Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree. What the Mayor of London should be doing is looking at what delivers on the overall vote of the people of London—the vote to which my hon. Friend referred—and at what delivers in a way that protects the best interests of Londoners, and that is to vote for this deal.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q14. The Prime Minister has had 20 dancing rebels, has promised five golden trade agreements and has had one big defeat, and yet she still cannot find her withdrawal agreement. Has she checked her pear tree?

[The Prime Minister]

It was a good attempt, but Christmas happened a couple of weeks ago.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend raises an important and sensitive issue. None of us wants to see a situation where people are not able to afford to do what is a terrible task, given that they have seen a loved one die, and it is important to families and individuals to be able to give their loved one a proper funeral. As he will know, the funeral expenses payments do continue to cover the necessary costs involved with funerals and cremations and up to £700 for other funeral expenses. Some changes have been made to ensure that other contributions are not deducted from the funeral expenses payment so that there is no change to that. My right hon. Friend’s position sounds like a Budget submission, which I suggest he might wish to put forward to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q7. Because of funding pressures, many schools are cutting short the school week, so what is the Prime Minister’s message to parents whose children will be out of school for half a day a week?

Capita

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend’s raises a very important point that is another rebuttal to this idea of ideology. If we want to look at ideology, perhaps the number of PFI contracts signed by a Government would give an indication of that, so let us look at the numbers. How many contracts did Labour sign on average each year? Fifty-five at the peak. How many have this Government signed in the past year? One. If this is about an ideological commitment to the use of the private sector, Labour Members should search their souls in relation to their last Government.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister makes great play of the 11% savings from contracting out, but it is no good making savings if core services are not being delivered well. Will he outline how many of the contracts he is concerned about—he has listed them a couple of times—and will he tell us how many contracts he is discussing with Capita with regard to whether their delivery should be reviewed? It is no good spending taxpayers’ money on a private company if it is not delivering the services that it is paid to deliver.

[Oliver Dowden]

The contracts that each Department agrees with the private sector for the delivery of services are very stringent. Each Department is responsible for ensuring their proper delivery, and if the company is not delivering properly, it will be in breach of the contract and remedies will be available. At the point of re-letting a contract, we look at the overall performance of the company concerned to ensure that it is in a fit state to be able to deliver on its promises. There is a dual responsibility between the individual Departments, which set out the terms, and the Cabinet Office, in which I sit, which has overall responsibility for the supplier market.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend raises a really important issue. The impact of WannaCry was felt by the NHS as a result of a legacy of some unsupported IT systems and inconsistent software patching. NHS Digital is taking a proactive approach to ensure that security patches are applied promptly, and the National Cyber Security Centre has provided expert guidance to CareCERT and is supporting individual NHS trusts and organisations in their migration from unsupported systems.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Cabinet Office rejected a Public Accounts Committee recommendation that it should set out a detailed plan for how the National Cyber Security Centre will enable those under attack to get help. We heard evidence from many people in large organisations who were very confused about where to go for that help. Will the Minister now reconsider the rejection of that requirement and look again?

[Caroline Nokes]

Our advice is very clear: we have funded a substantial national cyber-security programme, which goes alongside expertise from the National Cyber Security Centre. That is directed specifically towards improving the cyber-security of Government and the wider public sector. Our collective focus is on ensuring we have the most secure systems, and that public services and buildings are kept up to date so that our information is safe.

European Council

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. New immigration rules will be brought in in the UK for those people who move from the EU to the UK after we have left. It is entirely right and sensible that, in part of the negotiations, we discuss the cut-off date for EU citizens who are here.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I represent many EU citizens who are fearful and indeed tearful about their future prospects, so I welcome some of the clarity that the Prime Minister has brought to the matter. She talks about a streamlined system for applying for status, but many people worry about how they will pay the costs for an entire family to go through the process in short order. Can she give us an indication of what those costs might be and reassure them?

Grenfell Tower

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I can give that reassurance. It is about being close to friends and family, but it is also important for children to be able to go to their local schools.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister talked about looking to the future and about those whose lifestyles are far removed from the lifestyles enjoyed by many here in Westminster. That is the reality in my constituency, where there is overcrowding, with two families living in many homes, and where homelessness is the worst it has ever been. Will she live true to her word and take a personal lead in taking forward plans to ensure that we deliver not just more housing, but more genuinely affordable housing for the people who need it?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government published proposals on housing before the general election. We want to ensure that there are more affordable homes and that more houses are being built. We are putting half a billion pounds into dealing with homelessness.

