National Minimum Wage Enforcement
Andrew Selous Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am very grateful to Mr Speaker for granting me this debate.
I am very proud to support a Government who have committed to the national living wage being equivalent to two thirds of the median income by 2024, in addition to reducing the age for accessing the national living wage to 23 this month and to 21 by April 2024. We want work to be worth while and an effective route out of poverty, so it is important that everyone is entitled to the legal minimum wage.
Unfortunately, the combined impact of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 and the National Minimum Wage Regulations 2015, along with the provisions of the Care Act 2014 and the enforcement role of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, have all been completely ineffective in enforcing the law for one of my constituents, a carer who is owed £62,961 of unpaid wages below the minimum wage. Four other carers were in the same position. Who knows how many others across the United Kingdom are in the same position. I will use this case to demonstrate how the law has not worked effectively. I do not expect my hon. Friend the Minister to comment on the individual case, but I would like him to set out the plans the Government have to remedy the flaws in the current legislation, so that an effective remedy can be provided to people such as my constituent where now there is none.
My constituent—I shall call her Mrs Wright; it is not her real name—provided care for seven years to a disabled woman, whom I shall call Mrs Edwards, which is also not her real name. The wages to pay Mrs Wright were provided by Luton Borough Council and paid by a local charity into the account of the person being cared for. Checks were then made by Luton Borough Council to make sure that the money provided was paid over to the carer. Section 33 of the Care Act 2014 enables care to be devolved to the person being cared for, who enters into a contract of employment with her carer.
After seven years of good and faithful work caring for Mrs Edwards, the local charity that had received funding from Luton Borough Council sent the carer a schedule showing that, throughout the entire seven-year period, she had been underpaid a total of nearly £63,000. The local charity also paid the premium for an insurance policy to cover employers’ liability and legal expenses and costs should the carer have cause to sue the person being cared for—her employer, Mrs Edwards.
Mrs Wright, the carer, was never provided with the contract of employment by her employer. Both Luton Borough Council and the local charity say that they are not liable for this massive underpayment of wages because the contract of employment is between the carer and the person being cared for, and has nothing to do with either of them. The legal expenses insurer did not even bother to reply, which is completely shameful. There is no point in suing the person being cared for—the employer—because she lives in a rented flat, has no other assets and all her income comes from state benefits. As Mrs Wright’s solicitor said to me,
“this is a wrong with no remedy.”
The aim of this debate—so that the Minister and I are not wasting our time—is to make sure that a remedy is provided to Mrs Wright and other carers in her position, so that the law requiring the payment of the minimum wage applies to them as well as to everyone else.
This matter was first brought to my attention in the summer of 2018. I did my research and found out that everything I had been told about the inability to secure the payment of wages legally due was true. I contacted Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to try to get enforcement action. HMRC said in the letter back to me that it was
“determined that everyone who is entitled to the national minimum wage should receive it.”
That turned out to be a hollow phrase, because no effective enforcement action can be taken against an employer who has no assets and, indeed, never had any in the first place. Luton Borough Council wrote back to me to say:
“any issue regarding alleged historical underpayment of minimum wage will be a matter for the person being cared for and the carer to resolve.”
I should point out that there is no “alleged” underpayment, because the agency employed by Luton Borough Council to check wages paid against wages legally required to be paid came up with a schedule showing the underpayment of nearly £63,000.
Having hit a brick wall with HMRC and Luton Borough Council, which was the local authority responsible for providing the person being cared for with funds to pay for the care provided, I went to see the previous Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Corporate Responsibility, who was very sympathetic and agreed that there was a problem. At that meeting, I was told that local authorities did indeed have a responsibility for direct payments, in that they must be satisfied that personal budget holders are capable of paying the minimum wage, and the local authority should have undertaken a six-month review, after which it should have reviewed the making of direct payment no later than every 12 months.
The Minister’s predecessor then helpfully wrote to the chief executive of Luton Borough Council, pointing out that it should have had an “effective monitoring process” of the direct payments to ensure that the individual fulfils their responsibilities as an employer and that, following the six-month review, the local authority should have reviewed the making of direct payment no later than every 12 months. In its reply, Luton Borough Council said that the carer had been paid a fixed weekly rate based on unmeasured work hours, when in fact the carer had very clear hours that she was expected to work.
