Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Paula Barker

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker]

On that point, will my hon. Friend give way?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before the hon. Lady makes another intervention, I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that we have only until 5.15 pm to debate this matter. Eight Back Benchers wish to speak and, at the moment, their speeches will be limited to three minutes, so it might not be entirely fair for the hon. Lady to keep making interventions.

[Paula Barker]

I withdraw my intervention.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Lady for her courtesy.

Point of Order

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Paula Barker

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you give me some advice on how I can pursue an urgent response from the Secretary of State for Education? I wrote to her on 28 February, outlining urgent concerns about King’s Leadership Academy, a secondary school, being unable to open in my constituency despite the Department for Education providing a DfE unique reference number and DfE number, both of which are required for the local authority to offer in the admissions brochure.

The Department recently went on to instruct the local authority to remove King’s Leadership Academy from the admissions process. Parents have now been informed that the academy will not open in September and their children have been allocated secondary schools that were not one of their preferred choices, causing distress and logistical nightmares. It is completely unacceptable not to have received a response on a matter of such urgency, and unacceptable for the Department not to have raised any potential issues earlier. I seek your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. As Mr Speaker has said many times, the Chair is not responsible for the content of Ministers’ answers. However, Mr Speaker has also said many times that he expects, and that Parliament expects, Ministers to provide timely answers to questions from Members. It sounds as though the hon. Lady has had difficulty in that regard. Although I cannot answer her questions, I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard what she has said and that the matter will be passed on to the relevant Minister. I can advise her that the Table Office will be able to offer guidance on how she might pursue the matter further, if she wishes so to do.

Bill Presented

Post Office (Horizon System) Offences

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Secretary Kemi Badenoch, supported by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary James Cleverly, Secretary Grant Shapps, Secretary Michelle Donelan, Secretary Claire Coutinho, Secretary Lucy Frazer and Laura Trott, presented a Bill to provide for the quashing of convictions in England and Wales for certain offences alleged to have been committed while the Horizon system was in use by the Post Office; to make provision about the deletion of cautions given in England and Wales for such offences; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 181) with explanatory notes (Bill 181-EN).

Tackling Fraud and Preventing Government Waste

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Paula Barker

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and many happy returns of the day.

Notwithstanding what the Paymaster General suggested earlier, this debate called by my party is absolutely the right one. It is easy to forget, given the plethora of scandals afflicting this Government, that when it comes to actual good governance they fall short of that marker. Perhaps it is as a result of the cumulative effect of those scandals— certainly on the back of the Owen Paterson debacle—that these issues are starting to pick up traction. The issues of waste, fraud, fast-track procurement processes and contracts that did not deliver are all interconnected. They did not begin with Owen Paterson and end with Lord Agnew’s resignation.

Ever since the pandemic began, Members on the Opposition side of the House have raised questions, as any good Opposition should; but we were derided and ignored, accused of playing party politics throughout a national crisis. These days the Chancellor is conspicuous by his absence. That is in stark contrast to the dizzying heights of his popularity early in the pandemic, but it also means that he cannot continue to evade accountability and run from the truth.

It is not as if the Government were not warned. I attended a Westminster Hall debate called by my good and hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) on 8 December 2020, on the back of the National Audit Office report that was critical of the Government in respect of transparency about the use of public funds for covid contracts. Companies with no track record or experience of delivering comprehensive outcomes on anything, let alone specialist services, were awarded contracts to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer cash, and the only criterion, as far as we can tell, was their personal connections with the Conservative party and Conservative Ministers—a bit like the pub landlord, for example. It is absolutely shameful. At about that time, Conservative Ministers such as Lord Bethell were refusing to publish a list of the companies awarded contracts to provide PPE because of the “commercial sensitivity” associated with the high-priority VIP lane; others might call it the Tory gravy train.

Then there is the abject failure in terms of outcomes, most famously that of track and trace, at an eye-watering £37 billion. Consultants were on £7,000 a day; there were jobs for mates such as Baroness Harding, who was completely out of her depth, and money was being funnelled to companies like Serco which cannot even deliver decent asylum accommodation in my own constituency. When this Government claim that they got the big calls right during the pandemic, they are so far off the mark that one must wonder whether the booze consumed during recent Downing Street parties has killed off considerable numbers of brain cells.



We know that these are difficult times for a Conservative Government when the Telegraph runs with the headline “Government waste is an insult to taxpayers”. Now the latest reveal is that £4.3 billion has been lost to fraud in the covid support schemes—written off, never to be seen again—while £3.5 billion in public contracts has gone to Conservative pals in the private sector. The Government’s so-called levelling-up fund alone could have been three times as large if No. 11 had not been so flagrant with public money. Who knows? We could have afforded Northern Powerhouse Rail, not the cheap and nasty integrated rail plan that we have received.

I have to mention the 3 million excluded self-employed taxpayers who continue to be ignored by this Government and who have not had one penny in support, because the Government say that could be open to fraud. The hypocrisy is astounding. When all is said and done after the pandemic, history will not be kind to this Government. They are economical with the truth—and that is putting it kindly—but less so with the public finances. They have been nothing short of an abject failure.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Peter Grant.

Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Paula Barker

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

I cannot claim to be surprised we are here debating the scrapping of the £20 uplift to universal credit. As the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) alluded to earlier, the fact that universal credit had to be uplifted is surely an admission that the provision afforded to those falling on hard times was not nearly adequate in the first place. Yet in this moment, when we are told that our economy is on the road to recovery, this Government shamelessly pull the rug from under the feet of millions of decent people. It is morally reprehensible and also bad economics. In my constituency of Liverpool, Wavertree, it translates to 11,500 households, affecting more than 6,000 children. That number includes the more than 33% of UC claimants in my constituency who are in work.

We on the Opposition Benches are the party of work and workers. We do not make work pay through a low-wage economy subsidised by Dickensian social security systems, no matter how many times the Government employ divide and conquer tactics through the false dichotomy of strivers and skivers.

I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not here to listen to how this cut will affect my constituents. She grew up in my wonderful city, and it obviously left a very poor impression on her if she is prepared to turn her back on the 62,000 households affected in the city of Liverpool alone, never mind the many more in towns and cities across this country. Let us say it clearly: this is a grotesque act of levelling down. It is levelling down, not levelling up. Indeed, what is “levelling up”, if her Department is prepared to remove £12 million from the pockets of those in Liverpool, Wavertree, £12.5 million from the pockets of those in Heywood and Middleton and more than £10 million from those in Darlington?

As the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) did not know the figure for his constituency, for the record it is just over £5.5 million, affecting 5,340 households and 4,008 children. It is shameful. I am sure the penny pinchers on the Government Benches are perfectly aware of those sums, but then of course there are those other sums trotted out by the Secretary of State. For someone with a PhD in chemistry, I thought she would have a good grasp of detail, such as how many hours it would actually take to make up the £20 loss in income. It is obvious, considering the bluster and false rhetoric, that she has no coherent strategy to make work pay on the back of this £20 cut. Ultimately, it represents an act of war on the low-paid and the unemployed. The consequences for ordinary people will be grave: more food banks and hunger, more homelessness and more destitution in our communities. I am sure it will provide ample opportunity for the regular circus of Tory MPs taking selfies at the very food banks their policies helped to create.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I am afraid I have to reduce the time limit to three minutes in an attempt to give everybody a chance to speak.