Ministerial Code

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Governments of all stripes can always do better, but I think it is fair to say that, over generations and across parties, there has been a determined effort by our Prime Ministers to do everything they can to make sure that our democracy stays healthy. Of course, Prime Ministers in the past have made mistakes, but I think it is important that we recognise that, overall, we can have confidence in institutions like this House of Commons to hold them to account.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab) [V]]

The Minister has a specific duty to ensure transparency in Government through the Freedom of Information Act. Is he concerned that Transparency International last year identified nine unremedied breaches of the ministerial code? Why is information withheld in Government FOI responses more often than not? And is he still running his FOI clearing house to delay and filter FOI responses?

[Michael Gove]

The freedom of information clearing house, sadly, is not mine. It was set up under a Labour Government, so it is a Blairite inheritance. What it exists to do is make sure that freedom of information responses are effectively co-ordinated and that we do everything we can in order to make sure that we comply with the terms of that legislation. But of course one point about the freedom of information legislation is that it needs to be a safe space for frank advice to be offered by officials to Ministers, and it is important for the good conduct of government that that safe space remains.

Covid-19: Road Map

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

These “not before” dates are not arbitrary; they are crucial. They are determined by the time we need to evaluate the impact on the pandemic of the openings-up that we are doing. For instance, we will need four weeks to see whether the opening of schools has caused an uncontrollable surge in the pandemic, and then a week to give advice and so on. So they are not arbitrary; they are dictated by the science, and that is the right way forward. But if we look at the overall road map, it is beyond what many other countries are currently able to achieve, and that, as my hon. Friend rightly says, is thanks to the roll-out of the vaccination programme.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab) [V]]

Five local NHS areas in England, including Hammersmith and Fulham, have vaccinated 73% or less of the over-70s, despite the best efforts of NHS and public health staff and volunteers. This falls to a 60% take-up for the most deprived tenth of residents and below 50% for some ethnic minority groups. As the country moves on to vaccinate younger and less at-risk groups, what comfort can the Prime Minister give to the quarter of my elderly and vulnerable constituents that his Government have left behind?

[The Prime Minister]

Take-up is accelerating among all those groups, but the hon. Member is right to say that it has been slower in some groups than in others. That is why we have rolled out the network of community champions. However, it is also important for him and for all of us to champion the uptake of vaccines across all our communities in our constituencies.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

For many years now I have been listening to my right hon. Friend making her points with the passion and knowledge that she does, and I know she is right. I look forward very much to her review, and to her submitting her findings, and I look forward to working together with her to achieve the change that we want for early years children.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab) [V]]

This week, I got an email from Elena Hough, the deputy head of Wendell Park Primary School in my constituency. She says that lack of Government guidance means that her staff will soon be teaching over 100 children in school—10 times the number in the first lockdown. Having a lockdown in name only may suit the Prime Minister. He can feign tackling the virus while tipping the wink to his anti-lockdown Back Benchers and bending the rules himself, but as Miss Hough says, her pupils and staff, who, like all Hammersmith schools, are doing a fantastic job under the most difficult of circumstances, deserve better. Why are they being hung out to dry by the Prime Minister and his Education Secretary?

Transport Infrastructure

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is indeed the point of the investment in buses. Everyone knows from talking to their constituents that a decent, reliable bus route can be absolutely transformative of their lives and of their kids’ prospects, so we will do that across the country.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

With Birmingham airport 30 minutes from Old Oak we will not need a third runway at Heathrow, I am sure the Prime Minister agrees. However, will HS2 terminate at Old Oak for three years while Euston is under construction, as the press are reporting and, if so, what will he do about the disruption and overcrowding at Old Oak? It is already the biggest development and an interchange site, and is very happy with its historic name, by the way.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for the name of Old Oak Common. We will make sure that we take control properly of the management of that fantastic project. There is huge potential for success at Old Oak. Indeed, it presents a potential link between the great west line and HS2. We will also ensure that we take proper control of what is happening at Euston which, he would agree, has been a shambles. We have a special purpose vehicle established to get the maximum value for the taxpayer from that project.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I recognise that since this terrible tragedy took place, significant efforts have been made to ensure that the survivors—those who have lost so much—have been provided with accommodation that is suitable for their needs. I know that in the early stages many people felt that that work did not go as quickly as it should have done. I recognise, too, that in the struggle that the survivors have been facing to ensure that justice can be done, that the truth can be uncovered, and, crucially, that responsibility for what happened is identified, they have felt that the response of Government at national and local level has not always been as swift or as full as they wished it to be. Every effort will be made, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, to continue the work to support the families of those who suffered this terrible experience in this appalling tragedy. There are other aspects of support that need to be provided in the longer term as well, not least the question of providing mental health support for people who have been affected by this tragedy.