The Minister’s predecessor also wrote to the Minister for Care at the Department of Health and Social Care to explain the problem. The previous Minister for Care wrote back to say that Luton Borough Council should have been satisfied that the person being cared for was capable of managing direct payments by herself or with the help of the charity asked to provide that help. As I said, a local charity used by Luton Borough Council has produced a schedule showing an underpayment of wages throughout the entire seven-year period amounting to nearly £63,000.
I have raised this matter before on the Floor of the House with the Leader of the House, who said:
“I am clear that careworkers provide essential support to some of the most vulnerable members of society, and it is essential that they are paid in accordance with the law, including the national minimum wage, for the work they do. This is a responsibility of local authorities, which should ensure that personal budgets are sufficient to deliver a person’s care needs, including making sure that they cover the cost of wages, and local authorities have a duty to monitor how personal budgets are spent. However, the Department of Health and Social Care will take this up with the local authority and ask it to investigate what sounds like a very serious and concerning case.”—[Official Report, 25 July 2019; Vol. 663, c. 1450.]
I have also had a meeting with the Minister who is replying tonight.
In the 2019 Queen’s Speech, the Government announced that they would legislate to create a single enforcement body in an employment Bill. That Bill would give us the opportunity to remedy the very serious loophole that I have outlined. We should also remember the payment of premiums for an insurance policy to cover the employer’s liability and legal expenses and costs, which has been of no assistance whatsoever in this case.
The Minister will agree with me, I am sure, about the importance of people receiving the wages they are legally entitled to. We share a commitment to increasing the minimum wage to make it always worth while to go out to work and to lift more people out of poverty. I urge the Minister to make sure that the single enforcement body in the employment Bill will be up to the task of providing effective remedy in situations such as the one that I have described, and that it has retrospective power to help diligent, hard-working and highly compassionate carers such as my constituent, Mrs Wright.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Selous Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Robert Jenrick
The hon. Gentleman and I share the same view that young people in this country should have every right to get on the housing ladder that those of us who were fortunate to do so in previous years had. It is a shame that the Scottish Government have chosen to close the Help to Buy scheme and to pause the first home fund without bringing forward any credible alternatives. Of course many of these issues are devolved, but where the Chancellor and I can take action in Scotland, we certainly will. As I said earlier, we are working very closely with the big banks on a UK-wide basis to see what more we can do to help first-time buyers access high loan to value mortgages and get on the ladder.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Eddie Hughes)
I thank my hon. Friend for his question, not least because as a proud member of the Chartered Institute of Building I take a keen interest in all things related to energy-efficient house building, so I am personally delighted that from 2025 the future homes standard will ensure that new homes produce at least 75% less carbon dioxide emissions than those built to current standards. These homes will be future-proofed, with low-carbon heating, high levels of energy efficiency, and no further refit work needed to enable them to become zero-carbon over time, alongside the electric energy grid.
Andrew Selous [V]
British architects such as Bill Dunster are building not only energy-efficient homes but zero bills homes, which are brilliant for the planet as well as helping us relieve poverty. Will the Government commit that we will aim for the very highest standards, not least so that we do not have to retrofit later?
Eddie Hughes
We are indeed aiming for the very highest standards; I do not think anybody could accuse us of being anything other than very ambitious. While some of the sector is already leading the way by building highly efficient, low-carbon buildings, it is important that all parts of the industry are ready to build homes that are fit for a zero-carbon future. The timeline we have set out delivers on our net zero commitments while providing industry with the time it needs to develop the supply chains and skills that will be necessary. I am hoping that I will get to join my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing on his visit to the ZEDfactory in due course.
Building Safety
Andrew Selous Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Robert Jenrick
I pay tribute to the right hon. Lady for the work that she has done. She and I have worked together since the terrible fire that her constituents suffered in Barking. She is right to raise the issue of insurance, as other Members of the House have done already. There is a challenge here, because, as with the lenders, the insurers are faced with assessing a new and heightened level of risk. None the less the Association of British Insurers now needs to step up and take a proportionate risk-based approach. As I have said repeatedly, the risk to life in buildings is, mercifully, very low, with the tragic exception of the events of 2017. Insurers should be pricing that risk correctly and not passing on those costs or even profiteering on the backs of the leaseholders. Both myself and my hon. Friend Lord Greenhalgh who leads on building safety have engaged repeatedly with insurers and we will do so again.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]
I welcome this very significant intervention and the relief that it will bring to so many people. Does the Secretary of State agree that we have established a very important principle today—that if developers ever behave in this manner again, the Government will come after them, and not the hard-pressed taxpayer, to put these issues right?
