Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Sam Tarry

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

My constituency is the most diverse in the entire country; 80% of our community has heritage from a different part of the world. Many of my constituents, including the multiple hotels that we have holding asylum seekers and refugees, welcome those people into our community. In Ilford we embrace humanity and the differences in our community. We recognise the struggles that we all face, and that blaming each other for the ills that our country faces is not the right way forward. Our local churches helped Afghan and Iraqi refugees find Korans so that they could practise their prayer. It is wrong for Conservative Members to say that this is not about our constituents.

Let me be absolutely clear—I am speaking on behalf of my constituents—that the Bill is the most inhumane and unjust piece of legislation. It will do nothing to solve any of the problems that the Home Secretary outlined today. If it passes, it will effectively criminalise asylum in this country and allow the Government to commit flagrant human rights abuses without any real consequence. The United Nations says that the Bill would breach the refugee convention and undermine a long-standing humanitarian tradition of which the British people and I are proud, instead punishing people fleeing persecution and conflict—conflict that is often the consequence of decisions taken in this place and by our country, historically or in more recent times.

In the short time that I have, I want to tackle the incendiary rhetoric from this Government. It is the playbook for the next election from a desperate Government. I have spent a large part of my life fighting the far right, not just in Barking and Dagenham but across the country. Some of the language that I have heard over the past months and days has reminded me of the language that people like Nick Griffin used to describe people. It is appalling, it is un-British, it is unacceptable, and it needs to be challenged.

In a recent report, Hope not Hate said that there is growing alignment between the language of the traditional far right and the language used by the mainstream right. Those on the Conservative Benches are supposed to be the mainstream right, but I look at that side of the House and it is just like a turbocharged UKIP. You should be ashamed of yourselves for this Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order.

[Sam Tarry]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I will finish simply by saying that if the desire is to prevent children from making these dangerous journeys and to protect them, the solution is clear: more safe routes for resettlement, and expanding and improving the existing family reunion schemes.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Member knows that you do not address directly other hon. Members.

Points of Order

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Sam Tarry

Thursday 21st July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Okay, we will leave it at that. Thank you.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last year, the Government launched their national bus strategy and promised that it would be one of the great acts of levelling up. Over this weekend, the biggest cuts to bus services in decades will take place as recovery funding winds down. In South Yorkshire, a third of services will begin to be cut from Sunday. In the north-east, a swathe of cuts are due, and in West Yorkshire 10% of the network is at risk. This follows the Government telling 60% of local authorities in April that they would see no change in transformation funding whatsoever. Given this huge crisis facing the bus sector, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would be grateful if you could advise whether a Government statement will be required, and if not, what avenues I can explore to elicit an explanation from the Government forthwith, with these latest cuts just days away?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Member for his point of order. He asked whether the Government were likely to make a statement. I am not sure whether this was raised in business questions just now, but I do not think the Leader of the House made reference to any statement and I do not believe that the Speaker’s Office has received notification that the Government intend to make a statement today. Government statements are not a matter for the Chair, but I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard the hon. Member’s points, which he has now put very firmly on record.

Appointment of Lord Lebedev

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Sam Tarry

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. First of all, the hon. Gentleman knows that he should not refer to another Member by name; he needs to refer to their constituency. Secondly, it is important that we stick to the motion in front of us. There is a bit of a tendency to wander off into different subjects that are perhaps leading us slightly astray from the matter in hand, which is the process we are discussing with regard to peerages and so on. It was said at the beginning that we should try to keep our language moderate and calm. I think we need to return to that and I am sure Mr Tarry will now do so.

[Sam Tarry]

Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was merely thinking about the wanderings of the defence procurement Minister, which ended up at Russian arms fairs.

In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s comments, the irony is that if people had listened to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who for years and years has been calling for sanctions and actions against Russia, then perhaps those guys on the Government Benches would not have been—[Interruption.] I was just trying to answer the question. If only they had listened to the advice of Labour Members who were saying how dangerous it was that relationships with the Russians and our Government were far too cosy.

