Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Lisa Nandy

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

Of course I will give the hon. Member the opportunity—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Order! That means sit down. This is a very sensitive point and I want to hear what the hon. Lady has to say.

[Lisa Nandy]

I of course gave the hon. Member the right of reply, but I am quoting literally and directly a quote on his website. If those are not his words and are not correct, I leave it up to hon. Members to judge. I am simply quoting his words to the Secretary of State and asking whether that is correct, because we have had a report today that says, in stark terms, that the Department—

[Bob Seely]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a very serious allegation. Corruption has been alleged, but there is no basis for it and it should be withdrawn.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

This is a serious allegation. I am not in a position right now to weigh up one side of the argument against the other, because I do not have the evidence before me of whatever words were published and whatever words have been said. I ask the hon. Lady —[Interruption.] She cannot possibly be looking at her phone while I am speaking to her. No, no, she cannot possibly be looking at her phone while I am speaking to her! I ask her to get us over this part of the debate, and we can come back to this matter at another time. Will she please withdraw the—[Hon. Members: “ No!”] Do not shout at me when I am speaking from the Chair! Will the hon. Lady please withdraw the allegation of corruption, which is a very serious one, and perhaps find some other words to show that she disagrees with what the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) said. We can then proceed with the debate and, if necessary, come back to this point at another time.

[Lisa Nandy]

Out of deference to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, of course I will rephrase my words in a manner that is far more acceptable to you: this looks awfully dodgy to me, Secretary of State. Was this signed off by him or his Department? I would certainly never disrespect the Chair by reading from my phone, so I will not do it now, but the words are there on the website of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, and if anybody cares to look at them, they can draw their own conclusions.

I say to the Secretary of State that this matters at a time when councils and our communities around the country have had £15 billion stripped out of them by the Government. That is not what respect looks like. [Interruption.] Written into every part of the Bill is a lack of respect, and every single hon. Member who sits there chuntering and heckling, rather than standing up for their own communities, needs to look in the mirror and ask themselves whether they are doing a good job for their communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lisa Nandy]

No, I will not give way—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Mr Gullis, stop it!

[Lisa Nandy]

I do not need to dwell on the point about a lack of respect; we have just seen the most stunning display of a group of representatives who will open their mouths but cannot open their ears and eyes to the reality of what is happening in their communities.

In the press release that accompanied the Bill—[Interruption.] Perhaps I could directly address the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, who is chuntering again. If he cared one iota for his constituency, he would not be chuntering at me; he would be asking the Secretary of State where the missing £27 million has gone.

Anti-Semitism

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Lisa Nandy

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

I have seen one shocking instance of that at a party meeting in the past year, but I have seen acres of it online. It is not a lesser form of racism; there is no such thing. Racism is a disease. It does not exist in pockets; it poisons wherever it is found and it must be dealt with.

In recent months, we have seen a rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Britain, a murder in France, attacks on synagogues in Sweden, and fascists on the march in Poland. It is no wonder that, as one constituent who wrote to thank me for speaking out about the issue in the Labour party said, “People are frightened.” Labour has at times been the hope for people who were frightened of racism and anti-Semitism. For me, that is not historical fact; it is personal. My father was part of the small group of people who wrote the Race Relations Act 1976, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Human Rights Act into law and established the Equal Opportunities Commission, and they have had real, tangible benefits for me and my generation.

The Labour party ought to be the light on the hill for people in times of darkness, and it shames us that we are a source of pain because a small group of people has been allowed a voice, and that demands concrete action. Expel Ken Livingstone—it has been nearly two years—deal with the thousands of complaints that are waiting to be heard, and bring in training for members. I call for that not because most Labour party members are anti-Semitic—most, like me, joined because we abhor racism and discrimination every bit as much as we abhor poverty and oppression—but because Labour has a long history of empowering our members, and we are a party that seeks not just to run society, but to change it, and we have a duty to lead.

Those things, taken together, would create a culture in our party in which anti-Semitism could find no fertile ground. I have been a member of this party for 20 years, and what angers me most is the assertion that a person cannot be left wing and stand up to anti-Semitism—standing up to anti-Semitism is a core part of my values.

As vice-chair of Labour Friends of Palestine for the past six years, I have stood together with Jewish and non-Jewish colleagues against illegal settlements and demolitions, and in support and defence of the Palestinian people. I have never been as moved as when I visited the west bank and saw Israeli Jewish mums volunteering in military courts to advocate for the right of Palestinian mums to be heard. It is a disgrace that some in our party seek to divide and sow hatred when those mums have managed to reach across that divide and do the opposite.

Anti-Semitism tells us that something is rotten in our society. It is not enough for us to decry the shrill, sour, hopeless dog-whistle politics that we have heard from the other side in recent years; we have to be better. I implore my party today to act.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I call Paul Masterton.