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We all feel immense sympathy for the leaseholders, who are innocent parties in this situation, but it also is not right that the taxpayer—the broader taxpayer, many of whom are not home owners at all—has to step in and foot the bill. We have tried to strike a balance today in terms of ensuring that the developers, the builders and the industry behind this pay a fair share. The draft Building Safety Bill that we will introduce later this year will bring forward a very tight regulatory regime so that buildings over 18 metres—the high-rise buildings—are built to a very high standard and these issues should not happen again.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Selous Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
I am obliged to the hon. Lady for her question. I know that she campaigns hard for her constituents on this issue. On 21 January—in a little under two weeks’ time—we will be able to release the latest figures on the remediation of aluminium composite material cladding. We believe that, by that time, we should show that around 95% of the buildings identified at the start of last year—having such safety defects—will have had their work either completed or it will be under way. We are absolutely committed to resolving this issue for leaseholders. That is why we are accelerating the work to find a package that will ensure that they are not left disadvantaged.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend is one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful Members of the House on this subject, which he and I have discussed many times. Fewer than one in five children from a Gypsy, Roma or Traveller background meets the expected standard for English and maths at GCSE. I am firmly committed to delivering a cross-Government strategy to improve life chances in Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities and, as my hon. Friend says, to encourage greater integration, particularly in education. In the depths of the pandemic, my Department has invested £400,000 in education and training programmes for GRT children, so that they can receive extra tuition and catch up on lost learning.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Selous Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Luke Hall
Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend for all his work. The objective of the towns deals is to drive the economic regeneration of towns, including through improving transport and digital infrastructure, supporting skills development and making the most of the planning powers to create a supportive environment for residents and businesses. The towns fund will support mixed-use redevelopment in towns such as Thornaby, creating thriving places for people to live and work. Each town has its own local priorities and should align its proposed interventions with the towns fund intervention framework, as set out in the further guidance.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
The Government’s response to the consultation on powers for dealing with unauthorised development and encampments proposed measures related to Traveller site provision and strengthening planning enforcement powers. I can confirm to my hon. Friend that further changes to planning policy will be considered as part of our reforms to the wider planning system set out in our White Paper, “Planning for the Future”.
Andrew Selous
In parts of the country, we have the double disaster of settled residents moving away in fear and Traveller children having the worst outcomes of any group of children. Can the Minister reassure me that the review that his Department is undertaking will put an end to the unacceptable situation in which both those groups find themselves
Christopher Pincher
My hon. Friend has campaigned long and hard on these issues, as have several others in the House. He will know that the Government’s overarching aim is to ensure fair and equal treatment for Travellers and their children, but we must not be blind to the rights of the settled community as well. The distress that some local communities face due to antisocial behaviour is unacceptable. Local authorities have a wide range of powers at their disposal, including the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, but I can confirm to him that I will happily consider his and other proposals as we work through the contributions to the White Paper consultation, to ensure that our planning reform also encapsulates the concerns he raises.
Live Events and Weddings: Covid-19 Support
Andrew Selous Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Government are allowing deathbed weddings during this period of second lockdown but, please, I make a plea to extend that provision for deathbed weddings to where parents or siblings of the bride or groom are terminally ill and not expected to live beyond 2 December.
My own mother was not able to come to my wedding, when I was married many years ago, because she was in hospital at the time, though she was able to watch it on video afterwards. For people not expected to live another two or three weeks, I please ask the Government to go back. Such weddings could be for the minimum legal number of five—the couple, the minister celebrant and two witnesses—but I think that would be a real kindness to that very small number of people. I please ask the Minister, who I know tries hard on this type of issue, to take it back to see if we can do something.
The wedding industry is a £10 billion business in this country, supporting an enormous amount of employment, and yet we have wedding venues—one in my constituency—that did not manage to receive the business support grant, the retail, hospitality and leisure grant or, at all, the discretionary grant. Some wedding venues, therefore, have fallen through the cracks. There has been great difficulty for couples whose insurance has excluded cancellation on the grounds of Government guidance alone, and some couples have been charged an 80% cancellation fee, which is entirely unreasonable. No one should be forced to effectively pay 180% of the cost of their wedding to get married the second time around. There are some big issues on the weddings front.
