Risk-based Exclusion

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Stella Creasy

Monday 13th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I hear what the right hon. Lady is saying. How does she answer the charge that we in this place may be hypocrites—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We cannot be hypocrites in this place. I am sure that the hon. Lady can find a more appropriate word.

Migration and Economic Development Partnership

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Stella Creasy

Thursday 29th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

How much money?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Lady has asked her question. It is discourteous for her to sit there repeating it when the Home Secretary is answering it. A bit of courtesy is necessary on all sides.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Stella Creasy

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Solicitor General just suggested that amendable SIs was a novel procedure—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Stop. That is not a point of order. The hon. Lady has tried to intervene on the Minister. The Minister has already taken her intervention and he is not taking another. It is not a point of order for the Chair. The hon. Lady should not abuse the procedures of the House in this way. I call the Minister.

Public Order Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Stella Creasy

Report stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The right hon. Gentleman cannot intervene because he was not here at the beginning of the hon. Lady’s speech. He can intervene later, but he cannot intervene halfway through a speech when he was not here at the beginning of it. I appreciate that the hon. Lady is proposing amendments that everybody wants to hear about, but she has held the Floor for 15 minutes. We have three hours for this debate and I have more than 20 people who wish to speak, so I have to appeal for brevity. I would rather not put on a time limit, because that curtails debate. I hope the hon. Lady will appreciate the position of everybody else in the Chamber who also has to have an opportunity to speak.

[Stella Creasy]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I promise I was just about to wind up. I hope the Minister will address the issue in new clause 14 about foreseeable harassment and that perhaps over the course of the debate he will rethink his opposition to new clause 11. I know many of us across the House would welcome that.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Stella Creasy

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 18th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

Ending freedom of movement has become the loudest answer to everything we hear on the doorstep. No jobs? End freedom of movement. No housing, no doctor’s appointment, no parking? Blame freedom of movement. In that noise, it is hard to talk about this issue without being called either a racist or a bleeding heart liberal, but the truth is that EU migration has benefited our economy. EU migrants contribute £2,300 more to the public purse each year than the average adult—and that is including the cost of their children being here, too. They are also less likely to use our public services, although they work in them. We are more likely to meet an EU migrant helping us in our hospitals than standing in front of us in a queue.

Over the past 20 years, immigration has been on a much larger scale than we have had in the previous 200 years, but, truthfully, however many people have come, this country has never been good at making it work. With every new wave of people, the UK has always been unwelcoming and always regretted it. Indeed, it was the same with the Huguenots, the wave of refugees that brought both my family and Nigel Farage’s family here. When the Windrush generation came, they were met with “no blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. Now we rightly honour their contribution to our communities. We have demonised those who have come from Europe for years. Now, as we clap for those who are saving our lives with one set of hands, this proposed legislation asks us to abandon them with another.

The problem here is not immigration; it is politicians talking about what we do not want, rather than what we need. This Bill is that problem written down: bringing to an end freedom of movement without providing for what comes next, because in our toxic political culture ending freedom of movement has been sold as a solution in itself. The only answer the Government are offering us about what replaces it is to expose everyone to the dysfunction that is the current immigration system—the same system that gave us the hostile environment, the Windrush scandal and the legacy system.

The former Home Secretary and former Member for Blackburn once told me there are two divides in Parliament: left and right; and those who have to deal with the UK Border Agency and those who do not. The truth is that the UKBA has been a fiasco for Governments of all colours. It makes us all hypocrites: locking up victims of torture and rape in Yarl’s Wood, while claiming to be defenders of human rights. It is a system where, unlike in other countries in Europe, when we see refugee children, we do not seek to reunite them with their family members or provide them with safe passage to stop them being targeted by traffickers. Above all, it is a system that is just not very good at making decisions. Of the 25,000 people we locked in detention without any limit for how long, only 37% were eventually deported and yet we expect them to deal with this mess without any legal support. The only people who would be helped by this Bill will be us, because it absolves us of dealing with the problems it creates. It gives the Government Henry VIII powers to write immigration legislation without having to bring them back to this place and force us to address the damage that has been done. We already have a points-based system, so the question Ministers should be answering is: what do we award points for? We know that skilled or valued worker does not necessarily mean well-paid worker.