Rail Franchising

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Lisa Nandy

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I have tried to let the hon. Gentleman make his point, but he has now made a longer speech in that intervention than most people who are sitting here will get to make in the next half an hour, because we are going to have very tight time limits. Many Members have made very long interventions, which means some others will not get to speak at all. If hon. Members want to be fair, they know how to do so.

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend is right, because in a town like mine, which is typical of many around the country, people commute into nearby cities for work—Manchester is my nearby city, so I am familiar with it. Two thirds of my constituents commute out of the borough for work every day. For our town, the economic interest is enormous, because when they return to Wigan they spend in our local shops and businesses, sustaining our high streets and our local pubs. He will know as well as I do that towns across this country are ageing. The Centre for Towns research we launched last year showed that towns lost 25 million people under the age of 25 over the past 30 years, so public transport is the artery that keeps the heart beating in towns like mine. It has always been thus—towns such as Manchester and Birmingham grew and thrived because of the development of the railways, which enabled them to trade with one another. So how is it that 200 years later a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research finds that it takes longer to get from Liverpool to Hull than it does to get from London to Paris?

I will give the Minister one example of why these decisions, which are being made hundreds of miles away from the people who are affected, are broken. In 2015, the Department for Transport awarded the northern rail franchise to Arriva and, as part of that deal, which we were told would give us a better service, the decision was taken to axe the direct service from Southport through Wigan and into Manchester Piccadilly. Two thirds of people who commute from Wigan to Manchester commute to the south side of the city, but they were breezily told by their Government that instead they could commute into the north side of the city and arrive at work mid-morning. If they had been consulted at all, they would have told the Secretary of State why that was a problem. It has taken five MPs from three political parties two years of hard work to try to persuade the Government to sort this out, and we still have not managed to resolve it. No wonder four and a half times more people commute by train in London as a proportion of the population than in my region of the north-west. Decisions are made hundreds of miles away from the people who are affected, with no understanding and no thought given to the reality of their daily lives. I say to the Minister, who is not paying attention at the moment, that he will soon have to pay attention because the level of anger that this is creating across the country is immense.

The data analyst Tom Forth pointed out recently that for a scheme to be funded in Leeds, it needs to provide twice the return on investment of a scheme in London. How can that be sustainable? I just say this to the Minister: if we had been given the power to make these decisions for ourselves, we would have made very different decisions in recent years. We would have prioritised local services and connecting up our great regional cities before we started investing in High Speed 2. We would never have got into a situation where we were faced with losing the guard on the train. I will tell him what that will do: it will make our railways no-go areas for many people, including women late at night, people with disabilities and older people, who make up the bulk of my constituents.

We would talk far more about buses. In my constituency, it is now often cheaper for a family to get a taxi than a bus—how is that sustainable? The Secretary of State was very fond a few years ago of the phrase “take back control”. If he means anything at all by his word, he will give us back control, because we could hardly do worse than this Government.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Grammar and Faith Schools

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Lisa Nandy

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Lady, and I appreciate that she is speaking with passion and that the House is listening to what she is saying, but I will point out that, even though we have quite a lot of time this afternoon and there is not an awful lot of pressure, she has now been speaking for over half an hour—it has passed quickly, because she is speaking with such passion. She does not have to finish immediately, but I am sure that she will be drawing her speech to a close soon.

[Lisa Nandy]

As a matter of fact, Madam Deputy Speaker, I intend to draw to a close, by reminding the Minister that too many children in this country are unable to learn because of overcrowded housing, poverty and family pressures, and by telling him that the education maintenance allowance and Aimhigher, both of which were abolished by his Government, lifted the number of academic children in my constituency who went on to finish college and go to university by 40% in just six short years. Nothing that the Prime Minister, the Education Secretary or the Minister have said so far on the subject leads me to think that those children are their priority. Instead, they are fond of telling us when we object to policies based on such flimsy evidence that these policies are deeply popular.

I say to the Minister that there is a warning from history here. The Crowther report, commissioned by a Conservative Secretary of State in 1959, highlighted the public clamour that had grown up against a competitive element in grammar school selection. By 1964, when the Conservative party lost the general election, grammar schools had become deeply unpopular with three out of four voters, because segregated education is, by definition, divisive. Perhaps that is why the policy was set out not in his party’s manifesto, but in that of the UK Independence party, one of the most divisive forces in the country.

I will bring my remarks to a close, because many hon. Members wish to speak. In trying to divide children in this country, the Government have succeeded in uniting a range of voices, including the teaching unions, the chief inspector of schools, their own mobility tsar, the previous Education Secretary, the former Universities Minister, the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer and a significant number of MPs from all parties in the House. Together, we will ensure that the Government do better than this.

Women and the Cost of Living

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Lisa Nandy

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) progresses, I gently remind her that one does not refer to Members of the House by their names. The Prime Minister is “the Prime Minister” and the Chancellor of the Exchequer is “the Chancellor of the Exchequer”.