Business of the House

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Justin Madders

Thursday 25th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Do not shout from the Back Benches. I have already said that this is not a time for asking the opinion of the Leader of the House. This is business questions. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady asked her question perfectly well; it is her comments from a sedentary position on which I am commenting. This is not about opinions. She asked a perfectly reasonable question, and it has been answered.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I add my voice to the tributes paid to Frank Field, whose assistance and wisdom was of great help to me as a newly elected constituency MP for a nearby seat. He is held in very high regard by my constituents, and his legacy will live on in Ellesmere Port through Ellesmere Port College and the Frank Field Education Trust.

Can we please have a debate on private parking companies? I have had a number of instances recently where these companies seem to be operating by their own rules. Constituents have put appeals in against fines. There seems to be absolutely no consideration given to technical issues, or wider questions about why tickets have been issued. Frankly, it seems to me to be nowhere close to approaching justice in the sense that Members of this House would understand.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Justin Madders

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

The Resolution Foundation’s report on economic stagnation, published today, shows how levelling up simply is not happening under this Government. One of the speakers at the event this morning was Andy Haldane, the chair of the Levelling Up Advisory Council, who said that greater financial devolution was needed in all areas, not just in the favoured few. It sounds like he has been taking inspiration from our proposed “take back control” Bill. Does the Minister agree with him that more economic devolution is needed in all areas of the UK?

Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Justin Madders

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

It had better be a point of order.

[Justin Madders]

I think it is, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is really important that Members know what they are voting on—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Members know what they are voting on.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Justin Madders

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I wish to speak to Lords amendment 29 on the workforce. The most important thing I learned during my five years as a shadow Health Minister is that everything comes back to the workforce. We can have the grandest plans, strategy documents, reorganisations, integrations and configurations—all of which are probably in this Bill, in various forms—but it will all count for very little if the fundamental cog in the machine, the workforce, is not a central part of those plans. The consistent failure to invest in, and provide a plan for, the workforce, so that it can meet demand over a sustained period is at the root of the challenges that the NHS and social care face today. We now have a chance to correct that.

Let us look at some of the challenges. There are 93,000 NHS staff vacancies; £6 billion-plus has been spent on temporary staff to fill gaps; and more than half of staff are working unpaid extra hours each week, with 44% saying that they have felt ill with work-related issues—little wonder, given that retention remains a huge issue. We need a plan, and we need to give staff some semblance of hope that we are listening—that the claps on a Thursday were not just an empty gesture; that the tributes that we rightly pay here to their dedication are not meaningless platitudes; and that there is a determination to do something about the persistent rota gaps that mean that staff are both exhausted and demoralised.

The Health and Social Care Committee report on staff burnout says:

“It is clear that workforce planning has been led by the funding envelope available to health and social care rather than by demand and the capacity required to service that demand.”

That is rather the nub of it. Health and social care are both demand-led systems, yet the funding and therefore the workforce capacity are not linked to demand. Until that central issue is addressed, we will keep coming back to the many varied and unfortunate consequences of an overstretched and under-resourced workforce.

I suspect that the Minister—who I have a lot of time for, even though he is often wrong on these things—might privately think that a long-term workforce plan might be a good idea, not just to ensure that the NHS can plan properly and to move forward on a sustainable footing, but because that might help his Department when it goes into negotiations on the spending round with the Treasury, as it will be able to point to an independently verified assessment of workforce need. If the amendment has a weakness, it is that it does not ensure that any plan is actually feasible, because there is no requirement in it that any plan be fully funded. However, a plan that shows, for all the world to see, a clear funding gap would be helpful to the Minister, because it would allow him to go to the Treasury with a clear and objective demand. As he knows, I like to be helpful to him, so I hope that on this occasion he can support the amendment.

This debate is timely because it comes on a day when two surveys have been released that lay bare the crisis that we face. One survey shows that public satisfaction ratings with the NHS are reported to be at a 25-year low—a quarter of a century of surveys there—and another shows that the number of NHS staff who would recommend their trust as a place to work has plummeted. Those two facts are intertwined and symptomatic of the workforce crisis that the amendment is trying to address.

