Easter Recess: Government Update

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I apologise again. I thank the public very much for what they did: by their collective action, they have helped us to keep covid at bay.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

But giving an apology and then carrying on is not being held to account. Does the Prime Minister recognise that there is a very serious problem for the long term in leaving a lawbreaker in charge of the lawmakers?

[The Prime Minister]

I have said what I have said. I apologise and want to say again to the House that when I spoke before in this Chamber about events in Downing Street, I spoke in good faith.

Living with Covid-19

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 21st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my right hon. Friend speaks for millions of people around the country. I can tell her that many, many restrictions have already been lifted, and they will continue to be lifted.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Three years ago, the Government consulted on much-needed reforms to statutory sick pay, rightly recognising that the current system is inflexible and does not reflect modern working life. Those reforms were postponed when the pandemic hit, and day one access to statutory sick pay was introduced instead. I think the Prime Minister has just announced that day one access to statutory sick pay will be withdrawn in a month’s time. Will he now bring forward the much-needed and long-delayed reforms to statutory sick pay?

[The Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, statutory sick pay is only a part of what many employees already receive as part of their sick pay.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

In an effort to help the hon. Gentleman, I point out that we have extended 32 Nightingale Crown courtrooms until April and we have opened two new super-courtrooms in Manchester and Loughborough. In the Crown court, the outstanding case load reduced from around 61,000 cases last June to around 58,700 cases at the end of November. As I say, we do not in any way say that this is job done. We will continue to invest in this, but the figures are beginning to go in the right direction after the pandemic.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

10. What steps he is taking to reduce delays in the family courts.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)]

We are determined to reduce delays and bring down waiting times in the courts to reduce the impact the pandemic has had on children and their families. We invested £0.25 billion to support recovery in our courts in the last financial year, and that included £76 million to increase capacity to hear cases in the family and civil courts, as well as in tribunals. Last year’s spending review provided £324 million over the next three years to further improve waiting times in the civil and family courts and tribunals.

[Stephen Timms]

In east London the position is getting worse. The delays in the east London family court are the worst in London. Several months ago we were told that parts of east London would be transferred to other courts to ease the problems, but nothing seems to have happened so far and families are now having to wait a minimum of seven months for a hearing. When will we finally see some progress on this? Do we not need additional court capacity?

[James Cartlidge]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says. I can confirm that the Government and senior judiciary are working closely together to increase the sitting capacity across the east London cluster. In recognition of the pressure on family work across the east London estate, a Nightingale court was created at Petty France, with four additional courts, and additional courts are being utilised at Stratford magistrates and the Royal Court of Justice. But I recognise that this is an important issue for his constituents and I would be more than happy to meet him to talk about what more we can do.

Sue Gray Report

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend will see reference to that very problem in Sue Gray’s report and we will take steps to clarify things and make sure that there is greater transparency in the lines of command.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister recognise that repeatedly making statements, including from the Dispatch Box, which turn out subsequently to be untrue, is a serious problem, or does he not recognise that?

[The Prime Minister]

I really think the right hon. Gentleman is prejudging things, and he should wait for the conclusion of the inquiries.

Tributes to Sir David Amess

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

We have rightly been reminded of David’s enthusiastic advocacy for the constituencies that he represented, but he was also an enthusiast for the London Borough of Newham, where he was born and grew up; where he attended the excellent St Bonaventure’s Catholic school, which he stayed in touch with for the rest of his life; where he supported West Ham United football club; and where his mother lived until her death five years ago, as we have been reminded, at the age of 104. I heard over the weekend from somebody who was in the sixth form at St Bonaventure’s with David but who, unlike David, supported the Labour party. He told me that the politics teacher, Mr Cunningham, predicted that David was going to be a Conservative MP. He also told me that in a period when he was not able to attend quite a lot of the politics lessons, David very carefully wrote out all of his notes so that his friend could copy those notes afterwards. Kindness was evident at that early stage as well.

David stood for election to the council in Newham in 1974 and 1978 and for Parliament in Newham North West in 1979, before finding more promising opportunities further east, but notwithstanding party differences, his supportive interest in Newham remained. As council leader from 1990, I pressed the Conservative Government to bring the channel tunnel rail link through a station in Stratford. David was our unwavering ally on the Government side. Singlehandedly, he made the campaign cross-party, and that was crucial to its success, leading to London 2012 and the regeneration that is under way at the moment.

