Support for Civilians Fleeing Gaza

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Grant

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Many of our constituents have hardly slept for months, because they never know when they are going to get the phone call telling them of the death of a relative, or in some cases, the deaths of five, 10 or 15 relatives at the same time. It is an unimaginable worry for people to be living with.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member for bringing forward this debate, on a subject we all have in our mind. Does he agree that the most vulnerable people under attack in Gaza need a clear path to safety? Will he join me in urging the neighbouring nations also to step up their efforts to welcome refugees with open arms? Does he further agree that our Government should be ensuring that we do all we can to make sure that aid gets to the people who clearly need it the most?

Non-disclosure Agreements in the Workplace

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Grant

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) on setting the scene so well and all those hon. and right hon. Members who have made significant and helpful contributions. I wish to add my support to what the right hon. Lady has put forward and to give, as I always do, a Northern Ireland perspective on what we are discussing. It is good to be in Westminster Hall and back after the summer break, so to speak.

The right hon. Lady has raised this issue with us today and in the past. I have been in attendance to hear many of her comments about the dangers that non-disclosure agreements can pose in the workplace specifically. In theory, the agreements are supposed to be used as a legally binding contract that establishes a confidential relationship—if only that was what they were used for. As everyone knows, they have been misrepresented and used for other purposes, and that is why the debate is taking place. They can ensure secrecy and confidentiality for sensitive information, but have been seen more recently as a weapon to keep people quiet. It is crucial that the agreements are used correctly, so it is great to be here to discuss them and highlight some issues as well.

In May 2023, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 received Royal Assent. It included provisions to prohibit higher education providers and their colleges from entering into non-disclosure agreements with staff members, students and visiting speakers in relation to complaints of sexual misconduct, abuse or harassment. That was backed in 2022 by the then Minister for the Economy in the Northern Ireland Assembly and my party colleague, Gordon Lyons MLA. Queen’s University, Ulster University, Stranmillis University College, St Mary’s University College and the Open University in Northern Ireland have also signed up to the pledge.

I warmly welcome the Can’t Buy My Silence campaign and everything it stands for, which is ensuring that NDAs are only used for their intended purpose of protecting sensitive information in relation to a trade or a company. The idea that NDAs are used to silence those who are victims of bullying or misconduct within a business setting is totally disgraceful. We all have offices and staff, and most importantly we have a duty of care to each other to protect and listen to any concerns that our staff have. I find it implausible and difficult to imagine a situation where using an NDA for dealing with misconduct is a sensible idea for any party ever—I cannot comprehend it.

Some 95% of respondents to a survey carried out by the CBMS campaign stated that signing an abusive NDA had a profound impact on their mental health, so there are side effects as well. I certainly agree with the calls to extend the ban on abusive NDAs to more sectors. They have been used to silence people not only in universities, but in workplaces and other professional settings. There is a complete lack of legal oversight too, where victims do not have representation from a regulated legal professional and abusive NDAs are internal within an organisation or business.

A workplace should be an environment where staff members feel safe and can work to the best of their ability with no fear or worry of advantage being taken that is backed up by unhealthy and ill-thought-out NDAs. Another useful point is that banning the use of abusive NDAs helps to stop repeat offenders, as within the workplace there is no protection against abusive behaviour. A predator or someone who inflicts abuse on someone else has the underlying protection of an NDA, knowing that the information will not be shared. Banning NDAs gives predators no way out and would stop their behaviour, or they would risk being let go or even prosecuted.

[Peter Grant]

On the question of protecting repeat offenders, does the hon. Member see the massive injustice in this? A victim who speaks out is likely to be denied employment opportunities for the rest of their life, but a rogue employer or director can be protected, get a golden handshake and work on a different board of directors within a week and carry on with their nefarious behaviour. That degree of disparity is a massive injustice that has to be addressed.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There is no one present who does not understand that. When someone wants to do their best at work and is taken advantage of by an employer, that is unacceptable. I hope that when the Minister responds to our comments, he will grasp what we are trying to say. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke and the Mother of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who made a powerful intervention, proposed a legislative way forward and set the scene very well.