The question we must ask ourselves, if we choose not to support the Lords amendment, is whether the Government’s existing plans create sufficient accountability and rigour to deliver the transformative approach that the amendment would. In my view, it introduces a level of robustness to workforce planning that is currently missing. For the reasons I have set out, we owe it to the workforce, to patients and to those in receipt of social care to put workforce planning on the strong footing that the amendment would deliver.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am surprised that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) does not wish to speak. [Interruption.] Oh, he does. I hope he will be brief, so that the Minister will have time to answer the debate.

Points of Order

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Justin Madders

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. She knows that the Chair has no power over bringing Ministers to the Chamber, but Members have the power to use the proper means whereby that can be done, such as if a question is considered to be urgent. As the hon. Lady said, there was an extensive debate on this matter yesterday, when the very matters that she refers to were aired fully here in the Chamber, but I appreciate what she says about the timing of the publication of the National Audit Office report. I draw to her attention the ways in which she can ask for advice from the Table Office as to how she might compel a Minister to come to this House. I have at this moment, probably in view of the fact that the debate occurred yesterday, not received any notice of an intention from the Government to bring this matter to the House again in the near future.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Are you aware of a letter from the UK Statistics Authority to the director of data science at 10 Downing Street regarding claims made by the Prime Minister that there are more people in work now than there were at the start of the pandemic? In the letter, the UKSA points out that that claim is incorrect and there are in fact 600,000 fewer people in work than at the start of the pandemic.

I am mindful of what was said by Mr Speaker earlier and that accusations of deceit do not enhance the reputation of this place, but this claim has been made by the Prime Minister on 24 November, 15 December, 5 January, 12 January, 19 January and again today. I believe that the public have a right to expect what is said by the Prime Minister at the Dispatch Box to be truthful and accurate. Have you received any notification of an intention from the Prime Minister to correct the record?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for having given me notice of his intention to raise it. As Mr Speaker has said many times from the Chair, and as those of us who occupy the Chair have repeated, the veracity or otherwise of statistics and the interpretation of statistics is the very stuff of political discourse and debate. The hon. Gentleman is right to ask the questions, and I am quite sure that he will find a way of asking those questions directly of Ministers. He is absolutely right to say that it is important that statements made in this House are absolutely correct and true, and if an error has been made inadvertently, I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will note the points made by the hon. Gentleman, and his request for the matter to be looked at again will be referred to the appropriate Minister. There is of course a system for correcting errors and mis-statements, which Ministers and others can use if necessary.

Public Health

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Justin Madders

Monday 4th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

We all wish that these regulations were not necessary, but we are all absolutely clear that, given the threat we face, they are required. Before we get into the substance of the regulations, I want to say a little bit about the process, because whether we support these measures or not, given that they represent the biggest peacetime restrictions that this country has ever seen, they do demand full parliamentary scrutiny. I do not intend this to be a criticism of the Minister or anyone else, because we all know the efforts that have been made to get this place up and running again, but a couple of hours’ debate weeks after the regulations were introduced cannot in future be sufficient to provide the level of examination and scrutiny that such sweeping laws require.

We all know the damage that this virus is doing to our society, and we all know that these measures are needed to limit that damage, but we should not forget their impact—the business shut down overnight with no idea if or when it might trade again; the child who cannot understand why they cannot see their friends any more; the grandparents cut off from their family, missing out on their grandchildren growing up. Everyone is facing their own challenges. The physical and mental toll is huge, yet virtually everyone is adhering to these rules in a way that is a testament to the resolve and determination of the British people. So we say thank you to everyone who has played their part in slowing the spread of the virus.

We acknowledge that this is incredibly difficult, and we do not want these measures to be in place for a day longer than is absolutely necessary. The first duty of any Government is to protect its citizens, and if it is necessary to curtail basic freedoms—freedoms for which people have fought and died—to protect them, reality dictates that that is what has to happen. That reality must be accompanied by openness, accountability and scrutiny at a greater level than we would ordinarily see. We accept that the regulations had to be introduced hurriedly in response to the rising number of infections, but there is now a new rhythm to life, and there ought to be time and space to ensure that any future changes have democratic consent before they are introduced.