Debate on the Address

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). I thank him for his thoughtful contribution and want to pick up on a couple of the points that he made.

Overall, this is a very thin Queen’s Speech. It avoids big issues, some of which I want to talk about, particularly education, housing and health. I will come to those, but Brexit is clearly the dominant issue for this Parliament, and it is notable that the speeches preceding mine have focused almost entirely on it.

Before I talk about Brexit, though, I think it is right that I thank the voters of Hackney South and Shoreditch for returning me for the fourth time as a Labour and Co-operative MP. I was returned with 79% of the popular vote—a sign not of my personal popularity, but of people’s great impatience with austerity. There was no light at the end of the austerity tunnel for many of my constituents. While many people describe my area as achingly cool, in many parts it is still achingly poor.

People were pleased to see the Labour manifesto offering a glimmer of hope, but they were mightily concerned about Brexit as well. Some 78% of them voted to remain in the European Union last year, but now they do not even know what the Government are proposing in the negotiations on leaving. That approach risks a Brexit that will damage the British economy, jobs and living standards. We already see the pound 50% lower against the dollar and 10% down against the euro since the decision was made a year ago, and in April inflation rose to 2.6%, its highest rate for three and a half years. Constituents on the doorsteps said that they were noticing their shopping being more expensive, and that is just the beginning of the impact. It is vital that the Government set out a clear agenda for what they want to achieve.

There are two issues that I think are absolutely essential, one of which is the single market. I would prefer us to maintain membership, but at the very least we need access to it, for all the reasons that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) eruditely explained, which I do not need to repeat. The other is EU citizens in my constituency, who still greet me on the doorstep in tears, a year later, because of the Government’s woeful delay in deciding their future. It is heartening that there are press reports that there might be some fast-track measure, but there was nothing about that in the Queen’s Speech.

The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield picked up a point about the great repeal Bill, and we need to be careful about that. The Queen’s Speech identified a few items that the Government will particularly focus on, but this is the Government who promised to reduce quangos, and the Bill runs the risk of creating more as we transpose many regulations from European law to British law. The Queen’s Speech referred to nuclear, but we could also talk about medicines or animal rights. All those issues will have to be transposed. Frankly, if there is another general election and hon. Members lose their seat, I suggest that they go for a public appointment, because many bodies will have to be created in order to deliver that law. That, however, gives no comfort to my constituents who are worried about the cost of living.

The issue of costs and budgets brings me to education. The Government promise in the Queen’s Speech that they will

“work to ensure that every child has the opportunity to attend a good school”.

All children in my constituency attend a good or outstanding school, but my constituents are very angry about education. I have now fought four general elections in my constituency, and several elections prior to that in other places, and I have never seen such a groundswell of anger from parents, teachers and pupils—so much so that there were seven assemblies in Hackney one Friday during the election campaign. The people there were ordinary parents, not political activists—not that there is anything wrong with political activists—who were galvanised into action by the threat to our children’s future.

During the work that we have done in the Public Accounts Committee, which I had the privilege of chairing in the last Parliament and hope to chair again, the Government have kept telling us that the overall schools budget in England is going up and has been protected in real terms. However, they have not provided for an increase in funding per pupil in line with inflation. On average, that will rise from just over £5,440 in 2015-16 to £5,519 in 2019-20, which is a real-terms reduction.

Added to that, there is the proposal to change the funding formula—there has been some indication that that might be changing but, again, no details. The change would mean that schools in my borough of Hackney would lose 2.8% of their funding—the highest percentage cut in the country alongside that to two or three other London boroughs—which would be more than £5 million a year. Our schools are among the best in the country, thanks to the investment of previous Governments, and it would be short-sighted and frankly bonkers to cut that away now.

We can add to that the existing efficiency savings that schools are being expected to make, which the Public Accounts Committee looked at only a few months ago. That £3 billion of savings, which needs to be found by 2020, includes £1.7 billion through the more efficient use of staff—we know that that already means that teachers and classroom assistants are losing their jobs—and £1.3 billion through more efficient procurement. I am all for efficiencies and for spending every tax pound as efficiently as possible, because we can then spend what we save on other things, but these are often false economies. One headteacher in my constituency is looking at four-and-a-half-day weeks, while others are seriously considering whether they can maintain the full secondary curriculum or if they will have to cut it.

