Sport in the UK

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about free-to-air sport—indeed, I made that point to rugby union representatives today—but if we are prepared to pay for Netflix, we should also be prepared to pay for great sport. We should have the broadest opportunity for people to be seen participating and inspiring at the highest level.

On participation, I was talking about everyone, and I am pleased that the Chamber feels the same. We must ensure that everyone can benefit from sport. I also want to ensure that we reach harder-to-reach groups and get them active and staying active.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sure the Minister knows that basketball is the second most played team sport in the UK and reaches hard-to-reach groups in urban communities. I pay tribute to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and her predecessor, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), for giving £500,000 to GB Basketball. It meant, in particular, that the women could stay on court and qualify for EuroBasket top of their league. It is important to look at UK sport funding to ensure that basketball can make its Olympic dream come true.

[Mims Davies]

Basketball is a sport that has been helped by the aspiration fund, which makes it possible to turn the dial, become medal winners and so continue to inspire. I am delighted about the fund, and I, too, pay tribute to my predecessor.

I was talking about harder-to-reach groups, and some of those have just been described. We want more women; more black, Asian and minority ethnic women and men; and more disabled people taking part in sport, as well as those who might have a hard time finding the cash for exercise and wellbeing. We want everyone to have the opportunity to take part, including those who struggle to find a family activity that they enjoy—we have heard about that this evening as well. These are often the people facing the biggest hurdles to being active, and they are the people we need to support most. I want to tackle those hurdles and make sport fun.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Allin-Khan]

The hon. Lady makes a most excellent point. If you can see it, you can be it. I firmly believe that, and in my position as shadow Minister for Sport I have always pushed for equality in the boardroom, not only based on gender but across socioeconomic divides and for the black, Asian and minority ethnic community.

While I celebrate our wonderful Olympic success in London and Rio, I question whether we should be pumping millions into niche sports to gain a couple of gold medals when sports such as basketball, which is ever so popular in the UK, are going through a funding crisis. Should our success be measured by the number of gold medals we win?

[Alex Sobel]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning basketball. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on basketball. The UK and Team GB are on track for Olympic qualification, which will happen at the world cup this summer, but we will need the funding from the National Basketball Association and the Women’s National Basketball Association to get our players into that qualification tournament and into the Olympics.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I know that my hon. Friend has been tireless in his pursuit of ensuring that basketball gets the funding it deserves. I also know that, like me, he was staggered to discover that shooting is getting £6.9 million while basketball, a popular grassroots sport that can be played by all, has had its funding cut.

Should our success be measured by the number of gold medals we can win, or by the millions of people we can motivate to get fit and active and take the opportunity to play the sport they love? Just £23 million a year is being put into grassroots sports by the Government, and half of that was put in under Labour. Local government cuts have resulted in more than 1,000 grass pitches, swimming pools and sports halls being closed over the past two years. The discussion surrounding the sale of Wembley stadium sparked an interesting debate about the funding of grassroots sport in the UK. We believe that the Football Association answered all our questions and had the best intentions, but did we really need to consider selling our national stadium to build grassroots facilities fit for the 21st century?

Equitable Life

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

I start by paying tribute to my all-party parliamentary group co-chair, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who has given an excellent introduction and who has worked very hard indeed in the nine years that he has been in the House to try to bring about the justice that we all want for the victims of the Equitable Life scandal. I am sad that, after so many years of debating the issue, we are back here again today talking about the continuing losses suffered by hundreds of thousands of Equitable Life policyholders. They invested in the world’s oldest life assurance company in the belief that they would be able to live a comfortable old age, but instead, after a lifetime of saving, they find themselves sometimes destitute and often much poorer through no fault of their own.

How have we arrived here, nearly 20 years after Equitable Life closed its doors to new investors and nine years after the Government promised to ensure that the losses incurred by Equitable Life policyholders would be fully compensated? I hope that hon. Members will permit me briefly to go back over some of the history of this sorry tale in order to give the House and the public some answers to these questions. My first involvement in the Equitable Life saga was to speak in a Westminster Hall debate that I led on 24 June 2009. In that debate, I spoke about the serious issues facing so many of our constituents since the crash of Equitable Life following its inability to meet obligations and promises made to investors over decades.

