Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Eleventh sitting)
Debate between Matt Western and David Simmonds(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Matt Western
It is pretty obvious what little faith we have in the potential appointment of a director of free speech. Often in life, it is not a case of what is said but who says it. We can look at this legislation and then try to interpret what is behind it. It seems obvious that this is a clear next stage in the Government’s power grab over the supposedly independent Office for Students. Until recently, the OfS was genuinely independent, but that power grab is laid bare for all to see in the Bill.
To put that in a wider context, it is fair to say that the Government have widely abused the public appointments process. It is not clear whether the director of free speech will be recruited through open competition or essentially appointed by the Prime Minister. On numerous occasions, I have raised the appointment of Lord Wharton as chair of the Office for Students. He is a Conservative party donor and takes the Conservative party Whip. He is a political appointee, so it is not a good record. To clarify, people can of course be donors. But in this case a person is appointed to the independent Office for Students one month, and the next month, having taken a pay cheque from the Government, he pays £8,000 to the Conservative party.
I would like to see the director of free speech appointed through the Committee on Standards in Public Life. On the wider problem of political appointees, I read just a few weeks ago that another of the Prime Minister’s mates, Ewen Fergusson, who happens to be another Bullingdon lad, was appointed to the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The pattern that is emerging is not good for anyone across the political spectrum. It is vital that trust in all these systems is maintained, irrespective of who happens to be in power. That trust can be eroded quickly and we have to ensure that all of us do our best to uphold it.
Many academics view what is happening as a creeping appointment of Government Members, not just to these sorts of bodies but to museums as well. I mentioned earlier the resignation of Sir Charles Dunstone as chair of the Royal Museums Greenwich, which was prompted by the Government’s refusal to reappoint an allegedly decolonising trustee, Aminul Hoque.
Our cluster of amendments seek to limit the interventionist role of Government in supposedly independent positions in public bodies. The concern about that role was highlighted by Professor Biggar in oral evidence, when he said:
“someone like me, who thinks there is a problem—and I guess the Government do, given the legislation—wants a director who has a certain partiality of that kind.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 22, Q40.]
That is clear then, isn’t? We want a partial person to be going into the independent Office for Students to preside over this important role of the director of free speech.
Dr Ahmed said:
“There are always concerns with the regulator—that it has to be impartial—and there are also concerns in this particular case.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 20, Q36.]
Dr Ahmed was a Government witness, and I think he was referring to the case of Lord Wharton. Another witness, Smita Jamdar, a lawyer from Shakespeare Martineau, said:
“you could end up with somebody who is effectively an appointment of whatever Government is in place at the time, and who does not necessarily have any skills or expertise to make those judgments but is the last word on them. Again, in terms of freedom, that does not feel terribly free.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 57, Q111.]
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Does the hon. Member agree that it is important that, although these individuals are independent, they are also accountable? Does he recognise, as I do, having been part of a number of confirmation hearings for individuals appointed by the Government to significant roles in which they are expected to exercise independence, that that public, cross-party scrutiny—in this case, through the Education Committee—ensures that individuals can be questioned, and that the concerns that have been highlighted can be addressed, before the person assumes office, and that that happens in public and in a transparent manner?
Matt Western
Of course, we all want to believe in those processes, but when the processes end up consistently with mates of the Prime Minister being appointed, it is pretty disturbing.
Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Ninth sitting)
Debate between Matt Western and David Simmonds(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I wish to place on the record the fact that my wife works at a university.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I am an honorary fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Eighth sitting)
Debate between Matt Western and David Simmonds(3 years, 2 months ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I am an honorary fellow at Birkbeck.
Local Government Responsibilities: Public Services
Debate between Matt Western and David Simmonds(4 years, 8 months ago)
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David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I am sad to report to the House that, having spent 22 years as a member of a local authority and having been elected as a Member of Parliament, I have gone down in the index of public trust. When it comes to politicians and Members of Parliament, we are fortunate that we still sit above lawyers and estate agents, but local government is very much trusted by the people of this country. That is why what the Minister and the Government have done, not only in their approach to the coronavirus outbreak but to the bigger strategic challenge of how we properly resource our local services for the coming years, is very important.
One of the long-standing frustrations of my time in local government is that Parliament—it has the opportunity to be incredibly strategic on behalf of our country and to think about what it wants to achieve for the nation in many of these big-picture issues, such as housing, healthcare, social care and education—has sometimes been drawn into detailed debates about very specific issues, when we would achieve so much more by allowing our locally elected colleagues to demonstrate the leadership that they are demonstrating in response to this crisis. They need to have those resources to accept from this House the challenge to deliver against those ambitions and then to be left to get on with it.
Local resilience forums, which the Minister referred to on a number of occasions in his speech, are to me a very good example of exactly that kind of leadership. My experience as a councillor is in the London Borough of Hillingdon, although my constituency straddles two London local authorities. Going back to 2001, with 9/11 we suddenly had to deal with thousands of stranded travellers who had no means of getting back to their homes. They needed to be found somewhere to stay, to be fed and, in many cases, to be provided with medical care, communications and support. We saw local organisations––not just the local authority, but schools and the military––rallying around, co-ordinated by the local authority, to provide that crucial support.
