Royal Navy: Conduct towards Women

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Jess Phillips

Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

The excellent report by our right hon. Friend’s Select Committee, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham in particular, makes some recommendations along those lines, and much of that has been accepted, so the general trajectory of the environment—in particular for women who have found that Defence has in the past not provided the background against which they would want to conduct their careers and lives—will be improved. It is worth underscoring—our right hon. Friend made this point—that the great majority of women serving in our armed forces today have a positive experience that they would recommend to others.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a trustee of the Agnes Wanjiru trust. Agnes Wanjiru was a prostituted woman in Kenya who was murdered on the site where there were military personnel; I will say no more about the case, except that it has not been pushed forward.

The Minister has referred to a number of documents that have been produced since other cases have come to light. There have been a number of documents of progress. One document to which he referred is on sexual exploitation policy, which now disallows Defence forces having sex with sexually exploited people abroad. However, the document specifically says:

“While the policy is not intended to apply in the UK”.

Does the Minister think it is okay that the Department has written into a document that it is fine for British military personnel to sexually exploit people in the UK?

[Dr Murrison]

Sexual exploitation is unacceptable in the UK and abroad under any circumstances.

Health and Social Care Levy

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Jess Phillips

1st reading
Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

May I congratulate the Government on dealing with unfinished business? Since 1948, we have pooled our risk for the management of the consequences of poor health except for things such as dementia and the general frailty that for some of us attends old age. This could be a historic moment in which we sort that out, and I will most certainly be enthusiastically supporting the Government tonight. It is grossly unfair that certain conditions should be excluded from our provision, and I am so hopeful that this will finally, after 70 years, complete the job begun by our predecessors.

I am disappointed that Labour Members should have taken the line they have, because I recall their doing something really rather similar in 2003 with national insurance contributions, presumably because Gordon Brown and Tony Blair at that time decided this broad-based tax was the fairest and most equitable way of dealing with this and, crucially, of raising significant amounts of money. We can debate whether the money was then well spent, and the statistics and figures suggest that that was not the case at least for the rest of that decade, and productivity in the NHS only started picking up in the following decade. Nevertheless, in raising sufficient funds for spending on something we all agree is vital, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair made the right call in 2003, and I find it dispiriting, saddening and disheartening that Opposition Front Benchers should on this occasion decide, for their own purposes, not to support it.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I notice from the right hon. Member’s entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that he makes income via rentals, as many people in this House do. Does he think it is fair that, in what has been presented to us today, rental income for landlords is completely not within the remit of any take for this levy, so there will be care workers in South West Wiltshire who are paying this on the income they make being care workers while it will not be paid by landlords with rental income?

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful for that intervention, because additional rate taxpayers, who I think make up about 2% of taxpayers in this country, will be paying a fifth of the whole receipts for this measure and 14% of taxpayers will be providing half of it. That is progressive, which is presumably why Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, all those years ago, decided to levy this on national insurance. I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for raising and underscoring that point.

However, I do have some concerns, as Ministers would expect me to have. One of those concerns was expressed by our right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), which is that this is a one-way tax, because there is no way that in the future we are ever going to attack a tax hypothecated to health and social care. In some eyes it represents a flawed tax, since as Conservatives we of course always want to remove as little money as possible from the pockets of all of our constituents.

There is also a traditional disconnect in healthcare between money in and services out. We found that in 2003, and the challenge for the Government today, which I am fully confident they are up for, is to turn the money they have announced yesterday and today into the output we so badly need, and which indeed is vital if we are to turn this around in two years’ time and use this money for social care.

There is some concern about the extent to which the money that has been announced for this will distort the social care market, and I would be interested in Ministers’ views on that. Will the industry load hotel costs, and will it front-load charges up to the £86,000 cap? How will that incentivise the domiciliary care market, which could turn out to be extremely positive? How will it affect the current 40% cross-subsidy from fee payers to local government-funded customers? How can it grow a vibrant insurance product market that will cover the delta—the £20,000 to £100,000 difference—and what will be done with actuaries and underwriters to that end?

Can I finish by saying that all of this depends on improving productivity in the national health service? It is a challenge that has evaded many over seven decades, but one that must be grasped if we are to complete this and ensure that we do indeed set the foundations—and I am confident we will—for proper social care. We need, for example, to drive down sickness absence, which is very high in the national health service. We need more service work to be done by professions allied to medicine. We need more artificial intelligence, data analysis and robotics. We need to crack down on variations in healthcare and to have zero tolerance for practitioners who diverge from it. We need to cut treatments and procedures of marginal benefit. We need early switching to generics. We must stop the revolving door between social care and the acute sector—something I am afraid the industry exploits to its advantage. Over time we must revisit the disastrous doctors’ contracts that I am afraid have meant, over the past several years, that people like me at the peak of our powers are retiring early or going part time, grossly reducing productivity in our national health service.

Syria: Civilians in Idlib

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Jess Phillips

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

The truth is that we engage on an ongoing basis with charitable organisations, but I will not comment specifically on those organisations, really for their security. Much of our effort is channelled through the UN and its agencies, but I salute those across the charitable sector who engage in this extremely difficult and traumatic work. I will continue to engage with them as much as I can, the better to understand the challenges they face and their experiences on the ground.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

The Minister and everyone who has spoken has rightly pointed out that this is a complex political situation, and that it is complex for us to do anything about it. However, there is one piece of the jigsaw that we are entirely responsible for, and that is the number of refugees that we allow into this country. I speak as someone who has refugees from Iran and Kosovo in my own family who grew up in a place that has always provided a safe home for every wave of desperate refugees, and I ask the Minister, in the light of what we know is going on in Idlib: can we not do more to bring more people here?

[Dr Murrison]

The first thing to say about the recent onslaught in the governorate of Idlib specifically is that virtually all those involved are internally displaced people within that governorate. They are therefore not accessible, and it would simply not be practical to remove them to a place of safety in this country. The hon. Lady knows very well that we have been generous in relocating people who have been triaged by the United Nations, with the most vulnerable and needy being relocated to this country. We have all taken people from right across the demographic, but the UK has been particularly impressive in relocating vulnerable people, including women, children, elderly people and disabled people. That is the mark of a truly humanitarian nation, and I am immensely proud of that.