We know 3 million of our EU citizens, who are our friends, our family and our neighbours, are now struggling with the paperwork that pre-settled status entails. There are 1 million Brits in Europe who need a good deal, too. So ask yourselves if you want your children to be able to work for companies who have offices in Berlin or Rome without them being penalised because they cannot travel there, or one that gives points out so that if you fall in love with your French exchange partner you can move to Paris or they can come to you in Barnsley. The benefits that came with freedom of movement mean that when you do not have it, you will end up wanting to invent it. Such freedoms will become more important, not less, in the coming years.

If we are to have a better quality of legislation, we need a better quality of debate about who is coming in and why. Take, for example, the immigrant who came to us having failed his exams with a patchy work history and no ties to the UK. His name was Albert Einstein. Even then, in the 1930s, the UK border authorities misplaced his papers. His landing card was only found in a trawl of old paperwork in Heathrow in 2011. Back then, the Daily Mail urged readers to avoid him and boycott his lectures raising money for other refugees from Nazi Europe. Back then, another MP, Oliver Locker-Lampson, tried to sponsor his British citizenship and help Jews fleeing the Nazis. Back then, we said no and we lost Einstein to America.

When it comes to immigration, our policies all too often meet Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. I will not be voting for the Bill, because it is another example of that phenomenon and my constituents —former, current and future—deserve better from us all. All the while, we as politicians continue to behave like this and debate like this. The problem is not immigrants, it is us.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I suspend the House for 15 minutes until 7.14 pm precisely.

Points of Order

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Stella Creasy

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I take it from that nod that the Minister has listened carefully to the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty). I will also ensure that the Serjeant at Arms knows about what the hon. Gentleman has said, as I am sure Mr Speaker would wish me to ensure.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 6 November, I tabled a written parliamentary question to the Ministry of Justice regarding the number of appeals involving special educational needs cases and tribunals, asking for that material to be provided on a local authority basis. On 12 November, I received a response from the Department saying that such information would be placed in the Library. It is now 13 December and that information has not been provided despite regular calls from my office to the Library and the Ministry of Justice to try to secure it. Given that so few sitting days remain, I wonder whether you can advise me on how best to secure that information so that I may update my constituents, who are worried about special educational needs tribunals.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. As she will know, the Chair has no power whatsoever over the way in which Ministers operate their Departments, but I will echo what Mr Speaker has said many times. There is a duty upon Ministers and their Departments to answer hon. Members’ questions in a timely fashion, and it would appear that the hon. Lady has waited quite some time for her answer. By raising the matter right now, she has brought it to the attention of those on the Treasury Bench, and I am sure that her points will have been noted. If she still does not receive an answer, I am sure that she will come back to Mr Speaker for further advice and that he would be happy to help.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Stella Creasy

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Stella Creasy to move new clause 7 formally.

[Stella Creasy]

I move new clause 7 formally. We love whom we love. We all want control over our bodies. Let us choose to give each other—

[The First Deputy Chairman]

We have done that bit.

New Clause 7

Equal rights for people of Northern Ireland (No. 2)

‘(1) In the absence of Northern Ireland Ministers to address the matters identified by recent, current and future court proceedings in relation to the human rights of the people of Northern Ireland, the Secretary of State must issue guidance to senior officers of all Northern Ireland departments which will specify how to exercise their functions in relation to—

(a) the incompatibility of the human rights of the people of Northern Ireland with the continued enforcement of sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 with the Human Rights Act 1998, and

(b) the incompatibility of the human rights of the people of Northern Ireland with the continued enforcement of section 13(e) of the Matrimonial Causes (Northern Ireland) Order 1978

where they pertain to the provision and management of public services in Northern Ireland.

(2) The Secretary of State shall report guidance under this section on a quarterly basis to the House of Commons and set out her plans to address the impact of the absence of Northern Ireland Ministers on human rights obligations within three months of the day on which this Act is passed.”—(Stella Creasy.)

This new clause would increase accountability of the Secretary of State and senior officers of Northern Ireland departments for their role in ensuring human rights compliance in Northern Ireland, in the absence of Northern Ireland Ministers, by requiring them to address incompatibilities between legislation applied in Northern Ireland and human rights obligations.

Brought up,

Question put, That the clause be added to the Bill.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Stella Creasy

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 51, line 9, at end insert—

“1A A term which requires a consumer to pay a charge for, or be liable for, an element of a good or service that another party has also been charged for in the course of the same transaction.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 2, page 51, line 15, at end insert—

“2A A term which relies upon any bill of sale, as defined in section 3 (Construction of Act) of the Bills of Sale Act (1878) Amendment Act 1882, to reduce the level of consumer protection in relation to contracts concerning consumer credit.”