Of course, David was not initially seen as a friend by my Newham Council colleagues, who have not seen a Conservative elected for 30 years. We all remembered David dashing our 1992 general election hopes by holding Basildon, but we invited him to our town hall celebration when the Stratford campaign succeeded. I was not quite sure how that was going to go, but David won over everybody with a beautifully judged speech. Newham has lost a great friend.

David was accessible to his constituents. Tragically, he has now given his life. We will rightly reflect on what more we can do to stop that happening again—I wonder if we might ask the police to review our appointment lists ahead of each surgery, for example—but we must not give up on the accessibility of Members of Parliament. If we do, the sponsors of those who attacked David and who attacked me will have succeeded. That must not happen.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Many of the hospitals that I have been round recently are doing incredible work at getting back to pre-covid levels of service. I understand that NHS partners are working hard to explore options for restoring maternity services at County Hospital.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Together, the Chairs of the Committees dealing with social security in the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly and I have made a call that the £20 a week cut in universal credit due in October should not go ahead. A new Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report shows that if it does go ahead, out-of-work families with children will have an income way below what the general public regard as the minimum necessary for an acceptable standard of living. Instead of cutting down, will the Prime Minister not follow his own policy, level up and leave the £20 a week in place?

[The Prime Minister]

What we want to do is level up across the whole of the UK by increasing access to high-wage, high-skilled jobs and by getting people off benefits and into work. That really is the big difference between the right hon. Member’s party and the party that I lead. We want to help people into work, but I am afraid that, as so often, Labour wants to keep them on welfare. I do not think that is the right way forward. We want to see higher wages, which is why we have increased the living wage by record amounts, and we are working to ensure that this is a jobs-led recovery. All the signs at the moment are that that is succeeding, but of course it depends on people getting those jabs when they are asked to.

International Aid: Treasury Update

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Programme motion
Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab) [V]]

We had a 20-year cross-party consensus that we should meet the UN’s target of 0.7% of GNI on aid. I very much regret that that consensus has been lost. Of course, when GDP goes down, our aid budget will go down, but the pandemic is no justification for reducing the proportion of national income committed to international aid.

In a fine speech, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) referred to the strength of Christian Aid in Chesham and Amersham. As a Treasury Minister in the late 1990s, I saw the churches play the key role in securing that cross-party consensus. They were the instigators of Jubilee 2000 ahead of the millennium and the key supporters of Make Poverty History afterwards. Those campaigns led to the historic 2005 Gleneagles deal in which $40 billion of debts owed by 18 highly indebted poor countries were written off. The idea of cancelling unpayable debts inspired people and drew them together. Rooted in teaching in the Bible, it had a dramatic impact on Government policy and on the lives of millions.

Last month, I joined MPs on a virtual trip to Togo organised by the Christian charity Compassion UK. We “visited” its UK aid-funded child survival project. The situation in Togo is desperate. Under-five mortality is among the worst in the world, one in 25 babies does not reach the age of one, and women have a one-in-58 chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. Compassion UK’s work, supported by UK aid, is starting to change things: in the first year, the project reached more than 4,000 people in extreme poverty and the number of full-term healthy babies delivered was 24% above target. UK development aid helps to save lives among the world’s poorest people.

We met somebody called Ama, who registered in the programme when she was seven months pregnant. She was struggling to feed her children. When she reached full term, her husband left suddenly. She also had malaria. Her baby and her own life were at risk. The child survival project provided food and hygiene support. Her expenses were paid, she gave birth to a son and she has since been able to set up a business of her own.

Even a small amount of aid saves lives. The cuts to UK aid put thousands of projects like those run by Compassion UK in Togo at risk. I really hope that Parliament will reject the motion.

G7 and NATO Summits

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

There was widespread disappointment that the G7 did not commit to additional climate finance beyond what has already been agreed. What steps will the Prime Minister take between now and COP26 to ensure that that summit does deal effectively with the challenge of loss and damage in the countries most at risk?

