European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and David Lammy

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to have just a few moments to make a contribution to this important debate.

I think it has now been 1,216 days since the referendum, and it is clear that all of us in this House are weary and fatigued by, and some of us are certainly fed up with, the groundhog day of constant debate about this subject. In my constituency only the weekend before last, two men were knifed to within an inch of their lives. While we were sitting in the debate on Saturday, I saw an email from a constituent who was complaining that his 10-year-old son had just been mugged. I would so much prefer that we were talking about law and order and crime in our country. This morning, the GP practice that served me and my family growing up in Tottenham for most of my life was described as inadequate by the inspectorate. Again, I wish we were discussing health in this Chamber, not constantly returning to this issue.

As I reflect on where we are, and think about very good colleagues and friends on the Opposition Benches who are minded to vote for this Bill, I think of what connects constituencies such as mine and their constituencies in other parts of the country, and that is most certainly a degree of deprivation and poverty that our country should have escaped from by 2019 but is very real on our high streets when we look at the proliferation of betting shops and abandoned shops, when we visit our estates, and when we look at the prospects for too many of our young people.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend refers to people feeling frustrated, bored and fatigued. Does he agree that none of those things is an excuse for making what could be a very, very bad decision in haste, which is what the Government are trying to make us do today?

[Mr Lammy]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. As much as this decision is one that needs to be taken, we should not make it haste and we should think very, very carefully about the implications for our country.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and David Lammy

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is easy to dismiss views with which you disagree if you never listen to them and just dismiss the people who hold them as villains or enemies of the people.

Yet it is on these terms that we are being asked to rubber-stamp a blank cheque for the Government to deliver the most extreme version of Brexit imaginable. We are being asked to ignore the fact that leaving the European Union will saddle us with a £60 billion divorce bill. We are not going to get tariff-free access to EU customers while rejecting free movement; that is not on the table. We are not going to get a more favourable trading agreement with Europe from outside the single market; that is a paradox. We are not going to come to a full agreement with Europe within two years; believing otherwise completely flies in the face of precedent and all evidence.

Exiting without a deal and falling back on the World Trade Organisation rules is being talked about as though that is a good option. That is totally wrong—it would be an absolute disaster for this country. Even on the optimistic assumption that we can sign trade agreements all over the world, this does not even come close to making up for the loss of the single market. We are facing a return to a hard border in Northern Ireland and a breakdown of the Union with Scotland. We are not reclaiming sovereignty, another promise that falls apart under any scrutiny: we are transferring it to a negotiation behind closed doors.

Doctors are against it, scientists are against it, the financial services sector is against it, and manufacturers are against it because of their exports, but these people are dismissed—and why? Because these days we do not listen to experts. Yes, we are leaving, but it is the EU nations that decide how we leave and what we end up with. Where will this end in 2019? We do not know. Outside the single market, for sure, and outside the customs union, with no trade deal with Europe or anywhere else, our only friend President Trump—a man who has demonstrated why we should worry greatly about a free trade agreement that will probably lead to Kaiser Permanente running the NHS.

We should not fool ourselves. This is not, and never has been, a debate about the economy; it has always been about immigration. We are staring down the barrel of a hard Brexit because immigration has been prioritised over everything else: the economy, jobs, and living standards.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the whole debate on immigration has been completely dishonest in that it has failed to recognise that like all developed, ageing economies, we are going to need migration in order to thrive in the future? We could stop more than half of the net immigration into this country tomorrow, because it is from outside the EU.

[Mr Lammy]

Absolutely.

We were told during the campaign that we could cut immigration without hitting our economy. We were sold the lie that immigrants come here and take more than they contribute. Between 1995 and 2011, European immigrants made a net contribution of £4.4 billion to our public services. In the same period, our native population cost us £591 billion. Our economy cannot exist without people coming here to do the jobs that people in the country either do not want or do not have the skills to do.

It is almost half a century since a Member of this House, in a very different era, made these same warnings of

“wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth…children unable to obtain school places”

and

“homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition”.

How far we have fallen when a black British Member of Parliament, of African and Caribbean descent, has to stand here quoting Enoch Powell. It is the easy option to blame migrants who come here with skills instead of successive Governments, both Conservative and Labour, who have failed: failed to educate our own to compete, failed to build affordable housing, failed to fund our public services, and failed to ensure that growth is felt outside of London and the south-east. A hard Brexit will not deal with any of the long-standing structural problems highlighted by the Brexit vote—it will make them worse. The real tragedy is that Whitehall and Parliament, so consumed with Brexit for the next decade, will have no capacity to deal with these hard-pressing issues.

There are Conservative Members who have been dreaming of a low-tax, low-wage, low-regulation offshore tax haven for decades, and now they have it in their grasp, they salivate at the thought of us becoming the new Singapore. I am not going to stand with them. If we let the Prime Minister pursue this reckless course—this Brexit at any cost—we know who will suffer. It will be the poorest, many of whom are in my constituency. The referendum was not just about votes from the north; 52% of leave voters lived in the south of England, 59% were middle class and 58% voted Conservative in 2015. I remind my colleagues who are worried about this, and who are thinking of voting with the Government, of those things.

Let me finish by asking one simple question, which was once asked by one of our most celebrated parliamentarians:

“Is it prudent? Is it possible, however we might desire it, to turn our backs upon Europe”?

When Churchill spoke those words, he was talking about appeasement, and he was going very much against the prevailing wind. The same is true today. Patriotism requires more than just blind faith. We must remember our history, our values, what we represent and what we stand for. Most of all, we must remember what we stand against. For all those reasons, and for the sake of this country that I love, I will be voting against triggering article 50.

Aleppo/Syria: International Action

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and David Lammy

Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bradshaw]

I will not give way for the moment.