As far as the events and exhibition industry is concerned, one of my constituents, who runs an exhibition business, said: “I read, listen and watch leaders of industries bemoan the terrible impact that the second lockdown is having on their businesses, which I am very sympathetic to, and I see the Government provide substantial financial support to these industries. However, I look on with some incredulity that these industries have been able to trade in between lockdowns and have received support; yet the exhibition industry has neither been allowed to trade nor received any bespoke support. We have been locked down since March 2020 and will stay locked down until at least April 2021; yet we have received zero targeted support.” The events industry would echo those sentiments, and these are huge parts of our economy.
In relation to business rates, the Government gave discretionary grants to local authorities but there has been great variability in whether local authorities have granted rates relief to exhibitions and events businesses. I know of 40 local authorities that have, but other councils, for which I have sympathy, say that the Government have a proven track record in clawing back money that they believe has been paid out wrongly. There is therefore a postcode lottery on business rates. I ask the Minister to please give greater certainty to councils so that they can pay out business rates.
Paul Scully
I will happily look into any pilot scheme that has been happening. That may be something that we can feed into the taskforce with health officials, so as to look at how we might bring weddings on stream as and when the health advice allows. I am not an epidemiologist, but this is also about behavioural science, as well as the economics, which are very much part of my brief at the Department.
Andrew Selous
Would the Minister consider allowing a five-person event if siblings or parents were terminally ill?
Paul Scully
I will cover that in a moment. On live events, in tandem with our discussions with the wedding industry, we are committed to continuing our work with the musical and cultural sectors to understand the difficulties that they face and help them to access support through these challenging times.
Ministers in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport have been in discussion with stakeholders across the creative and cultural sector, including on the development of draft planning guidance for how music festivals might be able to take place in future. Significant funds have been allocated via the cultural recovery fund to protect cultural organisations across England—almost a fifth of the fund has gone to the music sector.
More generally, the Chancellor recently announced the continuation of the coronavirus job retention scheme—it is known as the furlough scheme—meaning that workers in any part of the UK can retain their job and be paid at least 80% of their salary up to £2,5000 a month, even if their employer cannot afford to pay them. The flexibility of that scheme will be retained to allow employees to continue to work where they can.
Lifting the Lockdown: Workplace Safety
Andrew Selous Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Paul Scully
In the first instance, what I would say to the hon. Lady is that as well as employers working on that guidance and ensuring that they are offering a safe place, employees and workers need to know that they have the right and the opportunity to approach the Health and Safety Executive and local authorities to make sure that existing legislation and guidance are being followed.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]
If we want businesses to come back, they need to survive. Small businesses that pay themselves through dividends are not pariahs; they operate entirely legally. Will my hon. Friend speak to the Treasury to make sure that these businesses survive, and can we look again at the dividend issue, because many small businesses will not survive to allow their workers to come back next week if we do not?
Paul Scully
I am grateful for that comment. Clearly, the Government’s first priority in all of this is saving lives, but livelihoods and making sure that businesses and jobs are retained and that we can bounce back is very important. I will certainly take that away. I know that the Treasury has always been keen to look at each step of the situation to ensure that we can come up with economic support as well as the health support that we have been discussing in this urgent question.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Selous Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)
Welcome back, Mr Speaker, and welcome particularly to our new Chaplain.
Homes account for about a fifth of emissions. Driving these down and improving energy efficiency are crucial to fulfilling our commitments to net zero carbon by 2050. We have committed to introducing a future homes standard by 2025, and we will respond shortly to the 3,000 or so responses to our consultation—it closed on 7 February—which proposes carbon emissions at least 75% lower from 2025.
Andrew Selous
British architects such as Bill Dunster are building competitively priced, zero energy bill homes today that not only emit no carbon emissions, but are massively helpful to poorer families, so what will the Government do to push our oligopolistic and rather luddite house builders to start building the houses of tomorrow, not of yesterday?
Christopher Pincher
I am obliged to my hon. Friend for his question, and I appreciate his desire to get the affordable homes of the future built today. Our recent consultation proposes a new householder affordability rating to measure a building’s efficiency and ensure it is affordable to heat. I am conscious that Mr Dunster has an opportunity at the Victoria & Albert Museum at the moment. I am very happy to visit his ZEDfactory in Watford, because I agree with my hon. Friend that we do need new, innovative small and medium-sized enterprises in the marketplace to drive variety in our housing market to improve the absorption rate.