In July 2008, the parliamentary ombudsman published her first report on Equitable Life, entitled “Equitable Life: a decade of regulatory failure”. On 11 December that year, the Public Administration Committee produced a report entitled “Justice delayed”, in which it stated:

“Over the last eight years many of those members and their families have suffered great anxiety as policy values were cut and pension payments reduced…Many are no longer alive, and will be unable to benefit personally from any compensation.”

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I should like to thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for making the case for Equitable Life members. I should also like to pay tribute to my constituents, Ray and Marjorie Dunn, who have been brilliant campaigners for the Equitable Members Action Group. They have made these exact points: this has been going on for a very long time, and many pensioners are now well into their retirement and living in pensioner poverty because the Government have only partially compensated them. Is it not time for the Government to make up for their past mistakes?

[Fabian Hamilton]

Yes, indeed. I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for making that point. I know Ray and Marjorie Dunn very well—they correspond with me regularly—and I know that my hon. Friend has been a champion of their case and of many other cases in his constituency. I will go on to say a bit more about how I think they should be compensated.

Fashion Industry

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is a passionate and committed member of the Committee. We were thrilled to be hosted by the V&A. Its amazing “Fashioned from Nature” exhibition contains earrings made out of little birds 150 years ago, showing how we have consistently stolen from nature to decorate ourselves. There is nothing new under the sun.

The hon. Gentleman is right about our very large Committee hearing. We are breaking all sorts of new bounds with this Committee. When we launch the report we are going to have some cartoons to accompany it. I think that will be a first for Parliament, too. As the right hon. Member for Wantage says, the real value of a garment comes not in its price but in the number of times it is worn. That is where we get real value. A £50 garment worn 100 times is better than a £5 dress that is worn just once.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, our Committee Chair, for her foresight in bringing this inquiry forward at this time. It is absolutely the right time. Does she agree that it is shameful that one of the top 10 fashion retailers in this country, Kurt Geiger, refused point blank to provide evidence to our Committee? It must come forward with evidence before we get to the final report.

Grassroots Football Funding: Wembley Stadium

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders]

As a Manchester United fan, I would say that, if we can encourage more George Bests, I will certainly be very pleased to see that. I will talk a little more about how we can encourage more youngsters to participate a little later.

Football in this country is in a very strong position. The premier league is the envy of the world. Most of the world’s top players come here, and England’s youth teams have enjoyed unprecedented levels of success in recent years. Whether those kids who have enjoyed great success with the national team recently get to play at the highest level remains to be seen. We should be concerned about the declining number of home-grown players, such as George Best, coming through the leagues, although I am sure someone with that talent would still make it today.

About 35% of players who started games in the premier league last season were English, on average. That represented a huge reduction on the 69% of English players who started games in the inaugural season of the premier league in 1992-93. There are huge questions about how professional clubs operate and about how our younger players can hope to get a chance against the huge influx of imported superstars, and I also sometimes wonder about the effect of giving a 17-year-old who has never played for the first team 10 grand a week—what does that do to their chances?—but that is probably outside the scope of today’s debate.

What we can do today is discuss how to improve the game below elite level. One in six grassroots matches were cancelled last year, and I recall my own kid’s games getting repeatedly cancelled over the winter period, although I do not think it was a particularly extraordinarily bad winter. Cancellations have a detrimental effect on both an individual’s and a team’s development, and we need to encourage that development. There are of course plenty of distractions and reasons why kids may find something else to do rather than play football, but we should do what we can to support it by encouraging a little bit more of the wealth that flows through the game to trickle down to the grassroots. We cannot expect the superstars of tomorrow to emerge if we are not prepared to invest in them.

One thing we can and, in my view, must do is improve the standard of facilities for younger players of all abilities, and for everyone involved in grassroots football. We should not tolerate second-rate facilities in our national sport. We know the pressure local authorities are under to balance the books and how there is little left for discretionary spending on improving sporting facilities. Pitches are often in poor condition, with poor drainage and areas of the pitch that are more mud than grass. Many pitches have little or no changing facilities connected with them.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a wonderful case for grassroots football. A club in my constituency, Otley Town, wrote to me to outline its concerns about facilities. It said:

“The key issue that we have is the quality of training facilities in winter. Most junior and senior clubs need access to all weather pitches so they have good environments to train in.”

They went on to talk about the need for funding for girls football, veterans football and disability football, to ensure that everyone can enjoy the game. Should we not ensure that the money trickles down from the billionaire owners to the grassroots?