I support the points made by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke and would be happy to support this matter further. We must ensure that NDAs are used for the correct purpose and not to hide and cover up nasty and disgraceful behaviour in the workplace that would otherwise go unpunished. I have hope that through this campaign we can do better to protect people from such coercion and behaviour and do more to ensure that the workplace is a healthy and happy environment. That is a goal worth trying to achieve. It would be better for everyone at work.

Tackling Loneliness and Connecting Communities

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Grant

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady has just done the very thing that I knew she would do—well done to her. I know that the Minister does not have direct responsibility for Northern Ireland, but it is a pleasure to see him in his place given his range of portfolios. When he speaks, I know that he will encapsulate all the requests we put forward. Whenever we want to ask the Minister something, he has an open door. It is always easy to ask for something when we know we have a Minister who will respond positively.

The Northern Ireland Assembly also pointed out that:

“There are approximately 25,000 individual farms with an average farm size of 41 hectares; this is the smallest in the UK. A key characteristic of farming in Northern Ireland is that 70% of the agricultural area here is defined as ‘less favoured’; this brings challenges in terms of successful farming.”

It also brings many other challenges. Northern Ireland, where one in five adults has a mental health condition at any time, has a 25% higher overall prevalence of mental illness than England. It also has the highest suicide rate in the United Kingdom, at 16.4 per 100,000 people, compared to 10.3 in England, 9.2 in Wales and 14.5 in Scotland. Prescription costs per head for depression in Northern Ireland are £1.71 compared to 41p in Scotland. Those are not just stats; they are evidence.

Northern Ireland is telling the tale of the detrimental impact on people’s mental health that I believe is partly because so many people feel so alone. The quarantine period during covid absolutely exacerbated that. I say this in fun, but the longest time my wife and I had spent together in our lives was during covid. We are married for 35 years, by the way. So covid did bring some benefits—at least I thought so; I hope my wife is of the same opinion! Whatever the case may be, there were too many who were isolated and alone. While covid restrictions have mercifully eased, for some people the ache of loneliness has not. I am so thankful for the community and residents groups who attempted to step into the breach.

The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford referred to Men’s Sheds. We have had a proliferation of Men’s Sheds, as I want to illustrate in my contribution. I recently watched a video of a Men’s Shed learning to play the ukulele. Those of us of a certain generation will know what that is, but those who are younger, like the hon. Member for Batley and Spen and others, might not. These men were from the Glen housing estate, and the camaraderie between them was clear to see. When I looked at the men in that video, I saw men who had been recently widowed or who had lost their jobs. In the Men’s Shed, there were hurting men who were healing simply by being with other men and focusing their minds on living and not just existing. That is so important.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I do not know if it is a universal practice in Men’s Sheds, but I know that in the Glenrothes Men’s Shed, one of the absolute rules is that at tea time they stop what they are doing, go and sit down with everybody and have a cup of tea. For many, that is the most important part of the day. Is that a standard feature in the Men’s Sheds in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency? If not, does he think it would be a good idea for more workplaces to adopt a similar rule?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Whenever anyone goes into a Men’s Shed there is a cup of tea and a biscuit—it might be a Fox’s biscuit or another biscuit; probably more likely to be a Jaffa Cake down where we are, but whatever it may be, it is about the camaraderie—[Interruption.]

Responding to MPs’ Queries: DWP Performance

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Grant

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Before I begin, I hope it is in order, Madam Deputy Speaker, for me to place on record my hearty congratulations to my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) and for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black), who have just been announced as the new leader and deputy leader of the SNP group here in Westminster. I offer my congratulations to both of them.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise in the House the woeful performance of the Department for Work and Pensions in responding to queries from Members of Parliament. I was particularly keen that the debate title should cover not simply correspondence, but all forms of communication—or non-communication—because the Department’s repeated failure to put in place a reliable and efficient way for MPs and our caseworkers to phone with urgent inquiries and speak to someone who actually understands the case is a recurring theme that I know causes immense frustration for MPs of all parties.