The Prime Minister’s continual failure to act makes a mockery of our democracy, and highlights the cesspool of cronyism and corruption at the heart of this Government. I am saying that this is a moment to reflect. The unwillingness to share that information and to shine a light of truth—a light of truth—into what many people across the country are wondering, led me to reflect on something I once read. Professor Richard Sakwa said in his seminal book “Russian Politics and Society”:

“Under late communism, nepotism and patron client relations undermined the political criteria of elite recruitment in the nomenklatura system. The political elite began to degenerate into a social class, perhaps one of the most economically useless in history…the Party fostered a class that grew at its expense and began to transform itself into a traditional oligarchy.”

That is a description of the collapsing Soviet Union, yet it could be used to describe the regime of the Conservative party.

Universal Credit and Working Tax Credit

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Sam Tarry

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

I find it astonishing that the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) and other Government Members do not understand the fury that has been unleashed across this country by the measures that the Government are failing to take and the callous way that they have treated so many millions of people. It is clear to me and the constituents of Ilford South that the Government should be hanging their heads in shame. They should not have even been forced to come to this Chamber or to have this debate.

This is a Government who have spent billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on contracts with friends linked to donors, and hundreds of millions of pounds on a failed test and trace system and, in my constituency, unusable personal protective equipment. It is an absolute disgrace that the Government cannot stump up an extra 20 quid to put food on the table of some of the most vulnerable people in this country.

We are in the midst of the worst recession ever. Millions of families, many in work but reliant on Government support to supplement poverty wages, are on the brink. This is not a time to let them sink below the poverty line; it is time for the Government to stick their hand in their pocket and do what is right.

Instead, the Government’s cruel and callous decision will have an impact on more than 6 million families across the country, and risk plunging more than 300,000 children into poverty. In my constituency of Ilford South, more than 19,000 people rely on universal credit to make ends meet. That is more than double the national average.

Worse, that decision comes just days after we learn that the Government are only setting aside £5—five measly pounds—to feed our children. Let us be under no illusion: this is an attack on Britain’s workers by a Government who represent the 1% of this country, intent on cutting tax rates for their mates and handouts for the poorest.

We are struggling through a devastating pandemic and—I think that people on both sides of this House agree—perhaps the biggest challenge for our country since the second world war. Due to the unprecedented nature of this crisis, we have all had to adapt rapidly, so it is little surprise that living costs have risen in recent months. Indeed, research by Save the Children and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that 86% of families with children on universal credit and tax credits have been faced with additional costs since the crisis began.

The increase in Government support previously was rightly welcomed. It eased the burden on millions of families up and down the country. However, it will be many months, unfortunately, before we are out the other side of this awful pandemic, and millions more will lose their jobs and be at risk of unemployment when the furlough scheme comes to its end. It is completely the wrong time to end that vital piece of support.

The Government have tried to spin their one-off payment of £500 as a positive, something that so many people have seen through. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) pointed out, in real terms that means the lowest level of unemployment support for 30 years, at a time when redundancies are going through the roof.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am afraid we now have the last speaker, who is Jacob Young.

Free School Meals: Summer Holidays

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Sam Tarry

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

I welcome the Government’s U-turn on this important issue, and it is incredibly disappointing that it has taken a high-profile intervention—a “Match of the Day”-worthy goal—from Marcus Rashford to get us to this point. I think of my constituents in Ilford South, where we have over 4,000 children who claim free school meal vouchers, and, potentially, with 17,500 people on furlough, that figure could rise to a far worse and frightening level.

Unsurprisingly, I have been inundated with emails from concerned constituents in precarious positions. Andrea, with three children, currently has no income whatever due to the covid crisis, her mental health damaged. I will quickly mention one young man—a 10-year-old, Muhammad Ameen, who took the time to write to me from my old primary school, Highlands, in Ilford South. He said that some children whose

“parents are poor, have to suffer hunger in this crisis and are not getting the free school meals they need. I must stress this is for the families who desperately need it.”

I know that we are short on time, so I will finish by saying that it does not often happen that someone who is a West Ham supporter will congratulate and thank Marcus Rashford, a Manchester United player, but by highlighting this, he has held a mirror up to the Government. Thankfully, they have responded and are going to help all those people in my constituency to get through this summer—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order.