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A whole range of groups are participating in football that possibly traditionally did not, and we need to encourage them as well.

I am not saying that there is no investment. Since 2000, the Football Foundation, funded by the FA, the Premier League and Sport England, has invested more than £600 million in projects. My constituency has recently benefited from such investment, with fantastic facilities at the Vauxhall Sports and Social Club, where two new fourth generation pitches, which I occasionally grace, have been opened alongside a fantastic new clubhouse. About half the money for that came from the Premier League and the FA facilities fund, but the other half had to be raised locally, and I pay tribute to the incredible work done by Dave Edmunds and Tony Woodley, in particular, who really fought to get those facilities off the ground.

Finance (No. 3) Bill (Seventh sitting)

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 6th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Clive Lewis]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the clause and our amendments. As the Minister might outline shortly, the clause provides for changes to certain levels of vehicle excise duty, which I will refer to as VED, by amending the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994, which will now be known as VERA—there are lots of acronyms in this.

Changes to the rates are due to take effect in relation to vehicle licences taken out on or after 1 April 2019. VED is chargeable on vehicles, dependent on various factors, such as vehicle type, engine size, date of first registration, carbon emissions data—indirectly—and other emissions’ impacts, such as air quality and public health. I will not go through all the changes to the various excise duty rates as they apply to the different types of vehicle covered by the clause. At this stage, I will simply note that they are relatively small.

The amendment would require the Chancellor to review the revenue impact of the clause and to publish the findings. That would allow the House, not to mention the drivers of those classes of vehicle and the public at large, to understand the impact on the public purse. Without such an assessment, neither the Government nor indeed Committee members would know how much additional money was available to redirect into measures to help drivers—in particular those on low incomes—to take up cleaner vehicles to the benefit of the natural environment and public health. Will the Minister tell us whether the Government have undertaken any such assessment? If so, will he commit to publish it? If they have not, will he undertake to do so?

The amendment would require the Chancellor to review the impact of the clause on carbon dioxide emissions and the UK’s climate change targets, and to publish that analysis. As the Minister might confirm, road transport accounts for 22% of total UK carbon dioxide emissions—a major contributor to climate change. The European Union has agreements with motor manufacturers that aim to reduce average CO₂ emissions from new cars. Colour-coded labels, similar to those used on washing machines and fridges, are now displayed in car showrooms, showing how much CO₂ new models emit per kilometre. However, as traffic levels are predicted to increase, road transport will continue to be a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

Given that light vehicles and other vehicles covered by the clause contribute substantially to carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, will the Minister explain why no such climate impact assessment has been carried out? How will the Government take a lead internationally in the fight to keep average atmospheric temperatures below 1.5° C in the absence of full monitoring and measurement of all greenhouse gas emissions from all sources? He will surely also need to apply “polluter pays” disincentives in the form of increased taxes, for example, including relevant changes to VED.

Finally, will the Minister give a commitment that any such planned or future increase in VED will be recycled into helping drivers to adopt low-emission fuel alternatives, such as electric vehicles or, in future, hydrogen-powered vehicles—that is particularly important to help drivers who must use their vehicles for work purposes as well as for leisure activities—or, where convenient, into helping public transport alternatives, which are rarely available in some parts of the country and many rural areas?

Amendment 110 would require the Chancellor to review the impact of the clause on road congestion and traffic levels and to publish the results. Vehicle use affects our whole quality of local life: traffic can be dangerous and intimidating, dividing communities and making street life unpleasant, while air pollution and traffic noise can make urban living uncomfortable. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies points out, taxing only fuel consumption and car ownership, no matter how the taxes are differentiated by emissions and engine size, cannot result in anything approaching an optimal tax, because neither is a good proxy for the impact of car use on congestion.

Many journeys occur on relatively empty roads. Those journeys are overtaxed because the congestion cost imposed on other road users is minimal. Rural road users are overtaxed relative to those who regularly drive in towns during busy periods. The result is too much driving in towns relative to the amount of driving in less congested areas, and the build-up of noxious fumes and climate-changing pollution. Those adverse impacts are in addition to the disruption for all drivers, who are less able to move freely and go about their business or other driving activities efficiently and without wasting so much time stuck in their vehicles. Not only is that personally frustrating and a contributor to so-called road rage, but the impact on economic and social productivity should be minimised. Will the Minister therefore explain why there has been no assessment of the impact of the clause on road congestion and traffic levels, or publish any that has been carried out?