There have been so many missed opportunities. As the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), said in his excellent speech, many people across the world have been calling for action against Assad since he started slaughtering his own people five years ago. In August 2013, after the international outrage at his use of chemical weapons, we had the chance, but we blew it; the Conservatives blew it, we blew it—every political party in this House blew it. The former Chancellor was absolutely right when he said that that had a direct impact on what the United States did then, with President Obama fatally withdrawing from the red line he had drawn on the use of chemical weapons, with absolutely horrendous consequences, not just now in Syria, but for the future of our world to come.

At any stage since that calamity, the Government could have come back to this House with proposals for safe areas, no-fly zones and, most recently, aid drops, but they did not. Just two weeks ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury made it quite clear that we would support airdrops. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), hid behind the excuse of not having parliamentary authority, but he did not even seek it, which has been a pattern of this Government over the past few years. As a desperate aid worker told the BBC yesterday, it might now be too late.

We now have the disgusting spectacle of a combination of far right and far left from around the world, united only in their contempt for democracy and human rights, celebrating what they call a “liberation”. Why do we constantly forget the lessons of appeasement, whether from the 1930s or more recently from the Balkans? Statements on Syria from Conservative Ministers have sounded just like the ones I remember from when they were dealing—or not dealing—with Milosevic as he rampaged through Bosnia. When will we understand that dictators such as Assad and Putin only respect strength and the credible threat or use of force? When will we realise that Russia’s strategy is to weaken and divide the free world and that driving the biggest refugee flows into Europe since world war two is a deliberate part of that plan? When will we admit that Putin is already achieving what he cannot achieve militarily through cyber-warfare and propaganda?

The motion that we are debating is welcome, but it is pathetic. It refers to the House considering “international action” in Aleppo. There will no international action, because there is no political will, either here or in the other countries where such will is necessary.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend as anxious as I am? With Putin and Russia linked to interference in the American election, with the bombing of Syria leading to a refugee crisis in Europe and with many central European countries looking inward, like we are, Putin’s expansionist tendencies and desire for a warm port should make the Foreign Secretary think carefully about the actions from this point on onwards.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I completely agree. We have not even begun to wake up to Russia’s cyber-warfare. Its interference in the American presidential elections is now proven. It probably interfered in our own referendum—we do not have the evidence for that yet, but it is highly probable. It will certainly be involved in the French presidential election. There are already serious concerns in the German secret service that Russia is already interfering in the upcoming elections. We have to wake up to this, but when?

Finally, the tragedy today is the tragedy of the benighted people of Aleppo issuing desperate, and probably futile, last-minute appeals for help to the outside world. The tragedy tomorrow will be all of ours for failing to stop this happening and for the consequences. Shame on us.

Accident and Emergency Waiting Times

Debate between Ben Bradshaw and David Lammy

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I associate myself absolutely with the remarks made by the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) about tariff reform, but given the time constraints, I will restrict my remarks to one particular issue that is putting pressure on the A and E crisis. I am talking about access to GPs.

I want to share testimony that I have recently received from people in Exeter. The first comes from a young teacher:

“Again and again, whenever I want to see a doctor there are no appointments available for as long as a week away, in addition to appointments not being made available at accessible times. Being a teacher, I am unable to easily pop out for a doctor’s appointment.”

Another constituent wrote to me last month about the A and E crisis:

“I believe one of the main reasons for this is that it has become very difficult to see your own GP unless you are prepared to wait three weeks for an appointment. I have personal experience of this, as do many of my friends and colleagues, and this is making people with minor ailments attend A and E in order to be seen.”

You will remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, that when Labour was in government, we introduced a requirement on GPs to grant appointments to their patients within 48 hours. We also introduced incentives in the GP contract for GPs to open at weekends and in the evenings, and we established GP walk-in centres in every primary care trust in England—in some areas, we established more than that. It worked. By the end of our Government, complaints from the public about GP access had declined significantly, as had pressure on A and Es that resulted from people not being able to see a GP.

By May 2010 more than 75% of GP practices in England were opening in the evenings and at weekends. Under this Government, however, 500 of those practices have reduced their opening times again. By May 2010, there were walk-in centres in every area offering quick, easy access to a GP, seven days a week and 12 hours a day. Since 2011, 25% of those centres have closed, and scrapping the requirement for GPs to offer an appointment within 48 hours has led to a return of the bad old days of people waiting days or weeks to see a GP, and therefore going to A and E instead.

[Mr Lammy]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Bradshaw]

I regret I will not do so because I have so little time.

When I wrote to the Health Secretary with the cases from Exeter that I referred to earlier, his colleague, Earl Howe, replied:

“It is our view that 48-hour access did not focus on outcomes, and specifying a particular model to deliver better services for patients misses the point about local needs, local services and local accountability.”

That, I am afraid, is gobbledegook. My hard-working constituents, who pay for the NHS, want to be able to see a GP when they need to and at a time convenient for them. Earl Howe’s letter went on to say that as this was a local issue, I should raise my concerns with the clinical commissioning group, which I promptly did. It replied stating:

“As this relates to GP services, the letter should be sent to NHS England.”

I await its response with interest.

Will the Minister help the House by making clear in her response who is responsible for ensuring that the public can see a GP quickly and conveniently? I was encouraged to hear the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) tell the “World at One” yesterday that he wanted to improved GP access, including opening times, in response to the A and E crisis. Hallelujah! May I suggest, however, that he and he colleagues start by stopping the closure of walk-in centres, and reintroduce Labour’s requirements and incentives for GPs to give appointments within 48 hours and to open their surgeries at weekends and in the evenings? Without such measures, I am afraid that current pressures on A and Es will simply get worse.