Planning System: Gypsies and Travellers
Andrew Selous Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
I want to consider the policy intentions on this matter and what good outcomes look like, both for the Government and for everyone else. I hope that we agree across the House that we want to see really well-integrated, cohesive communities and to have good outcomes for all citizens—Travellers and settled alike. Critically, that depends on giving everyone, particularly children, good life chances so that they can get those good outcomes. As we know from the race disparity audit, introduced by the last Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), Traveller children have some of the worst educational, employment and health outcomes in the country.
For many of my settled residents who live close to large numbers of Traveller sites, the current situation is not a happy one. I am sent here to speak truthfully and to speak up for all my constituents, Travellers and settled alike. I receive quite a large number of emails from constituents telling me that they do not feel safe in my constituency anymore, and are looking to leave if they can afford to. A large number of businesses that regularly suffer theft, and whose staff are threatened, are very concerned. Businesspeople have recently come to tell me that they will not invest in my area.
I choose my words very carefully. There are good and bad in every community and many, many law-abiding Travellers absolutely respect the law, but I have to speak as I find and as my constituents tell me as individuals and as businesspeople in large and small businesses. It is not a happy situation for many of my settled residents, and many do not feel safe as a result.
My contention is that, unfortunately, and not because any Government wanted this to be the case, the current set of policies completely fails Traveller children, who have terrible outcomes, and causes great unhappiness and even suffering among many settled residents. What we have is not working for anyone at all. At the heart of Gypsy and Traveller policy is a fundamental muddle.
Planning policy for Traveller sites talks about “fair and equal treatment” for Travellers—absolutely: we all sign up to that—and about facilitating
“the traditional and nomadic way of life”.
The assumption seems to be that a Traveller site is needed to facilitate travelling. Why is that the case? Many of my settled constituents travel regularly. Many are caravaners, perhaps with a caravan they keep in their front garden. Indeed, many travel a lot more than my Traveller constituents do.
The situation is a muddle. To facilitate a traditional and nomadic way of life, we might need somewhere to keep caravans or somewhere safe for horses to be kept—unfortunately, a number of members of the British Horse Society have reported to me some pretty horrible incidents of cruelty to horses locally, so we need to look at that issue as well. There is a muddle because we do not need a Traveller site to enable people to travel. If we were honest, we would realise that we are prioritising the provision of sites and allowing the nomadic way of life over and above the right of Traveller children to have a good education.
I was so concerned that I asked the Children’s Commissioner for England to come to my constituency to visit one of the main village primary schools— lower schools. It has a lot of Traveller children. She went and reported back to me, in writing, that most Traveller children are not in school at all over the summer, when exams are taken, and that most stop their education in schools altogether around the age of 15. How can we expect Traveller children to be the engineers, lawyers, accountants and scientists of the future when the result of our current policy is that we do not value their education?
I have some of the best education and welfare officers in the business—I name Andrew Copperwheat in particular, from Central Bedfordshire Council—who try their very best to ensure that Traveller children go to school, but it is a losing game again and again. My constituents who volunteer in food banks tell me that it is common for adult Travellers who come to ask for food to say, “I can’t read and I can’t write”. We may think that Traveller children might get home education, but how will that happen if the parents are illiterate, through no fault of their own?
We need a little honesty. The people who speak for Travellers are the adults, but I am concerned about the outcomes for Traveller children—beautiful, wonderful children, who deserve the same chances as all of our children. When I went around six or seven Traveller sites a couple of weeks ago, I saw those children and my heart felt for them, because I could see their trajectory. Let us have a little more honesty about what “good” looks like, and let us think about what we are prioritising, whether it is right and whether we can do it better.
To cheer Members up—this has been a bit of a gloomy debate in some ways—let me say that there have been some great outcomes when my council has managed to get Traveller families into local authority housing in my constituency. The children go to school regularly, the parents have regular work and they are all making friends in the local community—people are being integrated. My constituency has proudly integrated wave after wave of Italian, Polish and Irish people happily and well over recent decades. We all pull together, get on and make a great contribution, and I want that for Travellers as well.
