Civil Service Appointments
Matt Western Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course it is the case that there will always be turnover in the civil service. The normal length of tenure for someone in a permanent secretary role is five years, and it is also the case that previous Governments, in order to ensure that they could achieve their agenda, had political appointees. It was the case that the previous Labour Government had, in the persons of Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell, two political appointees who were given the power through Order in Council to give direction to civil servants. My hon. Friend is right that we need to ensure we have the broadest possible talent pool and an exciting agenda of reform.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
We have heard that we lost Kim Darroch, Philip Rutnam, Simon McDonald and now Mark Sedwill. In appointing Sir David Frost as National Security Adviser, is this what the Minister meant in June 2016 when he said that
“people in this country have had enough of experts”?
Does he believe now that we have gone from “Yes, Minister” to “Yes, special adviser”?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of what happened in 2016, when the people of this country voted to leave the European Union. I am afraid that he has edited what I said at the time, which was that we had had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms that had got things wrong in the past. I was specifically referring to the legions of economic modellers in organisations like the IMF and the CBI who argued that we should join the euro and then were proven wrong because we were successful outside the euro. My own view is that expertise is to be applauded and should be rewarded, particularly in quoting opposing politicians. So I hope that he will look back again at the record and gently correct it.
Census
Matt Western Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab) [V]
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare). Let me start by saying that I welcome the order. I am sure that there is almost universal support for a census. Although I support it, I am interested to know more about the decisions the Government have made in arriving at it.
The purpose of the order is simply to provide direction for next year’s census on the population of England and Wales. It includes the date of the census, the area to be covered, what is required in the return, who is included and the particulars that may be requested and from whom. I remember my first census back when I was eight years old, and just how excited I got. I do not understand quite why, but I just appreciated the scale of this enormous exercise.
Given the fact that we have one coming up next year, we must recognise the importance of this data collection in giving some snapshot, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) said, of the nature of our society and the people that we are. For a nation and for the purposes of good governance, I have always believed this data to be of huge importance and believed in the value of the continuity of measurement decade after decade.
What is also important, beyond the standard information, is the ability to use the census to update it and ensure its relevance in relation to social and economic change. Ten years is a long time to wait for these changes, and I suggest that a few that are being proposed are long overdue, given that we are now in the third decade of the 21st century. Let me come to identity in a moment, but may I just say that it is good to see the introduction of a new question capturing past service in the UK armed forces, which has been added? It should go some way in recognising the lives of our fabulous forces personnel.
On identities, I want to support the addition of two new voluntary questions on sexual orientation and gender identity. At last, LGBTQ people will be acknowledged, and that is most welcome. However, I also see there will be the continuation, for those not included in the existing tick boxes, to allow that to be expressed through the write-in option on both paper and online questionnaires. Interestingly, for the first time, an additional response option of Roma will be included under the ethnic group question, which is also welcome. In addition, the national identity question allows respondents to record multiple identities across the tick boxes and write-in box. But other than those changes, the proposed questions appear to be much as in the previous census 10 years ago.
Perhaps surprisingly, there has been no inclusion of a Sikh tick box, despite the House of Lords ruling in the Mandla v. Dowell Lee case of 1983 that Sikhs are an ethnic group, not simply a religion. The Sikh community is important to the UK in every sense, and I commend the speeches by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) and for Erith and Thamesmead. In my constituency of Warwick and Leamington, the community accounts for a significant and welcome share of our population and our community.
The Minister will be aware that there has been a long-running campaign by the Sikh Federation and, indeed, the whole British Sikh community for this change to be introduced. The concerns among the community, as has been widely shared this afternoon, are that, if Sikhs do not have a Sikh ethnic tick box response option, they will continue not to be properly monitored by public bodies and face possible discrimination in schools and the health sector, where there are known disparities, as well as in housing and across the public sector more generally. As has been evidenced in the current covid-19 crisis, there is no systematic collection of data on the number of Sikhs tested as positive or the number that, tragically, have died, despite the significant number who are actually working on our frontline.
I appreciate that this is a statutory instrument and is unamendable as such, so there will not be any opportunities to change the proposals. I simply want to ask the Minister why the decision was reached to exclude the Sikh identity as a tick box and what steps the Government will take to ensure the Sikh community is properly accounted for in data collection, ensuring the fair allocation of resources and provision of public services.
Veterans’ Mental Health
Matt Western Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Johnny Mercer
My hon. and gallant Friend is a long-term and passionate advocate of PTSD Resolution, which does good work. In the framework of veterans’ mental health, I will be bringing forward a programme in April that I will launch with Simon Stevens, the director of NHS England. My hon. Friend will see that that programme includes a clear role for charities of whatever size to bid to run some of the specialist services that PTSD Resolution and others do so well. The offering to our people is changing and I encourage my hon. Friend, PTSD Resolution and others to work together. We can meet this challenge if we work together and focus on outcomes, as I know both he and PTSD Resolution want to do.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Like the Minister, I have met several veterans who suffer from PTSD, most notably about 18 months ago when I met soldier N, who was like a coiled spring; I could sense the tension in his body and face about the trauma he had been through. Will the Minister support my call to provide homes for these heroes to give them that first step back into our civilian society, and to ensure that we have in place the wraparound service—with mental health and other provisions—to enable them through this difficult time?