Of course, today we can only look at phase 1 of the inquiry, because that is the report that is before us. One thing that comes through from phase 1 and will be clear to anybody who has met or has had any discussions with members of the Grenfell community is the care that they feel for each other—not just care within families, but care for friends and neighbours, too, and, indeed, for their whole community. The Grenfell community has a lot to teach all of us about the true meaning of community.

It was that care for each other that led to their raising their concerns and fears, over a period of time, about the safety of the building in which they lived. Concerns were brought home to me at a very early stage—when I first met survivors from Grenfell Tower—that they had been raising these issues about the safety of their building over a period of time, and yet those issues, their voices and those concerns had gone unheeded and had been ignored. I want to go on to reference some of the shocking aspects of this report, but I think that one of the most shocking features that has come out of consideration of what happened at Grenfell Tower is that those people had been genuinely raising matters about safety and yet felt that those matters were just completely ignored—and in some cases they were indeed just completely ignored. That was what led to the work to look at social housing across the country. I am grateful that a number of Housing Ministers undertook that work.

I see my right hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), the first Housing Minister who started that work, in his place on the Treasury Bench. That work was due to lead to a social housing Green Paper. I was pleased to hear my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister reference a social housing White Paper. We are now about to go into an election. There is purdah, but I urge the Government, as soon as possible after Parliament is reconvened, to publish that White Paper, because change is needed to ensure that those who are living in social housing are able to have their voices heard so they can have the confidence that, when they raise issues, those issues will be acted on, and if they are not, they can seek redress in order to ensure that their concerns are being heard.

There are other shocking aspects of this report on which I wish to touch briefly. Some of them relate to the conclusions on the London Fire Brigade. Our emergency services do an amazing job, day in and day out, and there is absolutely no doubt that, on that fateful night, individual firefighters gave totally of themselves. They bravely went into a building with a fire whose like, as they said to me afterwards, they had never seen before, yet they bravely put themselves in danger to try to rescue others. None the less, it is also clear from Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report that there were questions over the command structure, training and communications in London Fire Brigade, which all need to be addressed.

When there is an emergency, we are used to seeing—indeed we expect to see—our emergency services working seamlessly, both in teams within an individual service but also in services working together. Sadly, on that fateful night, that was not the case. Now these were the most challenging of circumstances. None of us should take away from the fact that people were dealing with something that they had not seen the like of before and were having to respond with instant and split-second decisions. But there is absolutely no doubt from the report that the lack of communication and of the passing on of crucial information had an impact on the response. Sir Martin Moore-Bick states in the report:

“The chaotic nature of the communication links meant that neither the control room nor the command units nor the incident commander could know whether rescue attempts had been made in response to calls, or if they had, what had been the outcomes.”

That seamless working together is important within teams but also across the services. It is very important that when our emergency services attend an emergency, they are able to work together in the best possible way to deal with it.

When I was Home Secretary, I oversaw the work on the joint emergency services interoperability principles, or JESIP. The whole purpose of that work was to ensure that there was a way of our emergency services working together that enabled them to provide the service we wanted them to provide. And yet on this night, a major incident was declared by each of the services at different times, but they did not communicate that to each other. Sir Martin Moore-Bick makes that point when he says:

“One of the consequences of the declaration of a Major Incident by the emergency services is that there should be a multi-agency conversation between the control room leads. This was a requirement of the joint operating requirements established under the Joint Doctrine…That was also a requirement of the Procedure Manual…The evidence that such a conversation…took place is at best unclear.”

This need to communicate is very important and it is absolutely right that Sir Martin Moore-Bick has raised it as an issue that needs to be addressed in his recommendations.

I want to comment on what in many ways must be the most heartbreaking aspect of the report for the survivors: the use of the doctrine “stay put”. I can quite understand why there was a doctrine of staying put. The experience was that a fire in a flat within a tower block would normally remain in that flat and would be able to be dealt with in that flat—compartmentalisation or containment within a flat. But of course that did not happen in this circumstance; something else happened because of the cladding on the outside of the building.