Amendment 3, page 51, line 18, at end insert—

“3A A term that directly causes financial detriment to the consumer such that it can reasonably be seen to alter the capacity of the consumer to pay the costs of the contract, where the contract is for a financial service.”

Amendment 4, page 53, line 2, at end insert—

“20A A term which either—

(a) requires or encourages a consumer to contract third party services without informing them of their right to seek independent advice; or

(b) seeks to limit a consumer’s access to independent advice regarding third party contracts where there is a potential conflict of interest for the third party involved.”

Amendment 19, page 53, line 2, at the end insert—

“20A A term which has the object or effect of permitting a trader to block, restrict or otherwise hinder the access of a consumer to any lawful electronic communications network or electronic communications service on the basis of an unreasonable or unusual definition of ‘internet access’, ‘data’, ‘webaccess’ or similar word or phrase. Nothing in this prohibition shall affect filters for the purpose of child protection. Electronic communications network or electronic communication service shall have the same meaning as in the Communications Act 2003.”

Amendment (a) to amendment 19,  after “trader”, insert

“engaged in the provision of fixed broadband internet access or mobile internet services.”

[Stella Creasy]

I shall speak to all the amendments in the group, which are about unfair contract terms. Unfairness is such a central concept to British values, I will wager, that it provides an apt discussion point for this week alone. All the amendments deal with where a market is stacked against one party and, we would argue, both miss out as a result. When service providers exploit a lack of information or collude to distort behaviour, it is not just the public who are badly treated: competition is stifled, creativity and innovation are weakened and, above all, the consumer is ripped off. The amendments thus reflect some of the problems affecting markets that we see in Britain and deal with what more could be done to make a stronger consumer rights framework that would give the public the tools to be able to prevent rather than have to deal with the problems that come from these distorted behaviours. There are four different issues, but we consider them all to be part of the conflicts of interest that cause detriment to the consumer.

Amendment 1 refers to what we call “double charging”, and particularly the behaviour of estate agents. We all know that buying a house is one of the biggest costs any of us will face in our lifetime. An English man or woman’s home is their castle, but it is often a very expensive one. The cost of buying a house has gone up so substantially in my constituency that it is now 30% more than it was a year ago—a source of extreme concern for many. Indeed, we know that the average home is worth eight times the average wage and that it can take 20 years for a family to save for a deposit. A million homes were bought in the UK last year, and prices have risen across the country by 8%, even if they have not risen as much as in some of our London areas. That is why the Governor of the Bank of England has warned that the biggest risk to the economy stems from the fact that people are getting mortgages—sometimes four or more times their salaries—that they cannot sustain. Housing is indeed a bubble underpinning our economy and leaving it in an incredibly precarious position.

The Government’s housing Bill will provide 15,000 houses, but people in my constituency know that we need to double that and then some, which is why Labour are proposing to build 200,000 houses, getting us closer to where we need to get to in order to deal with the pressures that people are experiencing. This amendment speaks, too, to some of the other charges that people face when buying a property. We may disagree about how many houses need to be built, but I am sure we would all want the housing property market to be as fair and open as possible so that it does not involve more expenses that mean people needing an even higher mortgage or an even higher level of debt—particularly in the form of the personal loans that people are taking out to pay the sort of fees necessary when they start ownership of a new property.

The amendment would deal with what the property ombudsman has called an “emerging commercial practice”—one that means that people such as estate agents, who benefit from the increase in demand for housing by exploiting the pressure on the country’s housing supply, reap the benefits. The practice involves a contract that we believe is ripping off consumers—both buyers and sellers—and therefore needs addressing. It is called “double charging” if the estate agent applies a fee to both the buyer and the seller of a property on the same transaction.

Let me explain the problem for the benefit of Members who have not yet observed the practice in their constituencies. It often results from the process of “sale by informal tender”. House owners are asked to accept sealed bids for their properties. Increasingly, estate agents are then charging successful bidders a “finder’s fee”, which, in some cases, is between 2% and 2.5% of the property fee plus VAT. According to the Consumers Association, an estate agent’s commission should normally be between 1% and 2%. Moreover, sellers themselves are paying to market their properties. Buyers must find the cost of the additional fee in order to bid.