If Travellers are here legally, they should be part of our communities and be contributing and paying taxes; their children should be in our schools and having the amazing opportunities that all our children should have. But that is not happening at the moment. When I go around some of our Traveller sites, I see terrible housing conditions, green mould in water tanks, hot water coming out of toilets and conditions that, frankly, we would not keep animals in. That is not good enough. The legislation is not fit for purpose. Environmentally, we have sewage going into ditches, and a lot of the time the situation is not healthy. There is also a lot of sub-letting, often with violence. There are no tenancy contracts—this is sub-letting to non-Travellers on Traveller sites, enforced with vigilante violence, by quite wealthy Traveller landlords who have a lot of cash. That is not a good situation.
At the start of a five-year Parliament, I tell the Minister, who is a decent, humane and reasonable man: act with compassion. He should be progressive, do something good in this space, create brilliant outcomes for Traveller children and dial down the antipathy, the anger and the hatred between our communities. Do something that we can all be proud of in this space.
Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)
I will start to call the Front Benchers at 10.40 am.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing the debate. We may have had some idea about the nature of the debate. Unfortunately, when it comes to the Gypsy and Traveller community, the prejudices that we have heard are all too common, and they are as old as time itself. I would have expected, though, that in the Parliament that makes the laws of the land, the debate would be based far more on fact and evidence, and far less on anecdote and local constituency casework. I fully accept that there is always a need to provide balance in debates and to be honest about some of the pressures.
I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) and for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) on their contributions to rebalance the nature of the debate. I felt that I was in a different debate when we talked about a community that expects special treatment, that takes out but does not want to pay in, and that is ruining our country. It could have been a debate on Amazon or Facebook, but it was not; it was a debate about people—human beings; members of our community who deserve respect and empathy.
What is it like to be a member of the travelling community, travelling around to secure work, providing for their family and living a lifestyle that they choose for themselves? Some people do not believe that the lifestyle is legitimate. We have heard before, “Why live in a caravan if you can live in bricks and mortar?” It is as if the way we choose to live our lives is the way that everybody ought to live their lives, because our way is perfect and others’ are de facto imperfect.
There are legitimate issues that we should be honest about and debate, but those issues come from injustice, not a community that is not willing to play its part. That is where we should start. Let us have the debate about educational attainment, but let us talk about how an education system should reflect a lifestyle that requires more flexible education that follows and supports the child throughout their educational life. Let us talk about housing and provision.
Andrew Selous
I am intrigued about how flexible education could follow a Traveller child around the country. Could the hon. Member expand a bit on how that might work?
Jim McMahon
We are not here to design an education system, but there could be a system similar to an education passport, in which the child’s curriculum follows them throughout the journeys they take around the country. That would at least be a start. Part of the issue is that education authorities do not talk to one another when children move from one school to another. The education experience that child might have had in one primary or secondary school is not necessarily carried on to the next. That is a big gap.
On land supply, when we talk about illegal sites, nobody supports breaches of planning law. The planning law is there for a reason, but we have to address the underlying causes. If I look at the terraced houses in Oldham and I see overcrowding, I do not blame the tenants; I look at housing supply and affordability. I see people being ripped off, paying massive amounts in private rent, but who want a decent social house that is affordable, safe and clean for their children. It is the same for the Traveller community. They want clean, safe and well-maintained sites, but all too often local authorities do not step up to their responsibilities. I say that as an advocate for local government and a standard bearer.
Too many authorities do not take responsibility. The nature of that presents in different ways, with a very different impact in a mainly urban area from in a rural area. Unfortunately, many urban authorities view the Traveller community as a problem that must be tolerated, rather than a legitimate community that should be supported. All too often the sites chosen as Traveller sites will be near the waste transfer site or the industrial estate, in the back of nowhere that we can ignore, hoping that the settled community does not kick up an objection. That is no way to treat people. What other community would we treat in that way?
We can call out bad behaviour. I get as frustrated as anybody else when a Traveller community comes in and commercial waste is left behind, but I can drive down a road in Oldham and see exactly the same from a tradesperson who does not want to pay the charges at the local tip, and who therefore leaves waste at the end of a lane or at the edge of a playing field. I do not say that the whole community of that person should be evicted as a result of the actions of an individual. That is where this debate goes wrong. We talk about anecdotes and the worst excesses of an individual member of a community, as if somehow that is the reputation of the whole. I might expect that on Facebook or an internet site, where people get angry and wind each other up, but I would not expect it in Parliament. We are here to make laws that are meant to be about rights, responsibility, balance and evidence.