Then there is capital funding for schools. There was no real mention in the Queen’s Speech of changes to the schools agenda—including on grammar schools, so we assume that that proposal has bitten the dust. We need nearly £7 billion of capital funding just to bring existing buildings across England up to scratch, yet we have seen a free schools programme that is expected to cost £9.7 billion by 2020. In London alone, four sites have been bought for £30 million or more each, and only recently I heard of a school in Hertfordshire in an old office block with no sports facilities or playground. The children do their PE in a public car park. Members of all parties have raised with me their concerns about similar examples. We need to invest in our children for this country’s long-term future. Our hope for the future, especially with Brexit looming, is that our children will get the best possible education and start in life. Whatever happens, we face choppy waters on immigration with the potential abolition of free movement.

There was also nothing about housing in the Queen’s Speech, except the banning of unfair tenant fees. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as someone who lets a property. I will personally support that ban, as I hope that my party’s Front Benchers will. However, it is an important but small element. The last Government promised to build 1 million homes in the Parliament to 2020, and I wonder whether that is still a target. What we need to see is not the Government talking about

“fairness and transparency in the housing market”

and helping to

“ensure more homes are built”,

but real numbers and real targets. I look forward to the estimates debates, when we can ensure that we attach money to those words.

Housing is one of the biggest crises in my borough. Education is in crisis at the moment, having been very good, but housing has been a dripping problem for some considerable time. There are problems with home ownership, with prices having risen by 83% since April 2011. Since that year, private sector rents have increased by 27%. In January, the median rent for a three-bedroom property in Hackney was £550 a week, or just shy of £2,500 a calendar month. That is just the median, so many are more expensive. Most people have no hope of getting on the housing ladder in Hackney.

There are also huge issues with social housing. Many households that I see are doubling up, with one family living in the living room and another in the bedroom. That is a real tragedy, because without a stable home, children cannot have a good start in life. If we could sort out housing in Hackney and stop the cuts to education, we would give our children great hope. We have 500 new people applying to be added to the waiting list every month. People do not really move along the waiting list unless they have a serious health problem.

[Alan Brown]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the crisis in social housing will only get worse, given the right-to-buy situation and the fact that the Government are thousands of homes behind the one-to-one replacement target? Does she agree that there is a case for ending the right to buy for social housing and council stock, as the Scottish Government have done in Scotland?

[Meg Hillier]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. My borough stands to lose 700 council homes through forced sale. The homes sold in Hackney will be so expensive that they will be hard to buy, but housing association homes sold in other parts of the country must also be replaced. Hackney alone has spent £35 million in the past year to house homeless families in temporary accommodation. Nationally, 120,000 children live in temporary accommodation. That is a national shame. That is not a good start in life, and it is happening at the same time as we are spending £21 billion per annum on housing benefit. We have got it wrong and we need far more action.

I will not go into detail about the NHS, suffice it to say that the Public Accounts Committee under my chairmanship produced more than 20 reports on that in the last Parliament. The details of our cross-party concerns are on record. It is time that the House and the Government started looking at longer-term solutions to NHS funding. It is no good throwing money at a problem when it arises; we need a longer-term solution.

This Queen’s Speech heralds no hope for my constituents. This Government and the preceding one knocked out the rungs of the ladder of opportunity for so many of my constituents. The reach to the first rung is very high. For instance, it is very difficult to get into further education without a loan, or into nursing without the nursing bursary, and we lost the education maintenance allowance six or seven years ago.

Some things will not happen because of the election result—there will be no grammar schools, no badly worked-up proposals on social care, and no scrapping of free school meals for infants—but, after the next election, we need a Government who will look at those who are aspirant and give them the opportunity to succeed. This Government and this Queen’s Speech do not do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

Lost for words for the first time, I think, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I am honoured to be returned yet again—for the eighth time—to the House. I am delighted to be joined, representing the city of Leicester, by my hon. Friends the Members for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) and for Leicester West (Liz Kendall). I stand here today having listened to a number of excellent speeches. Looking back on my three decades in this House, I do not remember a time of such political instability. I hope that the Gracious Speech and the scrutiny that this House will give it will enable us to get at least some legislation through in the next two years.

