Building Societies Act 1986 (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Anna Firth and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

2nd reading
Friday 19th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his intervention. Nationwide does so much in all constituencies where there is a branch. My Nationwide in Leigh-on-Sea has a dedicated cost of living expert who is helping the most vulnerable members of our society navigate the challenges caused by the cost of living crisis. The branch is also going out of its way to ensure that people who are not as tech savvy as some of the rest of us, particularly the elderly—I have a very elderly constituency on in Leigh-on-Sea—get that extra help. They have tea and tech events, which are very popular, that teach people how to use online banking and apps to manage their money. Digital exclusion is a real problem in our society, and it is so encouraging that the building societies are doing so much more. I could wax lyrical about all the other things that the Nationwide is doing, but because of the Bill that is up next, I am not going to.

I will end on the need for face-to-face banking services. The banking hub is a very good model, but none of the banks will provide such a hub if there is a building society that provides face-to-face services. But one should not exclude the other. I have been campaigning on this issue, but this is a fitting moment to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) for her “Save Our Banks” campaign, which I wholeheartedly endorse.

I fully support the Bill and thank the hon. Member for Sunderland Central for introducing it. I hope it will ensure that building societies can do even more for their local communities, not just in Southend West but across the whole country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the shadow Minister.

Safety of School Buildings

Debate between Anna Firth and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is only day three of a new term, yet once again we find ourselves in the position of having an Opposition day debate on an incredibly important subject that is pure politicking from the Labour party. We have not heard anything new, other than what we heard at the beginning of the week when we devoted an hour and a half to a mature and sensible debate on this matter. I would have hoped that Labour Members would have spent the long summer recess reflecting that so often these debates make things worse, not better, because they frighten the public and spread confusion and misinformation. Sadly that has not been the case, and once again, today we have heard point scoring, misinformation and scaremongering.

I believe what the public want and deserve at this point is a responsible sense of risk and proportion about this problem. We know that 156 schools have been affected by RAAC, 52 of which—one third—already have mitigation measures in place. Only 104 schools were informed this week, which is under 0.5% of the 22,500 schools across the country. Some have been closed as a precaution, including one in my constituency that I will come on to talk about. The vast majority of schools in our country are not closed, and even some of those with RAAC have not been closed in their entirety. The majority are expected to open next week.

Unlike Labour Members, I wholeheartedly applaud this Government for putting the interests of pupils, families and staff first. The absolute last thing we could possibly want is for a disaster to happen in any one of our schools, but we should not be spreading fear or exaggerating the scale of this problem. It is recklessly irresponsible to scare children by suggesting that their schools are not safe, when they overwhelmingly are—99% of schools in this country are safe, and children have gone back and are learning in them.

Over the past 13 years, this Conservative Government have invested in their schools and school buildings. We have invested £28 billion since 2010. We have invested £15 billion since 2015, to improve the safety of our schools, with priority given to those with potential safety issues. Of course we are committed to go further than that, and as a member of the Education Committee, I have a strong focus on this area. According to the Commons Library, estimated capital spending in our schools for the past financial year—2022-23—is around £6.4 billion. That is a 29% real-terms increase compared with the year before. We are also undertaking a huge rebuilding and refurbishment programme to improve over 400 of our schools, including Blenheim Primary School in Southend, which very much welcomes being part of this programme. I am looking forward to seeing spades going into the ground. If I may, I remind the Schools Minister that he would be welcome to come to Blenheim Primary School to see that new refurbishment taking place.

Let us compare our record with Labour’s record in government. Its Building Schools for the Future programme was slow, costly and substandard. That is an apt description, I would say, of the entire last Labour Government. In 2006, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment found that half the schools built by Labour were architecturally substandard, with a mere 4% being excellent. We need to understand not only exactly why RAAC was used in schools but, more importantly, how we can avoid anything like this happening in the future. We need to ask whether all the money that we are spending on remediation measures would not perhaps be spent more sensibly on rebuilding programmes. There is a range of things we need to look at, and that is why I called yesterday for a special session of the Education Committee looking into this issue. The point of that session is to learn and scrutinise, not to point fingers as the Labour party is seeking to do today.

In Essex, we are disproportionately affected by RAAC because we had such an extensive school building programme in the 1950s and 1960s. Sadly, in my constituency, the brilliant Kingsdown School is closed this week after RAAC was found in some of its buildings. Kingsdown School is the only special school in the country that has this problem, so the House will forgive me for dwelling on its issues in particular. It is waiting for three things. The first is the result of a risk assessment. The inspectors appropriately went in very quickly last week, but the school needs the results of that risk assessment if it is to open next week. It also needs emergency equipment in the form of portaloos, demountable classrooms and a portable staff room. Those things have been promised, and the sooner they are delivered, the better. The third thing is remediation measures, because these plans are short-term and the children in the school are among the most disabled, physically and mentally, in Southend, if not the south-east. This is a special school where some of the children need special feeding equipment or a special temperature. There are hoists everywhere. This is not a normal school, and these remediation measures are vital. It is a special school, and I make no apologies for arguing that it should be a special case.

I finish by applauding the work of the headmistress, Louise Robinson, who has been working around the clock along with Conservative-controlled Southend-on-Sea City Council; Councillor Helen Boyd, the cabinet member there; and Liz Hunt. They have been working hard to get things moving. The only thing that has not been helpful at all has been the press attention on this special school. The headmistress told me that she cannot pick up the telephone because the press are focusing on this school. That is appalling when one considers how anxious the parents and children must be. It is a completely inappropriate intrusion. I finish by reminding the Labour party that by calling today’s debate—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Lady has run out of time.