Budget Resolutions
Matt Western Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Whether or not Harold Macmillan actually said, “Events, dear boy,” it is events that define the times, and it is how Governments and politicians respond to them. We face huge uncertainty. Brexit is now being compounded by the coronavirus, the US-China trade war and the global economic headwinds. The growth forecasts do not look good. The Bank of England now predicts just 0.8% growth for this year and up to 1.4% for 2024. The impact of Brexit will be significant, particularly if we follow a Canada-style trade deal, which will, we are told, mean a fall of 8.6% in our GDP. Already, the OBR is quoting Brexit as having an impact of 2% on our economy. As Hillary Clinton said, it is the greatest act of self-harm.
Whether it is Brexit or the coronavirus, I appreciate that the Chancellor has had a tough challenge and I commend him for doing what he has done in such a short period of time. There has been much debate about what happened in 2008, but we can compare and contrast the reaction of the US Government under Obama, with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009, which pumped in $760 billion of fiscal support to the economy, to what we did here in the UK from 2010 onwards. We can see an uptick in the US economy almost immediately—within a couple of years—as it returned to pre-crisis growth. In the UK, it took four or five years to achieve the same level.
We have lived through a lost decade during which, as we heard earlier, we managed to double the national debt. This period of austerity—I always consider it to be a benign word—has been felt throughout our society, but particularly by the most vulnerable, with the closure of 500 Sure Start children’s centres, including 26 in Warwickshire, and our schools and colleges seeing a real-terms cut of £7.7 billion, equating to a 7.8% decrease in per pupil funding in my constituency. While I welcome what the Chancellor was saying about capital investment in further education, it is capital, and we need more investment and more revenue spending in this super-important sector, which is critical to our economic future.
Compare and contrast the impact of welfare cuts in this country—we have seen a £39 billion reduction in social security spending this year. The consequences of that have led not just to many people living in extreme hardship but, as was reported last week, to 69 people committing suicide in response to the circumstances that they faced. Errol Graham is the saddest case, dying from a lack of food.
By contrast, according to analysis by the Council of Economic Advisers, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which I mentioned earlier, prevented millions of Americans from falling into poverty, and more than 5 million in just 2010 alone. Here, we have 14 million people living in poverty and record numbers of children in poverty, with 500,000 additional children in poverty since 2010.
Turning to health and social care, the Chancellor made only passing mention of social care, but it is critical to our national health service. A quarter of the workforce is on the minimum wage and there are 100,000 vacancies, but no promise to remove the restrictions on non-UK residents being able to work in that sector. Without them, the NHS is going to be under ever greater pressure. We have 44,000 vacancies for nurses and 100,000 other staff vacancies, and we have lost 17,000 beds, as we know.
I appreciate that the Chancellor is talking about a further 50,000 nurses, but as has been debated frequently, how many are actually new and how many are already within the system? The talk of refurbishing hospitals and of potentially new hospitals is very welcome, but this is absolutely about the revenues that we need to invest in that sector. If the frontline workers—health workers and social care workers—many of whom are on zero-hours contracts or the minimum wage, are eligible for the state sickness payment, they will receive only £94.25 a week. Whether they should go to work or stay at home is a choice for them in the circumstances surrounding coronavirus. This is a desperate situation and it is critical for the provision of our health service and social care.
Likewise, our local authorities are again at the coalface. I heard very little mention of the reality that we face in our local authorities, but much of the increase in council tax is being borne by our local residents, in terms of tax demand. There was no mention of the withdrawal of the central Government grant. Of course, local authorities are increasingly dependent on business rates. The Chancellor or the Government announced a 12-month holiday and I would like to know how local authorities will be compensated. Elsewhere, we are seeing a proposed increase in police numbers, but that will just replace what we had, and during the last 10 years, we have seen a 152% increase in violent crime.
On the housing crisis, the Chancellor talked about a £12 billion multi-year investment in affordable housing, but there was no real mention of council housing, which we are desperate for. We have lost 200,000 council homes since 2010. In the past few years, we have seen only eight social-rented council homes built in my constituency of Warwick and Leamington, yet rough sleeping has doubled since 2010.
There was brief mention of the environment and energy generation, and I urge the Government to put more investment in and support for—through fiscal levers—the development of onshore energy generation. That is cheapest and it will help to drive down energy bills. We lack ambition and we need to see more emphasis on that—likewise in solar. In fact, the environment barely got a mention, despite the considerable floods that we have had in recent weeks. There is a huge opportunity to revisit the code for sustainable homes and what that can do not just for the environment, but for our house-building industry.