In the decade since, we have had to deal with significant outbreaks of very serious illnesses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome, middle east respiratory syndrome, H5N1 and swine flu, from which a young girl in my local area sadly passed away. The local authority then had to step in to manage those communications, in order to reassure that community and make sure that the support was in place so that a school or community that was grieving could deal with the situation. It is impossible to do that directly from this House, which is why the Government have rightly taken the view that they will look at the strategic question of providing an appropriate level of resources and then enable those people in their local communities to route that money directly to where it makes the most difference.
My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) referred to the provision of a bus to make emergency accommodation available for homeless people. Many of us have local authorities that have contracts with local voluntary organisations, for example, the YMCA, as in the case of my local authority, to provide that kind of emergency accommodation. In other parts of the country, such accommodation may be provided directly by the local authority itself. It is crucial, therefore, that the theme that runs throughout all this is the ability of local authorities and local resilience forums to deploy the money that is rightly coming from this Government in the most flexible way possible to meet those local challenges.
Lessons could be learned on that, and I am cognisant of what Opposition Members have said about the challenges associated with special educational needs and disabilities, and the educational provision for people in that situation. It is clear that the more local flexibility there is, the easier it is for those communities to rise to the challenge of meeting the needs of those individuals. The more we seek to control that from the centre, the less satisfied many of our residents and voters will be with the outcomes they are seeing. Given the amazing range of provision that we see—I am cognisant of the remarks about what was happening on youth services—we have fantastic voluntary organisations, which are providing brilliant opportunities to young people. A decade or two ago, their lives would perhaps have been lived in a youth club, but they are now being lived online, on a smartphone, where they talk to their friends in the privacy of their bedrooms. So something different is required in the modern world, and that is another example of where the leadership of local authorities, which know their communities, can deploy those resources, albeit more limited than they might have been historically, in the most effective way.
I wish to make a couple of specific observations about particular strengths of the Government’s response. The first relates to the announcements that have been made to support nurseries and early years providers. I should declare an interest: as a parent of two young children, I am a user of my local council-run nursery. There are many people, some employed in our public services and others who are going about their daily business who are dependent on the existence of those services to ensure that they can live their lives. Such services provide an opportunity for their children and the children who may not come from prosperous backgrounds to gain the best possible start in life. So I am pleased with the commitment that the Government have given to ensure that, even if children are having to step back from those places because of the immediate prevailing situation, funding will still find its way, and so when this moment of emergency passes families can find that those services and the opportunities for the youngest children are still there. That is an extremely wise move, and the more we can send that message to proprietors and managers of nurseries and parents whose children use them, the better.
The second thing I wish to refer to is the distribution of personal protective equipment. Because of my personal connections with the national health service and from what I hear as a local councillor, I know that there is, understandably, a high degree of anxiety among many of those staff who, unlike us in this Chamber, will be sent out to people who are known to be suffering from the coronavirus in order to provide direct, hands-on personal care. They are worried about whether they will be able to access the quality and standard of equipment that will be necessary to keep them safe. The announcement by the Minister that the distribution from national stocks of those products to those frontline workers is going to be absolutely crucial once again in providing that degree of reassurance.
That is not reassurance to those in the markets who are wondering which moves to make when they are trading their shares, and it is not reassurance to the international community; it is reassurance to people who are absolutely at the frontline of responding in a very direct and very human way to this crisis. Again, the more we can get out the message the better that, as well as a sum that is so mind-bogglingly large—over £300 billion—that it is hard to grasp, this House is thinking about the basics of face masks and gloves and aprons that people need to make sure that they are safe when they are doing an essential job, to bring this country together and to keep our people safe.
Matt Western
On that point, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be useful to understand from Government just how they are ramping up the production and supply of PPE, or ventilators or testing kits, so we understand where the base was and where we might be in two weeks’ time?
David Simmonds
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I have been very much reassured by what I have heard from Ministers over a number of days about the initiatives that are taking place to ensure that ventilators, for example, and other equipment are available. One of the things I am particularly aware of because of my local government experience and knowledge of what local resilience forums do is that there are long-standing plans in place, backed up by stockpiles of various different types of equipment that may be required. It is welcome that the Minister has been very clear today that, based on need and local requirements, the distribution of that is going to begin, particularly for the volunteer groups that many colleagues have referred to, with people who are not familiar with some of the challenges and risks that may be involved in treating patients with serious illnesses; the knowledge that they can access good quality personal protective equipment supplied through central Government and by their local authority, is going to be absolutely crucial.
In conclusion, I would simply like to make the following point. We have seen examples up and down the land of local authorities consistently on a cross-party basis—I can think of examples from the response of Manchester to the Arena bombing to those of local authorities across the country to the refugee crisis in Europe—where our local government colleagues have demonstrated very capably that they will rise to any challenge which this House sets. It is most welcome that Ministers have been clear that they will provide the financial resources that are central to the delivery of that, and I trust that all hon. Members will be providing a similar degree of cross-party moral support to our colleagues in local government that at this time of national challenge, we need to work together and rise to it together.