Terrorism has hit the streets of Britain three times since the House was last in session: in Manchester, at London Bridge and only this week in Finsbury Park. The commitment that has been made by the Prime Minister, and supported by the Opposition, that we put communities at the heart of dealing with counter-terrorism is the right approach. The Prevent strategy, which has been in operation under successive Governments, does need to be reviewed. We clearly need a strategy, but unless we put our communities at the forefront of trying to deal with terrorism, we cannot hope to succeed. It is important, especially at this time, that we choose our words very carefully indeed.

I pay tribute to the chief constable of Leicestershire, Simon Cole, for his work on counter-terrorism. He is the Prevent leader for the police. We in Leicester are a city of many cultures, races and religions. We live in harmony, apart from a small disorder last Sunday: after Pakistan beat India there was much activity on the Belgrave Road, but I hope very much that that was a one-off. Normally, however, all communities work very well and closely together.

In the context of counter-terrorism, it is important to raise the issue of policing. The threat to policing mentioned by the head of counter-terrorism, Mark Rowley, in his letter to the Home Secretary today is an important point. It is right that the Government have protected the counter-terrorism budget over the past few years but, as we all know, information is gathered at a local level and it is vital that the Government publish the police funding formula, for which we have been waiting for over a year.

In Leicestershire, we have lost 547 police officers since 2009—that is a reduction of 23%. In 2006, there was one police officer for every 430 people; now we have one for every 599 people. Despite the excellent work of the chief constable and his team, the police and crime commissioner, Willy Bach, and his deputy Kirk Master, they are still awaiting the formula, but without that formula, they simply cannot plan.

I join other Members in recognising the tragedy of the Grenfell flats fire and the fact that that obviously has an implication for all our constituencies in which we have high-rise accommodation. The Government must act quickly to deal with these issues so that people can be reassured that something is being done to protect them. I join the Leader of the Opposition and others in commending my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) on the work that she has done.

Brexit will, of course, dominate proceedings over the next two years. I hope that, as a matter of urgency, we will clarify the position of EU citizens. Some 3 million EU citizens live in the United Kingdom. My constituency has 10,000 people who have come from the EU—the majority hold Portuguese passports—and they are very anxious about whether they will be allowed to remain in the United Kingdom. Of course the Government have said they want them to stay, but unless we get that in writing, it will not satisfy them.

There are practical difficulties, too. I am glad to see the former Immigration Minister, the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), on the Front Bench, because this was raised by the Home Affairs Committee in the last Parliament. Some EU citizens have arrived with identity cards but without passports, while others have passports. When they make their applications for indefinite leave, it will be important that the practicalities are taken into consideration. We in this place have suggested that the registration should perhaps be done at a local level through local authorities, rather than through a process of writing to the Home Office because, as we know, it takes a great deal of time for it to reply.

[Meg Hillier]

rose—

[Keith Vaz]

I give way to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

[Meg Hillier]

I am not actually Chair of the PAC, but I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way.

This issue of registration is very important to many of my constituents. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is time that the Government came up with more detail on this, and looked at how the process can be fast-tracked so that people do not have to go through multi-page documents for every time they have left the country? People who have been here for a long time and have proof of that should be able just to be fast-tracked.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about what happens when people have to try to fill in those forms and then submit them to the Home Office, where there is a backlog of 400,000 cases, as those of us who do immigration work will know. They simply do not get a reply, so simplifying the application process, and perhaps moving it to a local level, would be the way to move forward.

There is no health Bill in the Gracious Speech. I know of your interest in diabetes, Mr Deputy Speaker, and your regular attendance at the all-party group on diabetes, which I chaired in the last Parliament. I declare an interest as someone who has type 2 diabetes. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), whose 30th anniversary celebration I will be attending tonight, recently found out that she has type 2 diabetes. What I would like to see, and what I think the House would like to see—this is certainly what the group has talked about many times—is a recognition of the need for individuals to be tested so that they know whether they have diabetes. More than that, once people are tested for diabetes, they need to be given compulsory education. There must be structured education for those with diabetes with regard to diet and lifestyle. Far too often, all the GPs do is prescribe tablets for individuals with type 2 diabetes, or inject type 1 diabetics with insulin. It is very important that we pass some legislation on structured education.

As we know, 3.5 million people—6% of the population—have been diagnosed with diabetes in the United Kingdom, and that figure is likely to rise to 5 million by 2025, representing almost 10% of the population. As we also know, treatment accounts for 10% of the national health service budget, so prevention is extremely important, and I am disappointed that we do not have a Bill on this subject.