The regulations require a review every three weeks—as the Minister said, one is due in the next few days. The Secretary of State is legally required to terminate any regulations that are not necessary or proportionate to control the transmission of the virus. A statement in the House following the review will provide a helpful examination of that requirement. I hope that when the Minister responds he will commit to that and to an oral statement after each subsequent review. If that review envisages some relaxation of the measures, we hope that any new regulations on the back of that are debated here before they are implemented and, most importantly, that they follow a wider conversation with Opposition parties, employers, trade unions and, of course, the public.

There are reports that that has begun to happen, but it needs to be done in a structured, open way, not through media briefings or leaks. I do not say that to make a political point, but because I believe that consent for an application of the rules will be better after full and transparent dialogue than it would be without that. We need only to look at the way in which some of those rules were interpreted and applied in the early days to know that there was confusion about their exact meaning. Again, that is not intended as a criticism—no law, let alone one that is completely unprecedented in its reach in modern times could be implemented without areas where there is ambiguity, and clarification is required.

Much of that was most likely due to the unusual and sudden nature of the regulations, but even recently we have seen a divergence between ministerial pronouncements and what the law actually allows. For example, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has recently said on a number of occasions that tips should be able to reopen. Regulation 6 does not state that such a visit is a reasonable excuse for leaving home.

That leads to my next point—the current rules, sweeping as they are, are not numerous. If the next phase is likely to contain a longer list of reasonable excuses to leave home, it is even more important that those rules are clear and consistent. The rules need to be harmonised with advice, guidelines and all forms of official communication. We do not want people to imply legal authority where there is none, or to act outside the law. That is vital to preserve the rule of law. We know that the lockdown was a blunt tool—effective nevertheless—and one that will change by definition as restrictions ease. There will be a measure of nuance, distinction and variation that requires careful explanation and policing. People will inevitably ask why one set of businesses can reopen, but not another. We believe that full disclosure not just of the names of the attendees of the Scientific Group for Emergencies but of all the scientific evidence and advice that has been provided is required to give the public confidence and reassurance on any changes to the rules.

It is in the area of transparency that we need a change from what have seen so far. To take people with us, and for the morale of the nation, any changes to the rules must be viewed in the context of a published exit strategy. We need clear sight of the proposed areas where restrictions will be eased, and a robust plan to protect workers and the public alongside a published impact assessment. So far, there has been no impact assessment—again, we understand why that was not possible in the circumstances, but we do not want that to become the norm, especially for regulations such as this. We see the impact every day and we know that it is not distributed equally.

I should like the Minister to provide assurances that there will be adequate personal protective equipment for all those working on the frontline and facing exposure to the virus. I should like to put on the record our thanks for the extraordinary bravery and dedication demonstrated by NHS staff and other public servants. Our thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones to the virus, and we hear the concerns from many royal colleges and trade unions in the NHS and social care sectors about the availability of PPE. That matters going forward. If, for example, any changes to the lockdown rules involve the wearing of masks in public what steps will the Government take to ensure that everyone can access them consistently and securely?

Will the Minister also address the question of what resources will be devoted to helping businesses make physical changes to ensure safe working and to increase capacity for the official enforcement of safe working practices? The Health and Safety Executive has experienced significant cuts to its budget over the past decade, and demands on it will be higher as questions inevitably arise about safety. What extra funding will be available to meet that demand?

Will the Minister provide clarity on the status of the 2-metre social distancing rule? It is probably the most effective tool in helping to stop the spread of the virus, yet it does not appear in the regulations. Does it appear elsewhere? Is it actually enforceable? On the question of enforceability, the comments today from the TUC about the lack of enforceability of the proposed guidelines that it has seen are extremely troubling. We cannot allow people back into work unless there is confidence that a robust and enforceable system is in place to guarantee their safety.

Finally, we require clarification on the list of vulnerable people in schedule 1 of the first set of regulations. For example, motor neurone disease appears in the schedule as an underlying medical condition for those in the vulnerable category, but it is not among the high-risk category of patients on the NHS shielding list. This may well be another example of where there needs to be greater harmony between the regulations and other guidance.

In conclusion, we will not oppose the regulations but, given that they represent the most severe restrictions imposed on British liberty in modern history, it is critical that they are subject to continual comprehensive and transparent scrutiny. Democracy demands no less.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We now have a formal time limit of five minutes.