Let me quote just one of the many constituency cases I could refer to. Alison has a job, but it is low paid, so she gets universal credit and should have got her cost of living payment in July. It did not arrive. That, remember, is money that the Government have accepted she absolutely needs in order to make ends meet. By early September, Alison contacted my office in desperation. She told us that she had stopped the payments for her rent, council tax and internet service, that within 10 days she had to cancel her car insurance and that she was being referred to sheriff officers for council tax arrears.

My caseworkers went through the whole rigmarole of phoning and emailing all the right addresses at DWP, but they could not speak to or correspond with the people who were responsible for making Alison’s payment. None of the people my staff were allowed to speak to had any authority, even to ask for her payment to be prioritised. Two promised payment dates were not kept. Alison eventually received the money she was owed on 28 October, over three months late.

It is not the fault of overworked DWP staff that they could not do anything to help; it is the fault of the way the DWP has chosen to make it unnecessarily difficult for MPs to do our job of providing support to constituents in need. For Child Maintenance Service casework, our staff have access to an MP hotline and a dedicated email address. Until 2020, there was an MP hotline for working-age benefits such as jobseeker’s allowance, employment support allowance and income support. That gave my caseworkers and others a direct line to the local, regional and national complaints resolution team—based in Glasgow in this case—where staff had access to the various benefits systems and could contact other DWP departments with queries and to chase responses. The team was also contactable directly by email.

With the introduction of universal credit, that hotline became less useful—although the DWP staff at the other end continued to do the best they could. Eventually, the hotline for working age benefits just disappeared altogether—but the casework certainly did not. The current confidential list of all MP hotline contacts says in big bold letters, near the top of the DWP section:

“There is no MP hotline for Universal Credit”.

The question has to be: “Why not?” Similarly, the retirement services hotline was removed, although it was reinstated earlier this year after a lot of pressure from my office and a great many others. Sometimes, if the wheel squeaks often enough, it gets the grease.

Those hotlines and dedicated email addresses are not a perk for Members of Parliament; they are not some sort of freebie. For our constituency staff, whose workloads are heavy enough as it is, there is a massive difference between being able to phone and speak now to someone who understands the problem and can access the system, look at the details of the case and get someone to fix it straightaway, and waiting for an hour or more to speak to someone who is not allowed access to the constituent’s full record and who, because of their lack of experience or because their specialism is elsewhere, probably would not understand the complexities of the case even if they were allowed to see the details.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Peter Grant]

I believe there would be major repercussions—Parliament would probably go into meltdown—if I declined to take the intervention.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Not from me. [Laughter.]

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. Although it is sometimes frustrating when our queries are not answered, we must appreciate all the highly skilled workers working in Government Departments and external agencies. Does he agree that to deal with delays in correspondence, we must ensure that those employed within Departments are able to deal with all issues presented to them, with the knowledge and ability to prevent delays and get queries answered?

[Peter Grant]

That is absolutely correct. I would not for a second want my comments to be taken as any sort of slight about the dedication and professionalism of staff at the DWP. There are simply not enough of them, and they do not have access to the information that they need. In fact, I would like to flag up some of them for special praise, but I am worried that the way in which they are being so helpful to my caseworkers is maybe beyond what the DWP thinks they should be doing, and I certainly would not want to get them into trouble for being too good in helping my constituents.

The way my office operates is that, when necessary, everyone in my staff takes on casework, so when I refer to my caseworkers, I mean everybody on my staff team. Every one of them does a fantastic job—as do the caseworkers of MPs right across the House—often delivering truly life-changing results for vulnerable people. I know that my constituents value them almost as much as I do—they could not value them more. But their performance is dragged down when they cannot get the answers that my constituents deserve.

Alan was diagnosed with a chronic and incurable medical condition, and was advised that he should claim employment support allowance, which he did online through his universal credit journal. He contacted us when he got no response. My caseworker emailed the only available email address—the generic DWP correspondence address—on 25 March, and on 26 April, 3 May, 25 May and 7 June. During that time, Alan told us that he had finally got his ESA but that it was not backdated. The DWP knew that we had been in contact about this, but it never came back to my office to tell us that Alan had got the money—well, he did. The DWP came back to us in November, months and months later.

