Right-to-Work Checks for UK Nationals
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, EU citizens who have applied to the EU settlement scheme should not be detained in Yarl’s Wood unless there is some exception such as, for example, criminality. In terms of people getting letters, I am sure the reminders are helpful; they are not intended to be hostile in nature.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked and we now move to the next question.
Police: Sarah Everard Vigils
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]
My Lords, I cannot give my noble friend the exact number, but this review will give us a good idea of what lessons can be learned in what are of course very unusual times.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Stop and Search
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The use of data is very important, and police collection of data is very important to interrogate why some of the trends that we see are happening. I would also say that, in many ways, it is more complex than just the data we have, and some of the social and economic factors in this have to be taken into account. It is very important that the collection of data is also scrutinised as we go forward.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
The time allowed for this question has elapsed.
United Kingdom Resettlement Scheme
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The noble Earl is right to point out that we are dependent on local authority places and accommodation to bring forward resettlement. We are very grateful to local authorities, but we cannot go beyond their capacity. We will launch the new UK global resettlement scheme in March this year. We intended to launch it in March last year, but clearly the pandemic placed restrictions on this. Resettlement arrivals have been coming since December 2020. We have received regular calls for that commitment, and it will be forthcoming.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, all supplementary questions have now been asked and we move to the next Question.
Fireworks: Damage
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they plan to take to prevent damage being caused by fireworks set off other than at organised events.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
I call the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Old Trafford.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford)
Well, I am young Trafford, actually, compared to the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, but we often get the two mixed up. One is old and one is young.
The Government remain committed to promoting the safe and considerate use of fireworks through an effective legislative framework and through non-legislative measures. We launched a public awareness campaign this October with the aim of educating people on how to buy, use, store and dispose of fireworks safely and considerately, and ensuring that retailers know and understand their responsibilities when selling fireworks.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The lockdown restrictions will certainly be reviewed on 2 December. I would love to see a New Year’s Eve firework display, but my noble friend the Leader of the House is not sure whether it will go ahead. Because the Government have to review some of the Covid measures on a regular basis, it is probably too early to say.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Domestic Abuse
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, I hope that I have outlined some of the measures that we intend to put in place. The noble Baroness will recall, some time ago when we discussed this, I explained how we will support people through local authorities in their own homes who need to be kept safe for a short period of time through safe rooms, et cetera. However, the whole point of the provisions of the Domestic Abuse Bill is to deal with all the things that she outlines, including supporting women who have suffered abuse and their children, and establishing perpetrator programmes, which are so often overlooked but are at the heart of us tackling this awful crime.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed. We now come to the fourth Oral Question.
Licensing: Closing Time
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(4 years ago)
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The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has elapsed.
Covid-19: Child Trafficking
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
I wholeheartedly concur with the noble Baroness’s concerns—concerns that the Prime Minister also shares. She will recall that he opened the virtual hidden harms summit in order to drive action to tackle domestic abuse, child sexual exploitation and modern slavery, which, as she has said, often now can take place online.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
I call the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich. No? I call the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, would the Government consider rolling out across the country child guardians for the benefit of the foreign children who have been trafficked here?
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
The noble Lord may recall the NCA swoop of a few months ago that pulled in many illicit articles and items. You cannot look at child trafficking in isolation; it is part of a package of drugs, guns, trafficking and child sexual exploitation, and it can be tackled effectively only at an international level.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
Is the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, online? No. All supplementary questions have been asked and we will now move to the next Question.
Domestic Abuse
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
Again, I did not hear the noble Baroness very well, but I heard her better than the first time—
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
If the Minister would promise to write on that question, we will move on, to get everybody in.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I declare that I am chairing an inquiry into alcohol harms. When will the data on alcohol-fuelled domestic violence during lockdown be made available and collated with sales, given that over half of intimate partner and almost all family homicides in 2014-15 involved alcohol and that the latest research shows that alcohol-fuelled violence is disproportionately clustered in the lowest socioeconomic groups—the people living in particularly difficult situations?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The Government are doing several things. In terms of adults, the #YouAreNotAlone campaign that the Home Secretary released is certainly up and running; I do not know whether the right reverend Prelate has seen it. Adults can access that and there have been a number of online support services for children, so that they have a line into help and support. Going back to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, there is also support for children who are victims of sexual abuse online during lockdown.
The Senior Deputy Speaker
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top? No? We will move on to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for all the excellent work she has been doing to tackle this long-standing and difficult problem, which has been greatly exacerbated by the current quarantine situation. Just how prepared were the Government and police in identifying and dealing with domestic abuse and violence during this pandemic, and what measures did they put in place in preparation for it?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The Government, particularly the Home Office, are getting more and more evidence of financial abuse, particularly among older people. Economic abuse is now seen as a form of domestic abuse, so the noble Baroness is absolutely right. There is not only economic abuse of the elderly; as was raised with me in a Question last week, older people are more subject to scams.