[The Prime Minister]

We will continue with our efforts —we are 80% of the way there—and we will blow away the clouds of despondency that seem to hang over some Members here today. I think it was a highly successful summit, and we are going to get there.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) said that this was a good Bill—no, it is not. It is a bad Bill, and it is an unnecessary Bill. All of this could have been done within the Armed Forces Bill that is going through Parliament, but the Government chose, for their own reasons, to put forward this Bill. It does not get to the central point of the issue, which is around investigations. They are completely absent from this Bill and currently absent from the Armed Forces Bill. They were resisted by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) in this Bill and in the Armed Forces Bill. It galls me that yesterday he was standing outside a court in Northern Ireland, trumpeting the fact that he was on the side of trying to stop people being investigated, when he had been in a position to do something about it. I think of him as being a bit like an actor in a play who has been sat in the audience watching, rather than taking part.

Without investigation, the Bill is flawed. I have written to the Minister: he needs to ensure that investigations are put in the Armed Forces Bill, because without that, despite the protections that have been claimed today, servicemen and women will be watching our proceedings, thinking that they have more protection than they have. They will still be investigated if allegations are made. There is an opportunity now, with the Armed Forces Bill, to remedy that.

Part 2 of this Bill should simply have been scrapped. I am sorry, but the idea that we should all have Limitation Act rights and yet members of our armed forces should not—that we should take those away from them—is just not good enough. A Bill that is supposed to give things to our armed forces has been taking things away from them. Part 2 will be challenged in court; only the lawyers will benefit from it.

I welcome the change on war crimes because, like many across the House, I was concerned about our international reputation. I fully support Lord Dannatt’s amendment; I believe we should support anything that helps servicemen and women who are going through such a process.

The Bill claimed to do a lot but does very little. It is disappointing. It could have been vastly improved, or just ignored altogether and incorporated into the Armed Forces Bill. There is an opportunity to put right what is not in this Bill when the Armed Forces Bill passes through the House. I know that the Minister is open to discussions about that, but I urge him to ensure that that happens, because without that, people will still be investigated; they will still go through the agony that this Bill was intended to stop. We all sympathised with that intention. It clearly will not be achieved in the Bill’s present form.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I also warmly welcome the further concession that the Minister has announced. The Bill will now exclude all the offences for which service personnel could be summoned before the International Criminal Court. That has now fixed the worst of the problems that many have been anxious about during debates on the Bill.

It would be helpful to understand why it has proved so hard for the Government to realise how awful what they were proposing was. No Minister wants to give armed forces carte blanche to commit torture, genocide and war crimes, and yet it has required the most extraordinary struggle to stop the Government doing exactly that. The noble Lord Robertson—I welcome the Minister’s tribute to him—introducing his amendment in the other place, said:

“Maybe after a lifetime in politics I was affected by some uncharacteristic naivety in thinking that the Government, faced by almost universal and expert opposition on this aspect of the Bill, would by now have changed their mind.” [Official Report, House of Lords, 13 April 2021; Vol. 811, c. 1190.]

Yet they ploughed on until yesterday. Perhaps it was indeed the change of Minister that averted disaster, and with others I congratulate him on his achievement in a short time, but if he can, in winding up, shed some further light on what on earth has been going on, the House would be grateful.

I strongly support what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) said on duty of care and investigations. I hope that we will come back to them soon if the duty of care amendment is lost this afternoon. I warmly welcome the progress on the Bill in the past few days and would be grateful for any light the Minister can shed on what has been going on.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Jim Shannon —Please resume your seat no later than 4.27 pm.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Leo Docherty]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention and I agree entirely with him. Those who have served are the finest among us, and this Government are resolutely committed to delivering through legislation the protections that our veterans of the troubles of Northern Ireland deserve.

I turn to the Government amendments in lieu of Lords amendment 1. The Lords amendment adds a new subsection to clause 6 that has the effect of excluding genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture offences from the measures in part 1 of the Bill. In proposing the Government amendment to include genocide, crimes against humanity and torture in schedule 1, I repeat what has been said many times during the passage of the Bill: the decision to exclude only sexual offences from the measures in part 1 did not mean that the Government would not continue to take the international obligations in respect of other offences extremely seriously. I should like to reassure hon. Members once more on that point. The United Kingdom does not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture for any purpose, and we remain committed to maintaining our leading role in the promotion and protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. However, the Government have listened to the very real concerns expressed by many in both Houses. I would like to express my thanks to Lord Robertson of Port Ellen for his constructive and collegiate approach on this issue.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Minister on his appointment. I very much welcome the concession he has just announced, but why are the Government retaining the presumption against prosecution in the case of war crimes, because that leaves open the risk of UK troops in future being summoned to the International Criminal Court? Surely nobody wants that.