When we got a reply on 21 July to my first two emails, whoever sent the reply had not been told about my three other emails, so I got a reply in July that did not mention the other emails I had sent—two in May and one in June. They explained how Alan’s payment had been calculated. It turned out to be correct. We thought he had been underpaid, and in this case we got it wrong and the DWP got it right. If there had been a properly supported ESA hotline we and more importantly Alan would have been told exactly how much he was entitled to and exactly when it would be paid in a single phone call almost four months earlier.

In response to Alan’s case and many others, I drafted a letter to the then Secretary of State asking for the ESA hotline to be reinstated. Some 63 MPs from, I think, every party represented in the House signed it, and I am grateful to each and every one of them. The letter went in on 29 July. Two reminders and nearly five weeks later we got a response, which stated:

“It is currently not possible to provide a date upon which the issue of the MP Hotline might be resolved.”

After I had applied for this Adjournment debate, my office received a copy of a letter dated 23 November 2022 referring to the joint letter of 29 July and stating that the working-age benefits hotline had been re-established. I did not remember seeing that letter come in—that is nothing unusual; I often do not—but what was unusual was that no one in my office knew anything about it, and they do not let these things slip.

I checked with colleagues who I knew had co-signed our letter. They confirmed that the reply had been sent out by email to all the joint signatories, but when they looked at the email circulation list, my name had been missed out. I do not know who else had been, but the person who initiated the letter had been omitted from the circulation list for the reply. The DWP had forgotten to tell me about its improved communication with MPs.

Sure enough, the latest online edition of the list of MP hotlines shows an “MP hotline for working-age queries only”. It is open for a three-month trial. We are already nearly one month into that, and to the best of my knowledge the DWP has not told anyone about it apart from the 63 MPs—well, 62 excluding me—who signed my letter. About 10% of MPs have been specifically alerted to the existence of this hotline. It will be no surprise if it does not get much use if nobody knows about it.

One firm request to the Minister is to give the new hotline a fair trial and to make sure that every MP is told about it in a simple dedicated email. The Government should not just assume that our caseworkers will check the intranet every time they want to speak to a civil servant or Department, just in case a new hotline has been established since yesterday. They should make it a proper trial of at least three months in real time after they have told MPs about it, and not including the Christmas and new year period. Most importantly, if they are going to call it an MP hotline, please provide the staffing and systems support to make it a proper hotline.

Anyone looking at the list of hotlines would not know it, but the working-age hotline in the exact words of the DWP is only

“for non-complex general enquiries that can be answered with little interrogation of our systems…Enquiries or complaints requiring thorough investigation”—

which is about 95% of DWP casework in my experience—

“should be submitted in the usual way by e-mail to”

and it then gives the standard DWP email address that my office has to wait five months for a reply from. That phrase

“can be answered with little interrogation of our systems”

looks to me very like saying that they will be able to answer general questions about the rules and regulations, but we will have no way of finding out why, for example, Alison went through months of utter misery or why Alan was not entitled to as much as he had thought. In other words, it is not a hotline at all.

Now that the DWP has been good enough to tell my staff about the hotline, I know they will use it. I am willing to be proven wrong and will even come to the Chamber and say I was proven wrong if it turns out to be working effectively, but it has all the hallmarks of a trial that has been set up to fail.

To conclude, when a Member of Parliament takes up a DWP benefits case on behalf of a constituent, there is a very strong probability—these days it is even stronger than before—that the constituent is already at the end of their tether and of their money. Often they will literally have no money and nobody but the loan sharks to fall back on if the DWP does not deal with their case quickly and effectively. Waiting weeks for any kind of reply is immensely frustrating for MPs and our staff—it wastes a lot of our staff’s precious time—but it can be much worse for the people we are here to serve. It can mean they are being denied the basics and the simple human dignity that any benefits system should surely be designed to protect. No Member of this House would ever tolerate their constituents being treated as badly as my constituents have been treated by the DWP’s inability to communicate properly with me or my staff. I certainly will not, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Financial Conduct Authority and Blackmore Bond plc

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Grant

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

For the second time in a few days, the hon. Gentleman has managed to read my notes a couple of paragraphs ahead of me. I am going to come on to that.