The Senior Deputy Speaker
I have added a few minutes as a result of the connectivity and audio issues. We will go back to the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, if she is still here. No?
The time allowed for this Question has elapsed. The Virtual Proceedings will now adjourn until 1 pm for a Statement.
Queen’s Speech
Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord McFall of Alcluith
My Lords, I am very pleased to participate in this debate. At the beginning of the day, the Minister said that the debate would be about the kind of society that we want. With that in mind, we should focus on things like character, competence, cuts and confidence, the first two relating to the personalities and actions of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor and the latter two relating to the well-being of society as a result of the Government’s policies. We have seen, even today, that austerity alone has been discredited in Europe and the UK. As a result, we need a new vision and a narrative that have been missing to date. I suggest that it is on that acid test that the Government’s character and competence will be measured.
The truth that is catching up with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor is that the problems in the UK were not exclusively home-made. The proposition that we were like Greece is absurd. The reality is that while the Chancellor has tried to peddle the UK as having been more like Greece, he has made us more like Spain in the process. In 2009-10, growth as a result of Alastair Darling’s stimulus was 3.2% while Spain’s was zero. Now, after six quarters of UK negative growth, we have 0.2% negative growth compared with Spain’s growth of plus 2.4%. What is missing from the lexicon is the “g word”—growth. There were hints before the Queen’s Speech that this would be addressed, but on the day after it the front page of the Telegraph said, in bold:
“Why was there no plan for growth?”,
while the Sun editorial said:
“Plans to boost the economy amounted to tinkering rather than a full-blooded assault on unemployment”.
Those are two comments with which I fully agree.
The Chancellor has to show his character here. Let us forget about him admitting that his strategy is wrong; but he has to address the concept of growth. Without that, confidence in the country is seeping away day by day. Justin King, the chief executive of Sainsbury’s and a member of the Prime Minister’s business advisory group, has said that he has not seen a consistent pursuit of a clear policy. The consequences will be greater inequality, a greater north/south divide, increasing welfare dependence, increasing unemployment and ambition and social mobility checked at source.
On the issue of cuts, the IFS has said that the real-terms spending cuts of £100 billion targeted between April 2011 and March 2017 will see £33 billion of them falling in the final two years of that period. So in 2015, an election year, sizeable cuts will still have to be delivered. If you want to see how austerity measures are killing confidence, look at the company sector, which took £72 billion out of the economy in 2010 and £80 billion last year. Non-financial companies increased their holdings of currency in bank deposits by £48 billion in 2010 and £62 billion in 2011. That takes the total to £754 billion sitting in companies’ balance sheets doing nothing—a staggering 50% of UK GDP—while we have youth unemployment of 1 million. My experience as a teacher in Glasgow in the 1980s was that these young people with no chance end up in a lifetime of penury, social inability and the likelihood of mental health, alcohol and drug problems, and the result is that they have an increasing reliance on the state rather than less reliance on the state.
That is why I welcomed the coalition’s commitment that it would adopt the Labour Government’s 2020 target to eliminate child poverty. However, the IFS is saying at the moment that the Government’s spending plans are putting into reverse the progress that had been made on that in the previous few years. I suggest to this House that an increase in child poverty is not an example of the broader shoulders taking the greatest burden. The Government promised that the poorest 10% would lose the least, but the reality is that the poorest 10% are losing more than anyone except the richest 10%.
I have two suggestions for the Government. The first is to postpone the change to the hours rule for couples claiming working tax credit. That was predicated on OBR predictions in 2010 that the economy would swing back to strong growth. That is not happening, and as a result 200,000 low-income families will be affected by this. It will dramatically worsen child poverty in its extent and severity and will create a situation where people will be better off leaving their jobs, to the detriment of the economy. I suggest that the Government’s slogan of “Making work pay” has a hollow ring.
The second issue is rebalancing the ratio of spending cuts to tax rises. The Government have said that that ratio is 4:1. That will dramatically change the situation against people on low incomes. The Conservatives’ approach during the recession of the 1990s was to adopt a ratio of 1:1. It is for this Government to realise that 4:1 guarantees that the distribution of the burden will be skewed towards those at the lower end of the income distribution scale.
The electorate are looking for authenticity and empathy, and those have been missing from the debate just now. If we are looking at what type of society we want, there are a number of fundamental questions that should guide us. Are the increasingly high levels of economic inequality in society a problem? Should the Government be concerned at the high social and economic cost? The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that child poverty is costing the UK £25 billion per annum. What action should we take to reverse the scandalous situation where the poorest children are likely to live for 10 years less than the more wealthy? Do we have an obligation to tackle this? We do, but it can be done only if the Government demonstrate their character and competence in these bleak times.
The death slogan “Austerity alone” needs discarding. Confidence needs to be restored in order to give individuals and communities hope for the future. Only by doing that will the Government demonstrate the authenticity and empathy suggested by the slogan, “We’re all in this together”. Otherwise it will be seen merely as an empty gesture.