[Leo Docherty]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I think he will derive reassurance from the remarks that I am shortly about to make, so I ask him to bear with me.

These concerns are that, by not excluding other serious offences, the Bill risks damaging not only the UK’s reputation for upholding international humanitarian and human rights law, including the UN convention against torture, but the reputation of our armed forces. Although we can be absolutely reassured that our armed forces would never resort to acts of genocide or crimes against humanity, and that it would be extremely unlikely for individual members of the services to be charged with such offences, not explicitly excluding these offences from the Bill is clearly an omission that must be rectified, and I am therefore happy to propose that now.

In addition, in order to prevent any further perceived damage to the UK’s reputation in respect of our ongoing commitment to uphold the rule of law and our international obligations, particularly the UN convention against torture, the amendment would add torture offences to the list of excluded offences in schedule 1. The intent of the Bill as drafted is to ensure that the part 1 measures will apply to as wide a range of offences as possible in order to provide reassurance to our service personnel that the operational context will be taken into account in relation to allegations of criminal offences on historical overseas operations. Excluding further offences beyond those of genocide, crimes against humanity, torture and sexual offences would, however, undermine that reassurance by excluding a considerable list of offences from the application of the measures in part 1. We believe that we can take this approach safe in the knowledge that the prosecutor retains their discretion to make the appropriate decision about whether to prosecute a service person on a case-by-case basis, including in respect of other serious offences. The presumption, therefore, against prosecution is a high threshold; it is not a bar.

In proposing this amendment, which will see the exclusion of a greater number of offences from the measures in part 1, the Government believe that it is appropriate to also propose the removal of the delegated power in clause 6, which allows the Secretary of State to amend schedule 1.

[Leo Docherty]

I take my right hon. Friend’s point, but the point to bear in mind is that nothing in the Bill will hinder a prosecution of that sort. What we must bear in mind is that the prosecutor retains the absolute discretion to prosecute if there is a serious allegation. The prosecutor will take into account the severity of the crime, but removing any more categories from the Bill would unnecessarily weaken the reassurance to service personnel and veterans. We must remember that it is a high threshold and not a bar. I hope that he is reassured by my words.

[Stephen Timms]

By accepting that change is necessary in the case of torture, the Minister is surely accepting that there is a problem here and that war crimes need to be excluded in the same way, otherwise, we run exactly the risks that nobody wants to see.

[Leo Docherty]

I accept the sincerity with which the right hon. Gentleman makes his point. The bottom line is that, because the prosecutor will retain the agency to pursue a prosecution in the event of a grave allegation, that will provide for the required investigation. It will not make more likely the ICC pursuing a prosecution of a member of our armed forces. I hope that he takes reassurance from the fact that this is a high threshold, and not a bar, to prosecutions. If there is a case to answer, the prosecutor will make sure that it is answered.

I shall conclude my remarks in relation to Lords amendment 1 by saying that these proposed amendments go a very long way to addressing the concerns of the House of Lords in respect of relevant offences. I therefore urge that these amendments be accepted in lieu of their Lordships’ amendment 1.

I will move now to Lords amendment 2, which seeks to introduce artificial timelines for the progress of investigations, including what appears to be an arbitrary cut-off point at six months for referral to the Service Prosecuting Authority, and a power for the Judge Advocate General to make directions in respect of investigations. The Government do not support introducing any such legislative limitations on the investigative process, not least as they would bring the real risk that to do so could lead to a contravention of our domestic and international legal obligations. They would also bring inconsistency of approach as these limitations would not apply to service police investigations in the UK, or to those conducted by civilian police forces.

I am also strongly of the view that it would be premature to propose any changes to the investigative process while Sir Richard Henriques’s review of investigative processes in relation to overseas operations is still in progress. I will briefly set out the key reasons why the Government are resisting the Lords amendment.

The timescales in the amendment are operationally unrealistic. They do not take account of the nature of investigations on overseas operations and could put us in breach of our international obligations to investigate serious crimes effectively. Where the service police have reason to believe that an offence may have been committed, they have a legal duty to investigate it. Artificial timelines and restrictions placed on them in respect of the conduct of investigations would clearly prevent them from carrying out effective investigations and impinge on their statutory independence.