The doctrine of “stay put” had been developed for good reasons, based on the normal experiences of firefighters. The problem was not the fact that that was the doctrine in such circumstances; the problem was that there was no flexibility to know how to deal with and respond to different circumstances. As we see in the report, at a point in time—the Prime Minister referenced that point—a decision was taken to evacuate rather than to continue to operate the “stay put” doctrine, but even at that time the messages that were getting through were not clear and the messages being given by the control room were not as clear as they should have been. One of the issues here is making sure that there is training to ensure that those who are making decisions on the ground know that they have the flexibility to make a different decision, but also know when and how to exercise that flexibility.

This doctrine did have an impact. On the Friday after the fire I was visiting survivors in hospital, where I met one family, the father of which told me that he, his wife and child had been told to stay put in their flat and that others had been brought into their flat as a place of safety. There came a point when this father took the decision that they could no longer stay in the flat, so he said what he was going to do and took himself, his wife and his child out of their flat. They survived. The others did not. So this doctrine did have an impact that night.

The worst thing that could happen now would be to lurch to having everyone say, “We can’t have ‘stay put’ at all”, because there will be circumstances in which “stay put” is still the right advice to give. But what is important is that flexibility is provided, and that training is given so that individuals know when and how they can exercise that flexibility and change the advice.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

If there is to be this change—a flexibility, under which there may be a full evacuation from time to time—would the right hon. Lady agree that it would be essential for buildings to have sprinkler systems, at least in communal areas, more than one means of escape and a central alarm system, and that Grenfell Tower would have benefited from those measures? Would she support those provisions being introduced in new buildings and retrofitted?

[Mrs May]

I have been asked about sprinklers on a number of occasions. Of course, the response to the Lakanal House fire was not that sprinklers should be fitted in all high tower blocks, but that the landlord should look at that issue. Sir Martin Moore-Bick is going to address the issue of sprinklers in part 2 of the inquiry, and he references that and makes the point that I have just made about the Lakanal House fire in this report. On the issue of the means of escape, there was a central stairway in Grenfell Tower, and I think firefighters have raised the question of the means of escape in that regard. This is another issue that part 2 of the inquiry is likely to look at, as it is looking at the requirements and regulations necessary for the future.

There are issues about the cladding itself and about the responsibility for why the fire was able to happen because of the circumstances of the building. I set up the inquiry to get to the truth, and Sir Martin Moore- Bick has shown that he is capable of and determined to get to the truth. His report so far has been clear and uncompromising, and I have every expectation that his report on part 2 of the inquiry will also be clear and uncompromising, whoever or whatever it needs to address.

I welcome the Government’s commitments, set out by the Prime Minister, to accept the recommendations, but change requires a willingness to change. I refer to paragraph 28.55 in volume 4 of the report, where Sir Martin Moore-Bick references the evidence of the Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade and says that he feels that it

“only serves to demonstrate that the LFB is an institution at risk of not learning the lessons of the Grenfell Tower fire.”

For the families and friends of those who lost their lives, the pain of that loss will never go away. But for their sake, and in memory of all who lost their lives, the lessons must be learned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

With hindsight, I think we could have had part 2 of the inquiry first, because those are the difficult and complex issues of culpability that need to be addressed. Although there are policy issues such as “stay put” that come out of part 1, there is also a concentration on individual action. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), whom I, too, compliment on the role she has played: I would rather the politicians and the corporate chisellers had been identified.

Very little progress has been made on cladding. I have read the briefings for this debate from the Royal Institute of British Architects, the London Fire Brigade and Rockwool. Yes, there is a ban on combustible cladding on high-rise residential buildings over 18 metres, but what about non-residential high-rise buildings, including hotels and offices? What about high-risk buildings under 18 metres, such as schools, hospitals, care homes and sheltered housing, and what about the range of materials? It is not just ACM cladding; there is now the high-pressure laminate cladding and many other types. The Government have only scratched the surface of these matters.

On the “stay put” policy, I intervened on the former Prime Minister because I hoped she might agree and say not just that these things might be in the inquiry, but that, if there is a problem fitting sprinklers in leasehold properties, at least they could be put in communal areas. One cannot vary the “stay put” policy unless there is a reliable means of evacuation, which requires more than one means of escape. Planning consent is being given now for tower blocks in my constituency built on the Grenfell model with one central staircase. That has to change. We have to have alarm systems.

