Medical Cannabis (Access) Bill
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kieran Mullan
Dr Mullan
I encourage the hon. Lady to listen carefully to what I am saying. I said at the start of the debate that, absolutely, there are very good reasons for individual patients to receive this treatment. I have acknowledged that there are licensed treatments based on evidence, so I think she is kind of misrepresenting what I said. I said clearly that I am giving context to the—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I am sure that the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) was not misrepresenting what the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) said. She is doing whatever he is suggesting that she is doing, but it will not be misrepresenting, because that would not be honourable.
Dr Mullan
I respect the experience that the hon. Member brings to her role. At no point have I said that the only way in which we can proceed is through RCTs. Earlier in the debate, when Opposition Members started talking in broad terms about observational studies and, to my mind, they were unfortunately disparaging RCTs, my comments were about being cautious. RCTs are incredibly important—they are fundamental to the vast majority of clinical medicine. I agree that other types of studies will be needed in some circumstances, but people need to make those arguments to the National Institute of Health Research. It is not for us as parliamentarians to override well-established processes designed to ensure that things are done in an appropriate, fair, thought-through and well-funded way.
Income Tax (Charge)
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kieran Mullan(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
You are clearly talking about the tension between the costs of going too late or too soon in terms of efficiencies. Do you agree that you might have more credibility—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Will the hon. Gentleman please refer to the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) as the right hon. Gentleman, not “you”? When someone says “you” in this House, they mean the Chair. We have to start getting that right; it is unprofessional not to.
Dr Mullan
My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that he would have more credibility on the issue if he had not backed Labour’s 2030 net zero target, which even his own unions did not support? He has no credibility on that point.
Covid-19: Child Maintenance Service
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kieran Mullan(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con) [V]
I, too, begin by recognising the enormous challenges that have faced all parts of the DWP and, indeed, Government over the past 12 months. If ultimately more people in need got more help through redeployment, I can understand the difficulties that had to be faced. Like other MPs, I have been contacted by constituents who have experienced difficulties with reductions in payments. I welcome the commitment that calculations will be backdated. We must get back to normal service as soon as possible. I would like to make sure that the challenges and difficulties created by the pandemic do not mean that we forget the longer-term challenges, so, if I may, I will make some broader points.
We know that there are £350 million of arrears with the CMS, that £2.5 billion of Child Support Agency legacy debt is owed to children and that as much as £1.9 billion is due to be written off. Those figures alone tell us that we can and must do more. I do not know every single non-paying parent’s circumstances, but I am not willing to hold back on my criticism of parents who could pay but do not, for fear of upsetting those who cannot. Let me be clear that in my view not financially supporting your children when you could is completely and utterly reprehensible. If you do this, you are the lowest of the low, in my book.
I understand that various measures including imprisonment are available. We confiscate passports and deduct money from people’s wages, but the outstanding money shows that we need to go further. I want to pay tribute to the charity Gingerbread, which has worked and campaigned so hard on this issue. It says that in 2019 over 100,000 children went without payments while the Child Maintenance Service confiscated fewer than five passports and zero driving licences. I have heard from parents in my constituency who are not receiving the money their child is entitled to, and they have my full support. They want to see tougher action taken sooner, and so do I.
When it comes to arrears, I am afraid that we are much too quick to write off the debt. I seriously question the approach of writing debt off at all. That money is owed to a child, so what right does the state or even a parent have to say that they will forgive that debt? What kind of message does it send when we say, “You can be let off your obligations to a child”? In my view, we should never do that.
I want to finish by raising another area of consideration that I appreciate is full of potential unintended consequences and complexity. Why is it only up to one parent whether the other parent is pursued for the obligation in the first place? The state intruding uninvited into family arrangements should never be done lightly, but the financial circumstances of families with a parent wilfully failing to pay affects the finances of all families. It is not just a private matter. In effect, welfare and child benefit and the concept of parental responsibility and child maintenance operate entirely separately, but when it comes to poverty, hard-working families pay their taxes, making up the shortfall of the money not being provided by non-paying parents.
In the discussion on poverty and welfare, we hear again and again the scenario of the single parent struggling. Why are we told this about someone who is struggling? The implication is that they are struggling financially because they are a single parent raising their children on a single income. Quite rightly, taxpayers provide a safety net of support for children if that single income is not enough, but we should not forget that the first responsibility rests with the parent who is not contributing. As others have mentioned, research has found that in the UK, for the children of single parents who are in poverty and not receiving maintenance, maintenance payments being received would lift nearly 60% of them out of poverty. I wish the same amount of attention and publicity was given to the obligations of non-paying parents as is given to the obligations of taxpayers and the Government to step into their place.