Amendment 111 is similar, requiring the Government to assess the impact of the clause on air quality standards. As the Minister must be aware, air pollutants in transport include nitrogen oxide, particles, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, all of which have a damaging impact locally on the health of people, animals and vegetation. Air quality in the UK might be slowly improving, but many areas still fail to meet the health-based national air quality objectives and European limit values, particularly for particles and nitrogen dioxide.

In town centres and along busy roads, vehicles are responsible for most local pollution. Vehicles of all types tend to emit more pollution during the first few miles of a journey, when their engines are warming up. Although new technology and cleaner fuel formulations will continue to cut emissions of pollutants, these benefits are being eroded by the increasing number of vehicles on the road, including motorcycles, and the number of miles driven. Can the Minister please explain why he does not believe that any such assessment, as set out in our amendment, is necessary to understand the impact of the clause on such a critical aspect of road use?

Amendments 108 and 111 also allow us to address a particular aspect of the total revenue impact and the impact of the measure on air quality: the specific amount raised from VED in London and the extra amount that would be raised as a consequence of the clause, and the consequent impact on air quality.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Are our amendments not particularly important in the light of fact that the Government have been taken to court three times by ClientEarth for failing European air quality standards and have lost three times?

Finance (No. 3) Bill (Fifth sitting)

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Having just passed clause 32, which ended first-year allowances on the basis they were little known about and ineffective, I cannot help but comment how clause 33 extends the first-year allowance for another technology for four years on the basis it will provide the incentives and drive Government policy in that direction. Forgive me for pointing out that there are mixed messages from Ministers on these clauses.

It is disheartening that this is one of the relatively few mentions of environmental issues in the Finance Bill. We were all at Mansion House in June when the Chancellor gave a speech about how we would lead the way on green finance, yet there have been no legislative measures to follow up on that promise. We still lag behind our European counterparts on things such as mandatory climate disclosure laws or sovereign green bonds, but we should welcome any measures we like the look of when we see them.

Transport is a major source of emissions and we agree that we rapidly need to shift away from fossil fuels towards electricity and renewable sources and, to a certain extent, hydrogen for heavier vehicles. Thankfully, electric vehicles are coming through the system quickly and are expected to move rapidly through their cost curves, getting cheaper and cheaper. I have been hugely impressed by the electric vehicles I have experienced. Some estimates have cost parity for purchasing an electric vehicle as soon as 2022, after which buying an electric vehicle will become cheaper than buying a fossil fuel powered car.

The transition to a decarbonised, clean and smart economy will offer the UK many advantages, particularly considering how tech-savvy and early adopting much of the UK population is. The Nissan LEAF is the most-sold electric vehicle in the world. I say with some local pride, as someone born in Sunderland, that Sunderland has been the sole producer in Europe of the Nissan LEAF, creating over 50,000 vehicles. Of course, electric vehicle and hybrid production in the UK has provided a £3 billion trade surplus.

With a growing list of countries setting a date to ban combustion vehicles and modelling showing strong uptake curves, the global move to electric vehicles will be rapid. The first mover advantage to capture supply chains and jobs in this coming market will be considerable.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Norway is planning to ban combustion vehicles by 2025—the incentives and the infrastructure in Norway are sufficient for that. We are not planning that until 2040. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a policy failure not just on this measure but more generally in terms of building our electric vehicle infrastructure?

Finance (No. 3) Bill (Third sitting)

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mel Stride]

The provisions of the clause change the regime such that they will be required to account for the capital gains within 30 days. In a sense, this has been done by changing the rules rather than providing an incentive, I am afraid. I thank my hon. Friend for his interesting interventions.

Amendment 31 proposes that the changes come into effect only once we can guarantee awareness of them. HMRC has engaged with stakeholders on the details of the change and the draft legislation. The Members who tabled the amendment will be pleased to know that the Government published a summary of responses to their consultation on 6 July.

Amendments 32 and 33 request a review of the revenue impact of the changes, including the impact on the tax gap. The latest estimates for the revenue impact of the measure, both with the original 2019 start date and the delay to April 2020, were published at the Budget 2018.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The transition from diesel and petrol to electric cars is vital for us to meet our carbon budgets. Has the Treasury assessed the impact of the measure on the electric vehicle market, as well as the wider automotive sector?