My concerns cover not just the Financial Conduct Authority but other regulators, such as Companies House, the Insolvency Service, the Financial Reporting Council and the professional bodies that regulate the audit of limited companies. Of those, only the FCA falls directly under the remit of the Treasury, so that is what I will focus on tonight, but I will continue to apply for debates so that the part played by other regulators can be examined.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

I think the sky would fall down if I did not give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Jim Shannon]

I am sure the sky will not fall down, but I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s giving way.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that financial devastations such as the Blackmore Bond scandal have the potential to be avoided if there is proper scrutiny by regulatory authorities, which the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) referred to? Does he also acknowledge that, often, that work starts with us in this House making legislative change?

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. Ultimately, the regulator is us. If we highlight deficiencies in the system, we must try to get them put right. That is partly why I was so keen to secure this debate.

As the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) mentioned, in March 2017, the Financial Conduct Authority received information from a very reliable, experienced financial services professional that a company called Amyma Ltd was using high-pressure sales techniques to target individuals to persuade them to invest in Blackmore Bond. The source, a Mr Paul Carlier, described in detail what he had seen and heard, and explained exactly why he was convinced that it was illegal. He made a point of sending his concerns directly to the then chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, among others. As a mark of gratitude, the FCA wrote back and said that it was aware of the situation and it was being passed on to the appropriate department.

It was the end of 2019 before there was any obvious sign that the FCA had done anything. To be fair to it, when it acted, it did not hold back. It banned outright the sale of mini-bonds to the kinds of investors whom Blackmore Bond had been deliberately targeting. If the FCA had done that earlier, it could have prevented up to £26 million of the losses eventually suffered by Blackmore’s victims.

The FCA has said that the sale of these kinds of investments was an unregulated activity, that Blackmore Bond plc was not registered or approved by the FCA for any regulated activity, and therefore that the whole thing was beyond its scope. That is just not good enough. What the FCA is effectively saying is that it had the legal power to ban the sale of these mini-bonds absolutely but could do nothing to stop one rogue company selling them to one particularly targeted group of vulnerable investors. I simply do not buy that.

While the sale of these high-risk bonds to investors who wanted low-risk investments was allowed to carry on in an unregulated free-for-all, the promotion of those same bonds is a regulated activity. The FCA’s website says that all adverts and promotions for financial services or products

“must be fair, clear and not misleading”.

Blackmore Bond’s promotional materials failed all those tests—something I will return to soon. Again, it took the FCA far too long to do anything, and when it did something, it did not do enough.

The FCA will claim that at some point during 2019, it was able to get Amyma’s website taken down. It seemed less keen to be reminded that in August 2019 Paul Carlier had to tell the FCA that the website was back up again. It may be just coincidental that a few weeks after Blackmore Bond went into administration, the director and sole shareholder of Amyma placed that company into voluntary liquidation, having first reduced the company’s assets from £316,000 to nil in the space of 18 months, meaning that the creditors of Amyma, including Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, would not see a penny of the £188,000 they were owed. It appears that Blackmore Bond really can pick its professional and business advisers very carefully.

Coming back to the promotional materials, though, under section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, any financial promotion must either be issued by an FCA-authorised company or have its contents approved by such a company. There are exemptions, but I have no indication whatever that any of those exemptions comes close to applying to Blackmore Bond. So if Blackmore Bond issued financial promotions that had not been approved by an FCA-registered firm, that was an offence under the Financial Services and Markets Act and the FCA should have been dealing with it.

The company issued its mini-bonds in six ways. For each one it issued an “information memorandum”, which appears, as far as I can tell, to have been approved by an FCA-registered firm. But that was not the only marketing it did. My constituent, who has probably lost £40,000, provided me with a copy of a separate document that he received. It is dated 3 October 2016—the same date as the information memorandum for the first series of mini-bonds. The FCA has confirmed to me that it meets its definition of a financial promotion. It was therefore an offence that it was circulated without being approved by an authorised firm, and there is nothing in this document to suggest that it was ever approved by an authorised firm. The FCA is not convinced about that. Its view is that it “cannot categorically say” whether the document was or was not lawful when it was circulated. But if that is the case, surely, knowing what it knows now about the operation of Blackmore Bond, if it “cannot categorically say” that it was not a criminal offence to send it out to potential investors, it should be investigating it.