We also have to crack down on product safety. A block of flats in my constituency, Shepherds Court, which was not compartmentalised, caught fire a year before Grenfell. That fire was also caused by a defective white good manufactured by the Whirlpool corporation. We need to be much tighter on these issues.

My final point goes beyond the Moore-Bick inquiry, but it concerns a matter that the Government have themselves highlighted. I have as yet seen no sign of a changed attitude towards social housing generally. Less than a mile from Grenfell are the West Kensington Gibbs Green estates, which, through the collusion of developers and Conservative politicians, have been blighted for 10 years. Two thousand people have lived in those homes without any security because of the greed of developers, who are now suffering because of the current climate. I should like the Secretary of State to go down to those estates with me, and see whether that changed attitude can apply not just to fire safety in Grenfell but across the board in social housing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Once again, the voice of Scotland—the voice of Angus. I thank my hon. Friend very much. We are indeed engaged in not just levelling up the provision of gigabit broadband across the whole of the country but improving the 4G mobile signal as well. It is our ambition to have 95% of the UK covered by the 4G mobile signal. We have made changes to the regulations and the planning laws to make it easier for the infrastructure to be put in place—and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has just assured me that her particular request is going to be addressed.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Q12. The Mayor of London has cut air pollution in central London by a third in the first six months of his ultra low emission zone. Does the Prime Minister support the Mayor’s plan to expand that zone and does he still oppose the third runway at Heathrow that will reverse these gains?

[The Prime Minister]

I am as scandalised as the hon. Gentleman about the failure of the Mayor of London to improve air quality, if that is what I understood him to have just said. When I was Mayor of London, just to pick a period entirely at random, we cut NOx—nitrous oxide—emissions by, I think, 16% and we cut particulates by 20%. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that this Government have the most far-reaching ambitions of any society in the EU to improve air quality. As for the Heathrow third runway, it remains the case that I have lively doubts about the ability of the promoters of that scheme, as I think he does, to meet standards on air quality and noise emissions, and we will have to see how the courts adjudicate in that matter.

Prime Minister's Update

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have tried to show every possible humility today, to the House, to hon. Members and to the court and its judgment, but the best way we can all collectively show humility as parliamentarians is to deliver on the will of the people, and that is what we will do. We could also show some humility by stopping talking exclusively about ourselves and Brexit, and getting on with delivering on the priorities of the British people. That is why we wanted a Queen’s Speech. I think they want to hear what we are going to do to support their healthcare services, bring down crime on their streets and improve their schools. Those are the priorities of this Government.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The judgment of the Supreme Court found that the Prime Minister had acted unlawfully and outside his powers in the advice he gave the monarch. He has just said again that he believes the court was wrong. Will he confirm that he has read the judgment? If he has, could he point us to the errors of law or fact that he says the 11 justices made?

[The Prime Minister]

If the hon. Gentleman would study my statement, he will see exactly what I meant. My views are shared, by the way, by the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls, who I think even he would accept are quite eminent legal authorities.

Prorogation of Parliament

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate; I was giving evidence to the review panel on High Speed 2. That issue is one reason why I am very concerned about the length of this Prorogation. HS2 phase 2a, which is being considered by Parliament and approaching the House of Lords, has a huge impact on my constituents, so it was important to be able to give evidence to the panel. I will come to the other things we will be prevented from doing in the coming weeks by this excessive Prorogation. It is right that we should have a Prorogation—I am fully in favour of a new Queen’s Speech—but it should not last until 14 October.

My plea to the Government is that we should come back at the latest on 7 October, if not on 3 October, once all party conferences have concluded. That is plenty of time. We are in the midst of a crisis in Parliament and in the country. We need to respect the result of the 2016 referendum and leave the European Union but do so with a deal in an orderly way, as set out by the manifesto on which I stood in 2017. The problem with coming back from Prorogation on 14 October is that that leaves little time for Parliament to consider the new deal or revised deal that I firmly hope the Prime Minister will bring back—even perhaps in draft, if it is in advance of the European Council on 17 October. It is our responsibility to look at that. Indeed, as a member of the newly formed grouping of MPs for a deal, I will work with Members of Parliament from across the House to ensure that there is an opportunity to arrive at a deal that achieves a majority in this House.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I was giving evidence to the HS2 panel, as well as meeting Extinction Rebellion and indeed Dignity in Dying, and Shelter. I wonder why it can be said that we have little to do here if we have to try to be in five places at once. I admire what he said on Prorogation. Will he go a stage further and say that we should at least remain Members of Parliament so that we can still lobby and come back some time in October? Were an election to go ahead, we would have no control over that whatsoever. As the Prime Minister has said he may be equivocal about obeying the law, an election is to be avoided at all costs.