[Mel Stride]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that in these tax matters—as with all tax matters—given our firm commitment to honour our climate change commitments, we are in regular contact with car manufacturers and those producing electric vehicles, through my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary.

As with all policy changes, the fiscal impact of the measure will be monitored by HMRC, and the Office for Budget Responsibility may request for it to be reviewed as the new out-turned data becomes available. The fiscal impact on taxpayer compliance has been considered and is included in the overall costing of the measure. HMRC publishes annual updates to its tax gap analysis, which will reflect the effect of capital gains tax policy changes. I therefore urge the Committee to resist the amendments and I commend the clause and schedule to the Committee.

Finance (No. 3) Bill (Second sitting)

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th November 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Dowd]

That organisation is always helpful, and it points us in the direction that the Government should go in. That goes to the point I am making.

Many proposals have come back to bite us, so we need a proper review to see how they are bedding in. For example, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the automotive industry employs 168,000 people directly in manufacturing, and more than 856,000 are employed across the wider industry. It accounts for 12% of total UK exports of goods, and invests £3.65 billion each year in automotive research and development. More than 30 manufacturers build in excess of 70 models of vehicle in the UK, supported by 2,500 component providers and some of the world’s most skilled engineers. The automotive industry represents 1% of all employment in the UK and 7% of all manufacturing. It is also one of the few industries in the United Kingdom that has had a huge productivity increase since the financial crisis. The manufacturing of motor vehicles went from 5.4% of UK manufacturing in 2007 to 8.1% in 2017. Those figures do not, however, reflect the role that the automotive industry play in communities across the nations and regions of the UK, and the impact that a fall in sales or rentals relating to optional remuneration might have.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech in support of the communities around the country that are reliant on motor manufacturing, which include Tyne and Wear, Derby, Swindon and Merseyside. Does he think that the Government should undertake and publish a proper impact assessment on the communities that will be affected by the changes outlined?

Folic Acid Fortification

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) for initially asking the Backbench Business Committee for this debate. When time could not be allocated, the Government allowed for this time instead, so I thank them, too. I thank my hon. Friend and the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) for their tireless campaigning. I was moved to speak in the debate because of my hon. Friend’s presentation at the Backbench Business Committee, of which I am a member. This whole issue seems like such a no-brainer, so I am really pleased that the Government have come forward with a consultation. I echo the comments of Members who want the consultation to happen quickly so that we can get measures in place.

In preparation for this debate, I went to Holland & Barrett to find out the cost of folic acid tablets. Just one jar costs £8.49. Being pregnant is an expensive business, as is having children. As well as folic acid pills—if someone is aware of their pregnancy or intends to become pregnant—there are baby clothes, decorations, cots and car seats to buy, and all that at a time when many people have very little money and are just about managing. Do we really expect those families to spend £8.49 on supplements?

Although supplements are costly, treating illnesses caused by the lack of folic acid in the diet of expectant mothers costs the NHS far more. Studies show that adding folic acid to food reduces instances of neural tube defects by 72%. That is exceedingly significant when we consider the fact that hundreds of babies are affected by spina bifida every year in the UK. Researchers in Chile compared the annual cost of the rehabilitation and treatment of children with spina bifida with the cost of adding folic acid to flour. The results showed that for every $1 invested in adding folic acid to flour, $12 was saved in medical treatment and care. Adding folic acid to our flour will not only benefit the would-be victims of neural tube defects, but save significant amounts for the NHS and therefore the taxpayer. It is estimated that it would cost only £200,000 a year for us to add folic acid to flour, and there are only 10 major flour mills in the country. It could be done very easily and very quickly.

Of course, there is a small minority of people who do not like mass measures such as the fortification of foods, but food fortification is nothing new and already makes an important contribution to diets in the UK and overseas. In the UK we already fortify white and brown flour with iron, thiamin and niacin after they are removed with the bran during the milling of wheat, so the relevant technology and infrastructure is already in the UK industry. We add other substances to food for flavour, for texture or to increase the speed of production, so why would we not add a harmless ingredient, for which there is no upper limit, that could save hundreds of babies a year from being born in the UK with lifelong birth defects?