Then we come on to the requirement for this and any other financial promotion to be fair, clear and not misleading. I am aware of the time, so I can only give a few examples of statements in the document that are either blatantly false or extremely misleading. On page 5 it tells bondholders that their money will be backed by “100% asset-backed security”. Not true; it was never the intention that the bondholders would even be guaranteed first call on all the assets, never mind that there was never a time, after the first series of bonds was issued, when Blackmore Bond plc ever held enough assets to repay the value of the bonds it had sold.

On page 4 it says:

“Blackmore Bond is part of The Blackmore Group”—

that bit is correct—

“a multi-channel investment group with a proven track record.”

The Blackmore Group was only incorporated in February 2016; it cannot possibly have had a proven track record by October 2016. It certainly could not have realised the £22 million in profits and property development that is claimed in the same document.

On page 4 we are told that

“The Blackmore Group”

has

“assets under management of £25 million”.

So how come The Blackmore Group’s accounts for 2016, signed by the directors, tell us that the total value of their assets was £390,000, and that after allowing for creditors and other liabilities, the total value of the Blackmore Group at 2016 was £2,281? How can that have created assets under management of £25 million?

Finally, on page 18, the directors promised:

“There are no fees or charges”—

completely untrue. Page 24 of the information memorandum devotes over half a page to explaining why the company will have to pay fees. They say that they will pay fees essentially for the marketing of bonds and for investor relations, and that those fees will not exceed 20% of total bond value. They then entered into an agreement with Surge Financial Services Ltd—a company well known to those who have an interest in financial misdealings—that they would pay it exactly 20% of the total bond value.

What the directors forgot to mention in any promotional literature was that they were also going to pay themselves a management fee. During 2017, the directors of Blackmore Bond plc chose to pay £1.4 million of management fees to the Blackmore Group Ltd, of which they again were the sole shareholders, the sole directors and the sole beneficiaries. Why did they choose to conceal that information from this document, and from the information memorandum that was sent out to persuade people to buy their bonds? Effectively, the directors were making sure that their cut was cleaned out of Blackmore Bond plc’s accounts as soon as—sometimes before—it hit the bank account, so that whatever happened to that company, their money would be saved and the poor investors would be left with nothing.

Blackmore Group does not of course have to publish a profit and loss account, and even the very sketchy financial statements it does publish are not audited, so it is anyone’s guess what Mr McCreesh and Mr Nunn did with that £1.4 million, and that, as I say, was only up to December 2017.

During my investigations into this affair, I received a copy of a chain of emails between one bondholder and Patrick McCreesh, who, as I say, with Phillip Nunn, owns and runs the entire operation. The bondholder is not a constituent of mine. He was happy for me to quote at length from his emails. He is happy for me to give his full name, but I have chosen not to identify him entirely, but his name is John—and it genuinely is John.

John’s investment was with another Blackmore company, Blackmore Estates Ltd. The bond was due to be repaid in January 2020, but by March 2019 John had got worried, because he had not heard anything from Blackmore Estates for a while, and he wanted to know what had happened to his money. Patrick McCreesh advised him that Blackmore Estates was now part of Blackmore Bond plc, and set out to persuade him not to claim back the investment he was legally entitled to in January 2020, but to reinvest it in Blackmore Bond plc.

There were numerous email exchanges, but by 16 August John was really getting worried because his online account with Blackmore did not seem to show anything. There was no indication whether he had any money left at all. He then wrote:

“Patrick, I have entrusted you with my military retirement fund, my only savings. Unlike others I cannot afford to live without this money. You have had my investment since 2015 and I am yet to receive a single penny back. If things are going downhill why would you call me personally and persuade me to re-invest only a few months ago?”

That referred to a telephone conversation they had in about April 2019.