[Mrs Anne Main in the Chair.]

[Jeremy Lefroy]

The hon. Gentleman and I were together at the HS2 panel and I listened carefully to the important points he made about Old Oak Common and the surrounding area that is affected by HS2. I am in a quandary about an election. On the one hand, it would be decisive. I suspect it would be run on the lines of remain, leave or leave with a deal, and it would be a chance for the people to decide, in a manner of speaking. On the other hand, I see what he says: if we have an election, we will not be able to make these points. Prorogation leaves us in a halfway house where we cannot raise points in Parliament and we do not have the decisiveness of an election; it is neither fish nor fowl.

There are two main reasons why I do not want to see Parliament prorogued for as long as proposed—and the Government could still request for Prorogation to be for less time. First, we need more time to consider really important matters such as the prospective deal, which I very much hope the Prime Minister is committed to bringing before this House, and which, in some form or other, will be passed by this House so that we can fulfil the referendum result and leave in an orderly fashion.

It is also extremely important to bring up constituency matters. With your permission, Mrs Main, I will give a few examples, because I will not be able to do so at business questions or other times. First, a constituent of mine, Staff Sergeant Proverbs, who has just left the Army after 20 years of active service to this country in a number of theatres, was injured on duty at NATO headquarters in this country, yet because of the intricacies of the rules around pensions and disability, he is being deprived of a proper disability payment and disability pension. I have taken up his case with the Minister for the Armed Forces and the Minister for Defence People and Veterans and had a sympathetic hearing, but the Ministry of Defence is not dealing with my constituent in a proper manner. As a result, he faces a much lower level of income, despite his disability, which was incurred in the course of serving our country.

I also raise the case again—I have done so before in the House of Commons—of my constituent, Mr Gray, on whose behalf on a serious matter I have written to Barclays a number of times to request a meeting, but Barclays has still not replied to me.

I also want to raise the fact that not long ago I had a debate on the manipulation of precious metal prices, which is a serious matter that is fundamental to the financial system of this country and the whole world. We had a good response from the Minister but there are serious outstanding matters that need to be raised in Parliament and discussed here.

I could go on, and I am sure other Members could do the same, but it is clear to me that we need the time in Parliament. Clearly, the Government need time to prepare the Queen’s Speech. I understand that, but a couple of weeks is more than enough. It is not as if they are starting on it ab initio or that as from tomorrow they will start thinking about the Queen’s Speech. They have been thinking about it for a long time, and rightly so. Two or three weeks maximum is more than enough time. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to communicate to his colleagues in Government and to the Prime Minister that if we could resume on 3 October or, at the very latest, 7 October, it would be welcomed across the House.

Priorities for Government

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend. She may have noticed that in the course of the recent election campaign I made it absolutely clear that we will accelerate the programme of full fibre broadband by eight years, so that every household in this country gets full fibre broadband within the next five years.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister order an inquiry into the £76 million that was wasted paying management consultants to work on the “Shaping a Healthier Future” programme for north-west London, which the Health Secretary has now abandoned after nine years?

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly say that the “Shaping a Healthier Future” programme for north-west London has not perhaps delivered the results that we wanted. I think the hon. Gentleman and I share a constituency interest, shall we say, in ensuring that we get the improvements to healthcare not just in north-west London but across the country. That is why this party and this Government are spending an extra £20 billion. That is why yesterday I announced new upgrades for 20 hospitals across the country, including some, I believe, in north-west London.

Detainees

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The problem with what the hon. Lady suggests is that, because so much of the information and documentation would have to remain secret for good security reasons, that could not provide such reassurance. It is the independence of the commissioner and the Committee that is the best and most compelling assurance we can give people.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

If matters are escalated to Ministers, will they be prohibited from authorising action that carries a real risk of torture?

[Mr Lidington]

I cannot see any circumstance in which a Minister of the United Kingdom would authorise action that was contrary to the law.