I would like the Minister to give us his thoughts on how, when taxpayers are sharing the responsibility, our welfare system could reflect the implications of one parent choosing not to seek financial support from the other. I appreciate that we need to be mindful of domestic violence and other complexities in those scenarios, but we should not absolve an abusive parent of their obligations because they are an abusive parent. That would create a terrible perversion of the system. As far as I am concerned, not paying child support when you can is child neglect. If a parent who is looking after and caring for their child simply stops doing what we expect of them, we do not accept that. The state steps in, uninvited if necessary. That double standard is not right. I know that the Minister and the Department will rightly focus on the immediate challenges—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has exceeded his time and he really must conclude.
Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kieran MullanMonday 18th May 2020
(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con) [V]
I welcome the opportunity to speak in these proceedings, as they represent another important step in this Government delivering on what people in Crewe and Nantwich voted for, and that is for us to take back control. That is why the Bill is important. I relish the fact that we are now once again having a full and healthy debate about the details of our immigration policy—not just a yes or no to the freedom of movement. We are having these debates because our Government are once again fully accountable for immigration policy. The Opposition have every right to scrutinise and propose alternative approaches—that is how our democracy functions.
How did we ever think that on such a complicated issue we could simply tick a box saying yes? Deciding who can visit, work in and live in our country is a matter of fundamental importance that should never have been simplified to such an unsophisticated approach as freedom of movement. There are so many different factors that we need to balance—the needs of business in the short and long term; the goal of providing the best possible job opportunities for British citizens; the obligations we have to provide safe refuge to individuals in need; the impact on our housing market; and the effect of large-scale immigration on social cohesion. Those are just a few of the things we have to think about.
All of those factors will ebb and flow in importance over time, and any effective immigration system needs to be able to ebb and flow along with them. Instead, we have had a fixed policy, direct accountability for which sat offshore. A multifactorial issue became a binary one. People were either pro freedom of movement or against it. I am afraid that that did not work, and was never going to work. It became a touchstone issue in relation to our EU membership, because voters could sense it was not right. That is fundamentally why I want freedom of movement abolished. It is policy making on the cheap, decision making without decisions—the multitude of views on all the different ways in which we should change our policy that we will hear in the Chamber today are a testimony to that.
I want to talk about what I think has been a shameless attempt to distort the meaning of the term “low-skilled”—a phrase that has been used cross-party across multiple Governments for many years. The last Labour Home Secretary referred on a number of occasions in this House to the low-skilled, and I cannot believe anybody would ascribe to him any disrespect to those he was referring to in his use of that term. The current shadow Home Secretary has spoken about high-skilled jobs in the House, and I do not imagine that anyone would argue that we can talk about high-skilled jobs without having to acknowledge the existence of low-skilled jobs. I do not in any way seek to diminish the prominence of the current post holder, but in 2014 the previous long-serving shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) asked the then Business Secretary what steps were being taken to address the exploitation of low-skilled workers. In 2018, the right hon. Lady also agreed that it was logical to distinguish between high and low-skilled migrants when making immigration decisions. I find the deliberate attempt to inject disrespect into the current use of that term extremely distasteful, because it is an attempt to gain some short-term political advantage by hurting the feelings of people who at this minute are working hard for this nation. However, perhaps it would do no harm to review our language in this regard so that in future it cannot be exploited.
What do we really mean when we use the term “low-skilled”? What we are actually talking about is how readily a skill can be acquired. The person who cleans a cubicle so that I can see a patient is just as vital a member of the team as I am when it comes to looking after patients. If they were not doing their job, I could not do mine. But we can more readily train someone to do that job than we can train someone to be a doctor or nurse. That is a simple fact. It does not in any way demean the importance of the role or contribution of those whose skills are more easily acquired than others. Opposition Members know that full well, and that is part of the discussion we will have about salaries and how that works when we decide roles and who we want to come here.
When we consider whether we should allow people to come here to live and work, we inevitably prioritise individuals with skillsets that are not readily or easily acquired. That is what we are talking about when we talk about high and low-skilled jobs. Going forward, perhaps we could consider changing our approach to talk about readily acquired and non-readily acquired skills, so that we are saying exactly what we mean and there can be no doubt.
Of course, I expect the Government to look closely at how their policy approach will translate in the real world so that our public services have the staff who are needed and our economy is well resourced. We need to find a way to recognise the important and valuable contribution that immigrant workers have made to the NHS during this crisis, but it is absolutely right that we should grow our home skill base whenever possible. I have felt very uncomfortable with our reliance on the immigration of healthcare professionals to this country over many decades, because we are sometimes taking staff who are desperately needed in their countries of origin, particularly outside the EU. That cannot be right—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Thank you. The hon. Gentleman has exceeded his five minutes.
Flooding
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kieran Mullan(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The prize for patience and perseverance goes to Dr Kieran Mullan.
Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have seen examples in my constituency of local residents warning of flood risk outside of recognised flood plains, but development happened anyway and, sure enough, flooding follows. What more can we do to ensure the planning system listens to local knowledge about local flood risks that the Environment Agency may not typically recognise?