we are talking about hundreds of millions of pounds, which would affect our economic forecasts. The Government refuse to give the figures now, but they will come out after everything has been decided and article 50 has been triggered in March, when there is no room for reversal. The British public deserve and want either a good deal or no deal, and the right to decide that question. This should not be decided behind closed doors. We need to delay article 50 until November to allow the people to decide their own future.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

As a member of the Welsh Affairs Committee, which has taken a considerable amount of evidence on this subject, I feel that I can talk about the potential confusion that surrounds the combination of polls that we face. The House may be interested in the testimony of Philip Johnson, the chair of the Welsh branch of the Association of Electoral Administrators. He said:

“The capacity for confusion is immense.”

He said that 2015, when there will be the combination of polls, could be horrendous. He is not talking about voter confusion over policy issues, which will, I think, be a significant problem for our democracy.

In Wales, where we have a Labour Government, various proposals will be made to carry on, revive and enliven the policies in Wales. Alongside that, Labour will put forward a different set of proposals on focus and investment to take to the UK Parliament. Therefore, there will be quite different proposals from the same party for different elections on the same day. What is more, there may be varying views on alternative voting. Furthermore, we will have different constituencies for the Assembly and for the UK parliamentary election. For example, I might be standing as the candidate for Swansea West and, at the same time, voters could be asked to vote Labour for the Assembly Member for Swansea Central. Obviously, that could be confusing to voters. We could have one party making different proposals in the same area.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, which is why we should not have the referendum on the same date as other elections. I say that not because the electorate are not intelligent enough to understand that there are different questions being asked of them, but because the system itself is intrinsically and intentionally confusing.

[Geraint Davies]

I certainly agree with the hon. Lady. What I have just said is a prelude to what I was going to say about the inherent administrative confusion over the combination of the polls. I only added the issue about confusion in voters’ minds over the policy, where they live and who represents them because the same party will be saying different things to them.

To start with, therefore, people will go into polling stations feeling a bit confused because of that complexity, but there is a further problem. Normally, there will be different turnouts for different elections—traditionally, the UK election turnout is higher than the Assembly election turnout, and it can be expected to be higher than that for the AV referendum. People will go into polling stations without necessarily wanting to vote in all three polls, and without a settled position on them.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Laing]

We have been having the argument about registration across the Floor of the House for many years. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the individual has to take a certain amount of personal responsibility in registering to vote, especially when individual voter registration is introduced—a measure brought in by his Government, with the support of the then Conservative Opposition? Does he agree that there is an element of personal responsibility, that sometimes people do not register to vote because they choose not to do so, and that they therefore choose to lose their vote, for whatever reason?

[Geraint Davies]

Clearly, we all want to encourage individual responsibility, and I think that there is an individual responsibility to try to register to vote. However, there is a propensity for certain categories of people not to vote because it is more difficult for them to do so. Examples include the one in five people in Britain who is functionally illiterate and finds it very difficult to fill in forms. And what about people who do not speak English very well?

We are about to move to the next stage, which is individual registration as opposed to household registration, and that will have a dramatic impact, particularly on ethnic communities, where there may be a lead member of the household who is the only person in the household who can speak English; in such cases, we may start off with five votes and get one. Some people might say, “It’s their fault; they should learn English,” and all the rest of it, but our law is that an eligible voter is an eligible voter, whether they are educated or not.

Through the amendment, I am saying that the boundaries should be drawn on the basis of eligible voters. Parallel to that, we want more registration, because the people who can vote are those who are registered. The point is that Parliament should represent the people. Poorer people should not be less well represented because they do not register as a result of failures in the education system, or for a host of other reasons.

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[Geraint Davies]

I certainly think that more resources need to be put in. More people need to be registered and to participate in the vote, but it remains the case that as we stand—as has been pointed out, not many resources have been put into this—there is a systematic bias against poorer areas in terms of the number of eligible voters being reflected in the number of registered voters. If we are going to make this massive change based on a numerical system of one size fits all, that numerical system needs to be rooted in the best estimate of eligible voters, not in the number of people who happen to have registered. As we go downstream with individual registration, my fear is that things will get worse and worse as groups of people who are not very literate and so on fall off the register because they are not being registered as a household. That will produce more and more of a bias.

[Mrs Laing]

The hon. Gentleman is being extremely gallant in giving way, because I have to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), who is sitting on the Bench almost beside him and has just accused me of saying something shameful. She is completely wrong and she took my words completely out of context, which is not normal parliamentary behaviour. I agree with every word that she said about individual responsibility resting also on Members of this House to ensure that people are registered. Of course we must, and it is wrong of her to call me shameful.

[Geraint Davies]

That was a strange intervention on my speech. The case that one would want to make is that we have an individual responsibility to register, but that we have to be cognisant of the fact that there is a bias in the rate of registration among different groups. With this amendment, which I would like to press to a vote tomorrow—if that is when we have the vote—I am calling for fairness in that sense.

I should declare an interest. My father, David Thomas Morgan Davies, was the secretary of the Boundary Commission for Wales between 1973 and 1984, so I have a particular interest in this area. Historically, it was always the case that the start point for drawing boundaries was equality in size and populations of constituency, adjusted for community and natural geography—rivers, seas and so on—and the needs of effective democracy. That is why we are where we are in Wales, for example, which stands, as has been pointed out, to lose a quarter of its elected representatives—the number will go from 40 down to 30. The real fear, as well as the points that I have made about the proportion of people from mining communities and other communities that are under-registered, is that we will lose out numerically and that communities will be merged—one valley with another, and with no geographical relationship between them—or that people will have to be in a constituency with a mountain in the way. In terms of effective democracy—devolution was mentioned—an Assembly boundary might be coincident with a parliamentary boundary, so that people can come to see me to talk about benefits and see the Assembly representative to talk about the health service. Now the boundaries will all be changed and then, every five years, changed again. The issue is one of effective democracy. How does the citizen know who represents them and which institution has a clear mechanism for doing so? These things have evolved into place over time and there is a risk that by superimposing a one-size-fits-all system based on the wrong calculus—namely, registered voters as opposed to eligible voters—we will end up with a much less effective democracy.