Three times further to that between August 2019 and January 2020 John reminded Patrick McCreesh in the most poignant terms that this was all he had. It was a pension he had got by serving with distinction in Her Majesty’s forces. Patrick McCreesh knew that John could not afford to lose the money, yet he deliberately set out to entice him to leave the money with McCreesh, and not to take back the money he was entitled to, but to put it into a company that by the summer of 2019 Patrick McCreesh and Phillip Nunn knew had no future. They had not published audited accounts for some time, but they had prepared draft accounts that showed that, in the first two years of its existence, one third of the bondholders’ entire money had disappeared. By July 2019, Nunn and McCreesh knew the business was dying. McCreesh still went out and deliberately targeted this poor gentleman to fleece him of what McCreesh knew was all he had.

As I say, I have pages and pages from the email exchanges between John and Patrick McCreesh in relation to, as I said earlier, whether the conduct was criminal, civilly unlawful or simply despicable. I am happy to share the remnants of my speech with anyone who wants to look at it. It makes it perfectly clear of the behaviour certainly of one of those two directors that to describe it as despicable would be excessively charitable to Mr McCreesh, and I have no indication that Mr Nunn would have been any better.

John will not ever get his military pension back, and there are 3,000 other Johns out there. They were all taken in by two individuals with a track record of dodgy financial dealing, but who are still free to go and set themselves up as directors of a different company and start all over again. That will not be by selling or mis-selling mini-bonds to people like John, because that is now illegal, but they will find another way. Until the Financial Conduct Authority and other regulators scare them out of the way, there will be another generation of Johns, and in 50 years from now or 100 years from now, our successors will be in the successor to this Parliament bemoaning the fact that billions of pounds have been taken out of the pockets of hard-working people and used to fund a luxury lifestyle for charlatans, crooks and conmen.

The Financial Conduct Authority was not the most culpable party in this. Nunn and McCreesh were, and they have to be called to account somehow. The Financial Conduct Authority was not the only regulator that failed because it did not have the powers, failed because it did not use the powers or possibly failed because it did not have the resources to deal with the amount of financial misdealing that is going on just now. But one way or another, for the sake of the next generation of Johns, the Financial Conduct Authority and the other regulators have to get their act together, and they have to do it quickly.

Freedom of Religion or Belief

Debate between Jim Shannon and Peter Grant

Thursday 12th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

I certainly do. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his knowledge and his participation today, which is most helpful.

We need to see some other changes in Pakistan, particularly around the 5% of jobs that are set aside for Christians. Christians need to have the opportunity of educational advantage, training and opportunity, so that they can apply for jobs other than those that on offer at the minute—cleaning the streets and cleaning the latrines. Christians deserve the same opportunities as everyone else. I know that 5% of jobs are set aside. Let us have the same opportunity for jobs, whether that is as nurses, doctors, teachers or whatever.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on a powerful and well-informed speech. Sometimes what in some cases can look like religious discrimination is very close to racial discrimination, and sometimes religious differences are used as an excuse for racism, just as sometimes racial differences are used as an excuse for religious persecution. Does he agree that religious persecution and racism are often close relatives?

[Jim Shannon]

I certainly do. They are intertwined and wrapped around each other, and sometimes the situation is used in that way.

No precise figures are available, but Pakistani non-governmental organisations such as the Movement for Solidarity and Peace have estimated that each year around 1,000 Hindu and Christian girls in Pakistan are kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam and forcibly married or sold into prostitution.

I discussed that and other issues during my trip to Pakistan in October 2018. I travelled in a delegation with two other British parliamentarians, the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) and Lord Alton from the other place. We spent five days in total in the wonderful country of Pakistan, having very productive meetings with Government officials, as well as several human rights NGOs. We also met representatives of various minority rights organisation and had the opportunity to visit some Christian communities, including in slum residences in Islamabad.

One thing that left a lasting impression on me and on the whole delegation was visiting those slums and the houses that people live in, and the people who were volunteers. One lady in particular was teaching children, from about five to 16, the rudimentary elements of education. If Christians have the opportunity to educate themselves, they have the opportunity to apply for the jobs. We need that issue to move forward and we will take that up as we go on.