Whatever we do, we need a proper joined-up strategy that covers health and wellbeing, housing, education, employment and the very real issue of the gap in life expectancy and the unacceptable levels of male suicide.
Andrew Selous
I tried to be as fair and balanced as I could in my contribution. If the hon. Member came to my constituency, he would meet many decent, tolerant constituents who would have harrowing tales to tell him about what they have experienced. That is not anecdote; it is fact, and it has gone on for well over a decade. That has to be reflected in this debate as well.
Jim McMahon
It is for the Government and local councils to be supportive and to facilitate good community relations. They do not do that when the planning, education and housing systems are stacked up to make the people we are talking about part of the problem, not the solution. The reason there are illegal encampments is that often not enough authorised sites are provided. Even so, 88% of the travelling community are on authorised sites, whether local authority or privately owned. We do not talk about that; we talk about the unauthorised ones, as if that is somehow representative of a whole community. It is not.
Those in positions of power and leadership have a responsibility to build bridges, not walls, and to bring people together. They must use the levers of government, whether about regulation, tax or spend, to make sure that we create a long-term solution. We will be having this debate in another 10 years. If the Government put in place even harsher laws, which the police will not even implement because they recognise the reality on the ground, that will not solve the problem at all. We need positive solutions, looking at communities as human beings and recognising that people have the right to live the life they ought to lead, whether as a Traveller or in a settled community.
Perhaps some cross-party support is needed. If the Government want to look at the issue from a human being’s perspective, I am sure that they will find useful participants in that conversation on this side of the House. If the Government do not want to do that, but instead build walls and further the division, they can expect very firm opposition.
Assisted Dying Law
Andrew Selous Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the law on assisted dying.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I wanted specifically to examine the law on assisted dying as it stands, given that it affects not just those who want to have some control over the manner of their death, but those closest to them. The current law in this country simply is not working. I hope that we can begin to address today the effect of that law on terminally ill people and their loved ones, and on public servants such as doctors, health and social care professionals, police and coroners. They are all, in different ways, profoundly affected by our laws on assisted dying. I am well aware that this issue is hugely evocative, can involve issues of faith and puts the medical profession in the most difficult of positions. It is also, of course, the most personal, intimate and ultimate of decisions.
Like many people—possibly many people in the Chamber—I have been on a journey over this issue. I am not sure when it began, but I know it started with the point that it was not up to me. I did not know whether I would ever be in the position to have to make the decision, but I knew I had no right to interfere with anyone else. I suppose I could have been described then as a passive supporter, but over the years there have been several landmarks on my journey, to the point that I now see it as incumbent on me—on all of us, particularly all of us here—to ensure that our law is the best and most supportive law we can have, and that it puts the interests, needs and wishes of individuals first.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to be very careful to ensure that old and sick people do not feel a pressure to end their lives, perhaps from their children, who might want to inherit their assets and to whom they may feel they are being a burden?
Christine Jardine
I fully appreciate that point. That is why I am so concerned that we should have a very narrow and precise definition if we change the law. However, it has been ascertained that a third of patients who request assisted dying and meet the eligibility criteria in Oregon, for example, do not actually take the life-ending medication. They request it as an insurance policy—not because they feel they are being a burden, but because they want to have the opportunity to make the choice themselves.
As I said, there have been several landmarks on my journey to this point. The final one was just a few weeks ago, when I was chatting to a friend. We were talking about nothing in particular, but we decided that when people say, “You only live once,” they are not quite right; actually, you can have many lives. I certainly have, and I am sure many other hon. Members have. I been a journalist, a mother, a university lecturer and a politician, and I hope one day to be retired, but I will only have one death. When my time comes, I would like it to be the easiest possible for me and my family, and I would like to be able to choose for it to come at the end of a happy day.
The first step on my journey was, as I am sure it was for many other people, watching someone I loved go through an experience far from that: a long, painful death, which I still wonder about now, more than a decade later. Could it somehow have been eased? It took me years to come to terms with the emotional conflict between the despair over losing my mother and the relief I felt that she was no longer going through the pain of having her lungs destroyed a little bit every day. I have to be honest: I do not know whether she would have wanted the choice of how or when to end her life. Frankly, there would have been no point even asking, since it is not a choice allowed by the current law here, with its blanket ban, and most people cannot afford the fees to travel to Switzerland or elsewhere.
That is not in any way to criticise the standard of care in our hospitals or hospices in this country. Both provide a marvellous service.