On business, I welcome many of the initiatives that the Chancellor introduced, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises, including the business rates holiday. However, they face a huge Brexit challenge as well, and our high streets, shops and so on face a huge challenge because of the presence of the internet and the pressures of the coronavirus, as well as Brexit.
The past 10 years have been a lost decade. We have seen the debt double from £950 billion to £2 trillion and a reduction in the state, masquerading as austerity. At the same time, we have seen inequality rise, 500,000 more children in poverty and life expectancy fall for the first time. In my constituency, there is a gap in life expectancy of 18 years between the wealthiest and the most disadvantaged. While I welcome many of the proposals from the Chancellor, there is still much to do. I hope there will be more debate to come.
Transport Infrastructure
Matt Western Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I pay tribute to the workers of British Steel for what they do. Most of our train tracks come from British Steel, whether in Scunthorpe or elsewhere, and we will do our utmost, notwithstanding the difficulties that the plant faces, to ensure that that remains the case in future.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
When we first talked about HS2 10 years ago, we were not talking about a climate emergency. Given that the landscape has changed in that respect, the Government should invest significantly more than proposed in sub-regional transport systems such as buses and cycle routes, as the French and continentals are doing.
The Prime Minister
I think I can say without fear of contradiction that I have built more cycle lanes than anyone else in the House—that was not always popular—but that is nothing compared with what we are about to do. The investment that we are about to make in buses is absolutely colossal, and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman finds grounds for criticism.
Oral Answers to Questions
Matt Western Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Yes I can; and not only are we investing record sums in primary and secondary education, but we are also setting up a national skills fund to help those who do not necessarily think that they are candidates for university but have a huge amount to offer the economy and need all the help they can get—they have massive, massive potential.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. As he knows, it is our view that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action remains the best way of preventing nuclear proliferation in Iran—it is the best way of encouraging the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon—and we think that after this crisis has abated, which of course we sincerely hope it will, that way forward will remain. It is a shell that has currently been voided, but it remains a shell into which we can put substance again.
European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill
Matt Western ExcerptsFriday 20th December 2019
(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Hilary Benn
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely powerful point. We have been told repeatedly that there will be no border in the Irish sea; there is now going to be a border in the Irish sea. That will have consequences for the way in which trade is conducted.
This Bill is also a gamble because of the clause that says that no Minister is able to apply for an extension. Quite why the Government need to legislate to prevent something from happening that they have already made clear they have no intention of allowing to happen—an extension to the transition period—escapes me, but I gently point out to the House that the point of no return will be next June. Under the withdrawal agreement, if a further extension has not been agreed between the parties by then—and the Government are ruling it out—there will be no possibility of extending the period. I say to the Government that they will need to be really, really confident about how the negotiations are going by June next year—not very far away—if they are to be certain that they will not need that additional time to get what they want.
There is no doubt that the Prime Minister is looking for a hard Brexit, because a free trade agreement of the type he has put before the British people—and for which, I grant him, he has won a mandate—has already been assessed by the Government as the second worst outcome for the economy after a no-deal Brexit. It is extraordinary that the House has still not been presented with an economic assessment of the single most important decision that we are going to take and the nature of the future relationship—nothing; silence. History will record that that was an act of irresponsibility.
I say to the House—in particular to new Members on both sides, whom I congratulate on their election—that, as these negotiations unfold, businesses that we represent will be coming to us; they will want issues to be raised in the negotiations and will be concerned about the outcome of the negotiations. Some of the things they are looking for will not be consistent with the policy that the Government have set out. This should not be about ideology; it is about the practical implications of having thrown away—because that is what Brexit does—the best trading relationship we have with any countries in the world. It is about what kind of new long-term arrangements will be put in place, on which our jobs, our factories and our communities depend. If the Government get it wrong, it will be a question not of getting Brexit done but of some industries being done over by Brexit.
Matt Western
My right hon. Friend is making such a powerful speech. Does he not agree that the great concern for this place has to be that it was promised that we would take back control? The greatest deceit of all is the fact that there will be no scrutiny in this place of any element of the trade deals and the impact they will have on our economy.
Hilary Benn
I agree with my hon. Friend: that is a matter of great regret.
I come to my final point. Our leaving the European Union will create great cheer on the Government Benches, just as it will sadden many of us on the Labour side. The divisions it has created will not easily be healed: many people still think that this is a terrible mistake that will weaken our economy and our influence in the world.
In the modern age, it is how we use our sovereignty that will determine how well we can advance our interests and protect our citizens. If we have learned anything from the events of recent times, it is that if we are to deal with the great challenges we face as a world—climate change, the movement of people around the globe, threats to peace and security, making sure that the global economy works in the interests of all—we can do it only by working together. We are about to walk away from one of the most important relationships that enables us to do that. I say to the Government that we will hold them to account as the process develops and unfolds.