I know it is not fashionable to do so, but I want to thank George Osborne, who has left this House, for his sugar tax, which he introduced before he left and I hope is still on track. Of course, Mr Osborne has not gone to the other place, as others have done; he has gone to a higher place—the editorship of the Evening Standard—but his legacy on the sugar tax is something that we all celebrate.

I have two final points, the first of which is on Yemen. There are others in this House who have been here for longer than me—the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) came into the House with me 30 years ago—but I cannot remember a Queen’s Speech debate in which the Prime Minister did not refer to foreign policy. I know that the Prime Minister talked about Brexit, but we heard no mention of foreign policy. I would have liked to have heard something about Yemen. Yemen is of course a country that is very close to my heart—I was born there and I chair the all-party group on Yemen. Ten thousand people have been killed in the civil war in Yemen so far, 3.2 million people have been internally displaced, and 14.1 million people—half the population—have none of their basic healthcare needs met.

I pay tribute to Flick Drummond for the work that she did in this House, to Angus Robertson for the number of times he led on Yemen during Prime Minister’s questions, and to Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh for what she did when she was in this House. All of them made a huge contribution. I also thank the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) for his outstanding work as Minister. He always engaged with the all-party group and we will miss him. We know that he has been replaced by the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), but he was an outstanding Minister as far as Yemen was concerned.

My final point concerns one of my youngest constituents, who died during the election campaign. All of us will have read about the case of Evha Jannath, the 11-year-old girl who died at Drayton Manor park on 9 May 2017. The inquest is pending, and Staffordshire police and the Health and Safety Executive are conducting inquiries. I thank both organisations for the work they have done, but serious questions remain about the rides that young people take at theme parks such as Drayton Manor. We will need a full inquiry into what happened so that we can understand how it happened and prevent such a thing from happening to young children in the future.

This will be a rollercoaster two years. I know that our attention will be not only on Westminster but on Belfast, because of the role that the Democratic Unionist party will play. I think that its Members have already returned to Belfast to begin their work. I hope that we can be constructive, that we can create lasting legislation and that we do not just spend all our time talking about Brexit. There is important work to be done, and I know that Members—especially the newer ones—all want to participate in it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Meg Hillier]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that giving our young people the right to roam on the streets in which they live is such an important issue, that they should not live in fear and that their voices need to be heard in this debate as well?

[Joan Ryan]

I agree absolutely, which is why we need police in our community, building community relationships. For those, mostly teenagers and young men, who are stabbing each other—or being stabbed—we have a duty to protect them from themselves. We have failed somewhere along the line. The Government cannot wash their hands of responsibility for any increase in crime, given that they have made such swingeing cuts to our safer neighbourhoods teams. It is no coincidence that the 70% rise in violent crime in Enfield has come at exactly the same time as 188 police officers and police community support officers have been removed from our streets. Nor is it a coincidence that violent crime has increased so sharply at exactly the same time as it became harder for our police to carry out “stop and search” of youths suspected of carrying knives. Since 2012, stop and search in London has fallen by 70%, and last year we saw a 24% rise in the number of knife crime offences across the capital. Parents from all sections of the community in Enfield are crying out for a new, workable, responsible stop and search policy, because teenagers are being stabbed to death every few weeks. I know there was a problem with stop and search, but I think that could be sorted. Despite the best efforts of our police service in Enfield, it is nigh on impossible for them to maintain a highly visible police presence on our streets when we now have only about 550 police officers attempting to protect a population of 330,000 people.

[Meg Hillier]

One area of police funding that we on the Public Accounts Committee examined as long ago as 2015 was the impact on police services of cuts in other public services, whereby the police became the responder of first and last resort, for example, on mental health. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an additional pressure, which is clearly causing pressures in her borough, too?

[Joan Ryan]

Absolutely. Various studies show that upwards of 70% of police call-outs involve some kind of mental health issue, which many police do not feel able to deal with. Enfield is a growing borough. It is London’s fifth largest borough and over the next decade is set to become the fourth biggest, so spreading resources this thinly is unfair, both to the public and to the police. There has been no way of getting the Prime Minister, either now or when she was Home Secretary, to face up to the effect of her law and order policies on people’s lives. When the current Home Secretary came to Enfield North during the election campaign, after a young man was stabbed to death, she said nothing about the loss of almost 200 uniformed police officers and PCSOs locally, and 20,000 police officers nationally, over the past seven years. I notice nothing in the Gracious Speech that indicates any plan to increase police numbers. The Home Secretary called for longer prison sentences for carrying a knife, which many people would support, but that is completely ineffective if we have not got the police on the streets in the first place. If we cannot catch them, we cannot sentence them.