Having children is an incredibly exciting time for parents—full of hope and expectation—but it is also fraught with risk and concern. Pregnant women and expectant parents are bombarded with information about diseases and issues that can afflict the mother and the baby. If we can do one simple, cheap and effective thing to reduce the chances of a baby contracting a life-changing illness, surely it is a no-brainer.

Homelessness among Refugees

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

It is truly a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) and others who have all made such great contributions. I will not repeat what others have said. I will move on to a specific aspect, which, I am afraid to say, is possibly outside the Minister’s area of responsibility. None the less, it is entirely relevant to the topic under discussion: the right to work.

First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who is chair of the all-party group on migration, for securing this important debate and for working so closely with me as chair of the all-party group on refugees. We work closely together and I am very pleased about that.

I launched the “Refugees Welcome?” report just before the general election last year. The APPG on refugees produced it after an inquiry of many months. We took evidence from refugees, refugee organisations, local authorities and health organisations. There are copies available: my office has paper copies, but it is also online. We looked at various things, some of which the Government have now taken up. I am pleased about that and I thank them for doing so. For instance, the issue of national insurance numbers—my hon. Friend mentioned their inclusion in documents—was holding up many refugees needlessly and pointlessly, but that is supposed to have been sorted out now. I am still getting evidence that it is not completely fixed, but at least the intention is clear.

On the 28-day move-on period, we kept finding more and more egregious examples of how it ended up turning into destitution and homelessness. The impact of detention and the two-tier system between the resettlement scheme and refugees who come via the asylum route have also been mentioned. That is not directly relevant today, but some of the things we picked up had a specific impact on homelessness. As my hon. Friend has said, the 28 days turns from delirium to despair. The news that someone is being given refugee status should be a day of joy and celebration, but for many refugees it very quickly turns to despair when they realise that they will become either homeless or destitute—or both—within 28 days, for reasons that others have mentioned.

Our report recommended a move to 56 days, which would be coterminous with the universal credit timetable, so it makes sense. I urge the Minister to urge his colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions to reconsider the matter, because that would be most useful. I must thank Jon Featonby, previously of the Refugee Council but now of the Red Cross, for his help with the report, particularly the careful drafting.

On the right to work, I thank Forced Migration Review for its June 2018 edition on refugees and economies. Such a focus would really help to prevent refugee homeless. Even though the issue is a DWP competence, it is relevant to the Minister’s work at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I also refer him to the fact that the integration strategy—it is not a refugee integration strategy, which I would like—is part of MHCLG’s competence, and I want him to re-examine that strategy’s specific impact on refugees.

The 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees affords refugees the right to work. I want to be clear: our legal obligations require us to give refugees the right to work. When we give refugee status, they are able to work. However, there are problems with waiting until that point. Nearly half of the 145 states that are party to the convention declare reservations in applying the right to work. Even those that do apply the right to work usually impose conditions and limitations. There is very little consistency in implementing the right to work and there are significant variations among those countries.

We should consider some examples of good practice in order to help prevent refugee destitution and homelessness. Jordan, a non-signatory country, provides a quota of work permits. Turkey is not a particularly wealthy country, but it has 3.3 million refugees and they can apply for work permits after six months. In Chad and Uganda, refugees are allowed to settle in host communities and some are granted arable land for agricultural purposes. In Ethiopia, the International Labour Organisation, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Government of Ethiopia collaborate on an out-of-camp policy, which relaxes conditions of residence and movement so that refugees can work. They can set up their own businesses both inside and outside camps.

In Kenya, community organisations help refugees with language classes and links to employment and support. In the UK, various businesses are active, including Starbucks, Ben and Jerry’s, IKEA and, I am sure, others. I declare an interest, because I hosted a dinner recently for Starbucks to discuss its refugee employment programmes. I urge right hon. and hon. Members to consider the role played by private industry. When private industry wants to take a responsible role, we should welcome that, and I do.

In Bristol, as in countries across the United Kingdom, volunteers and campaigning groups such as Bristol Refugee Rights, Borderlands, Bristol Hospitality Network and others do fantastic work to prevent refugee homelessness and to help refugees into work in order to prevent homelessness and destitution. Yet refugees and asylum seekers tell me of their frustrations at not being able to work sooner and of the gaps that that imposes on their CVs. They tell me of the limitations on volunteering.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

While people wait for a decision, after 12 months they can apply to work but only in jobs on the shortage occupation list. Is that not one of the barriers? Should not that stipulation be dropped?