Child Support (Enforcement) Bill

Debate between Anna Firth and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

3rd reading
Friday 17th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell). He always speaks incredibly well on a Friday, and today is no exception. It is also a pleasure to support my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie), who has done such a lot of work in this sphere and done a wonderful job in highlighting this issue and piloting the Bill through Parliament. I give credit to my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher), who has also done a wonderful job standing in for my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud. I would certainly not know the difference—particularly without my glasses on.

Child support is such an important issue. I was delighted to be in this place to support another Bill on the same topic towards the end of last year, the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Bill, brilliantly championed in this place by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart). The fact that there are two Bills on child support before Parliament underlines what an important issue it is and shows that reform of the system is needed so that, in the very unfortunate event of a family breakdown, parents—we must be honest, it is usually fathers—are not allowed to financially abandon their children.

Having children, looking after them and supporting them financially is a huge responsibility, and no one should be able to decide that they simply do not want to pay for a child that they have had. I am therefore very pleased that the Bill means a parent will no longer be able to get out of paying the amount of child maintenance cited in a child maintenance order by playing games, and in particular playing games with our court and administrative system. The Bill will be hugely beneficial to mothers who are doing the incredibly difficult but vital job of providing the day-to-day care that these children need: they will not have the continual, nagging worry about whether a father will pay his dues.

Failure to pay child maintenance has a massive impact on the families who rely on it, as is amply demonstrated by the number of cases and queries that appear in all our postbags and inboxes. I want to raise a particular case with which I have been involved. Quite soon after I entered the House, a lady came to my constituency surgery. Her relationship with her partner broke down, very sadly, while she was pregnant. She discovered at that stage that her partner had been cheating on her, and she has described him as an abusive liar. I cannot imagine the trauma that a woman must experience when she finds out that her partner is cheating on her while she is still carrying his unborn child.

My constituent’s ex-partner has never made his child maintenance payments consistently, apart from a few sparse payments here and there. He works full time, but as soon as the Child Maintenance Service sees that he is working on a PAYE basis for longer than a few months, he either changes jobs or claims that he is not working, and works “cash in hand” to try to get out of paying. He has also been convicted of breaking two non-molestation orders. He has been taken to court before and made to pay some money, but unfortunately as soon as the court has seen him make a few payments, the case is transferred back to the Child Maintenance Service and he very soon stops paying. Obviously arrears then accrue, and he now owes more than £10,000 in unpaid maintenance. He is living the life of a rich man, yet he supposedly cannot afford to pay for his child.

No one should have to go through what my constituent has been experiencing, and I am delighted that the Bill will go some way towards ensuring that parents do not have to go through it any more. Sadly, as we all know, since the CMS was set up 11 years ago, nearly £500 million of maintenance has not been paid. I am pleased that the Government have taken steps towards resolving that, and I believe that the Bill will continue to improve the position.

We have already heard some explanations of the two child maintenance payment systems, direct pay and collect and pay. It is quite complicated, but I think that it bears repetition. For direct pay, the CMS provides a calculation and a payment schedule, but payments are arranged privately between the two parents. That is, of course, far the most favourable way to proceed. Where necessary, for collect and pay, the CMS calculates how much child maintenance should be paid, collects the money from the paying parent, and pays it to the receiving parent. Collect and pay tends to involve cases in which a more collaborative arrangement between parents has failed or not been possible to achieve, or there are high levels of conflict. Paying parents on collect and pay are therefore considered to be less likely to meet their payment responsibilities and, indeed, evidence shows that to be the case.

Clause 2 in particular will assist in the collection of payments from unwilling paying parents. It provides for the Secretary of State to make a liability order when the paying parent has failed to pay an amount of child maintenance, and a deduction from earnings order is inappropriate or has been ineffective. The clause provides an assurance that administrative enforcement measures will be appropriately considered before more stringent measures are taken. As I understand it, in practice, that will mean that enforcement measures will be able to be taken much more quickly against parents who have failed to meet their obligations. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that in his summing up.

Clause 3 expands the power to make administrative liability orders by setting out in regulations provision for the variation of a liability order, for example, where the amount of arrears upon which the liability order is based is subsequently amended as more information about the paying parent’s income is obtained. This is important to constituents such as mine where the father has consistently lied about his earnings. Clause 4 gives the Secretary of State the power to set out in regulations provisions that relate to a parent’s right of appeal against a liability order. Those provisions will include the paying parent’s right of appeal to a court, the period within which the right of appeal may be exercised, the powers of the court in respect of those appeals, and provision for a liability order not to come into force in specified circumstances. The provisions in clause 4 will prevent court time from being used to consider day-to-day CMS business that can be completed operationally, again speeding things up. Importantly, the provisions will, therefore, not place any additional or unreasonable constraints on a parent’s ability to seek an appeal.

The Bill is important in ensuring that the CMS can make the necessary improvements to enforcement processes and get money to children more quickly. We must ensure that, when someone asks for help through the CMS, they get help quickly and in a way that makes them feel supported. We must also ensure that parents who are messing about with court procedures know that there will be sanctions and action against them.

This is an incredibly important Bill. It will allow parents in situations like those of my constituent to receive the money they are owed much more quickly and efficiently, and it will help to protect vulnerable children; I am delighted to see that it has support today from across the House. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, who is not here today, for giving us the opportunity to debate this issue and for her sterling efforts to ensure that children receive the money that they deserve.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call shadow Minister Karen Buck.

Energy (oil and gas) profits levy

Debate between Anna Firth and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I have been here.

[Anna Firth]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I remind Opposition Members that this budget is bringing in the largest ever increase to the national living wage—as we have heard, £1,600 on average for millions and millions of workers. These are not people at the top of the tree.