The policy response has to be about prevention, education and more visible policing. Working with the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, I am pleased that Enfield will have 21 more local, ward-based officers in place by the end of this year to help fight crime. Unfortunately, the Government are taking entirely the opposite approach. The Met has already seen £600 million stripped from its central Government grant since 2010; another £400 million cut is planned by 2020; and as much as £700 million on top of that could be cut due to changes in the police funding formula—we have yet to hear the details. At a time when the Met Commissioner is saying that the police are “very stretched”, cuts on this scale would spell disaster. They will put the safety of our communities at risk. I urge the Government to provide the Mayor of London and the Met police with the resources they need to ensure proper levels of policing in Enfield and throughout the capital.

Let me turn to the issue of local health services in Enfield. I recall standing in this place in 2015 for that year’s Gracious Speech, when I spoke about the

“shocking decline in acute care and primary care provision”—[Official Report, 2 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 504.]

under this Government. Chase Farm hospital has lost its accident and emergency and maternity unit, and seen its in-patient beds reduced in number from 500 to 48. The closure of those facilities heaped huge pressure on local GP practices and the A&E department at the North Middlesex hospital. Last year, the North Mid was tipped into crisis, partly as a result of those pressures, and the A&E department was saved from partial closure only by a public outcry, the launch of a community campaign and the concerted lobbying of health Ministers by myself and other north London MPs. However, just yesterday we learned of a leaked NHS report which, according to the Royal College of Surgeons, threatens “devastating” cuts to local health services in north London. Those would impact on the quality of care provided to patients and, potentially, close further A&E and maternity units, affecting residents throughout Enfield, Camden, Islington, Haringey and Barnet. During the general election, I pledged to do all I can to protect our NHS from these cuts—I reaffirm that pledge today—and to work with residents and fellow MPs in Enfield and across North London to oppose these proposed cuts with all means at our disposal.

I had hoped to move on to a positive note on education, but, sadly, that cannot be the case. The third aspect of public services that came up so frequently on the doorstep during the election campaign was concern about the future of our children’s education. A good education is essential for unlocking young people’s potential and is a vital investment in our country’s future, at a time when we need to build the best skilled workforce possible. I am therefore dismayed, as are so many parents, headteachers, teachers and others in Enfield, that our primary and secondary schools are facing the largest real-terms cuts to their budgets in a generation.

Before the election, Enfield faced the prospect of a further £27 million cut to school funding by 2020 under a Conservative Government. The Conservative party’s panicked manifesto commitments on education, which have served only to make the scale of the impending cuts less transparent, will result in all schools in Enfield losing out in real terms. Schools are having to consider further reductions to their staffing levels, support services and curriculums, which could seriously compromise standards and affect every child’s ability to achieve their very best. However long this Parliament may last, I will be fighting for our children’s education and for a fair funding deal for Enfield’s schools.

To turn away from domestic issues for a moment, the top of the last page of the Gracious Speech states:

“My Government will work to find sustainable political solutions to conflicts across the Middle East.”

It is no secret in the House that I have a long-standing commitment to a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. I remind the Government, and particularly the Department for International Development, of the value of building peace at the grassroots by supporting co-existence projects that bring Israelis and Palestinians together—projects that build a constituency for peace and of which there are many good examples. There is undoubtedly an international consensus in support of a renewed focus on the importance of the civil society dimension to advancing a two-state solution.

I agree almost without exception with the remarks of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) on Brexit. Interestingly, the subject came up very little on the doorstep during the election campaign, but it is an underlying concern and anxiety for our constituents. As strapped for cash as public services are now, if the Government come back with no deal, a bad deal, or the worst possible deal, we could see our public services absolutely collapse through lack of funding. People in Enfield, and up and down the country, are aware that Brexit is a significant threat to their standard of living and to public services. We all have to try to work constructively, as far as we possibly can, to get the best deal, but the onus is on the Government to ensure that Opposition Members are able to work with them. If not, I fear for the outcome for my constituents. I seek reassurances from Ministers that my constituents will be given the resources they need so that they have the decent public services that mean so much to their way of life, safety, health, education and future.