Covid-19

Debate between Bob Stewart and Chris Bryant

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I want to talk about a dangerous bit of fake science that is doing the rounds—the so-called Great Barrington declaration which calls for focused protection for the vulnerable and ending all lockdowns and restrictions so that everyone else should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Idyllic. Some 6,300 people have signed the declaration. That sounds impressive, but that is a tiny, tiny proportion of all the medical professionals in the world, the vast majority of whom dismiss that approach out of hand.

Many of the signatories to the declaration are not world-leading epidemiologists and virologists. Many of them are homeopaths and self-certified therapists. They include the famous Dr Johnny Bananas, the Rev. Booker Clownn, Dr Person Fakename and Mr Matt Hancock, although not the one of this parish. I remember what fake science did over the MMR vaccine when lots of journalists paid court to one man, Dr Andrew Wakefield, simply because he had the title Doctor in front of his name. That caused immeasurable harm to a very important vaccine programme.

Some of the people who signed the declaration told us earlier this year that the virus would just melt away by the summer and others guaranteed that there would not be a second wave. Yet some people still support them. None of the declaration’s assertions is supported by evidence. They do not even pretend to be. There are no references to peer-reviewed research; they are simply assertions.

It is completely wrong to call people who believe all this stuff “nutcases”. I did earlier this week and I wish that I had not used that word the other day. I have worked long enough in acquired brain injury and as a personal counsellor to others to know that that is wrong. I apologise. But this really is a fringe opinion shared by conspiracy theorists, funded by hard-right economic libertarian extremists in the United States of America and advocated entirely by fake scientists. Ignorance is one thing. Deliberate ignorance really is stupidity.

At the heart of the declaration is the belief that we need to acquire herd immunity by letting everybody get infected. The facts—and there are no alternative facts here—are that there is no evidence that contracting covid-19 grants long-term immunity to future infection. We already know that one can catch it twice and it is not yet a year old. Other coronaviruses only grant temporary immunity. Fact.

[Bob Stewart]

To support the hon. Gentleman’s case, may I point out that if we could achieve herd immunity, we would not contract diseases like measles? We still get them, so herd immunity is impossible to achieve.

[Chris Bryant]

In this case, the point is that we will not achieve herd immunity just by trying to let everyone get the disease. That is an immoral proposition. We have all heard the line that this virus is not that dangerous and is less dangerous than flu. I am sure that we have all had emails about it. The facts—and again there are no alternative facts here—are that covid is more easily transmitted than flu and has more complications for more people. Between January and August 2020, there were 48,168 deaths due to covid-19—not associated with it—compared with 13,619 deaths due to pneumonia and 394 deaths due to influenza. The number of deaths due to covid up to 31 August this year was higher than those due to influenza and pneumonia in every single year since 1959, including years when we did not have a vaccine for flu.

The other theme of the great declaration is supposed to be focused protection. Again, that sounds great—“let’s protect the most vulnerable”—but we cannot just shut the elderly and vulnerable away and throw away the key. They do not live in hermetically sealed units, funnily enough. They rely on nurses, carers, home helps and family members. All those people would presumably have to be locked away. Is somebody going to suggest that the most vulnerable communities—in fact, the BAME community—are en masse all going to be locked away, as well as the overweight, no doubt, and all the men? Of course, that is a complete and utter nonsense. By one estimate, we would be incarcerating a quarter of the whole UK population.

There is a cruelty at the heart of this proposal: it is basically survival of the fittest. Yes, it does make me angry when people propose it. It makes me angry for those who have lost loved ones this year, who seem to be ignored. It makes me angry for the NHS staff who have slogged their way through the misery on our behalf and need us all to realise that there is a much better creed than survival of the fittest, and it is that we are all in this together.

Immigration

Debate between Bob Stewart and Chris Bryant

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I will start with the issues on which I completely and utterly agree with the Minister. First, I agree that this is not an issue we should—[Interruption.] I am sorry, the Minister is wittering something, I think. [Interruption.] He is carrying on.

The Minister said that he believed this House should consider immigration on a regular basis, and he is absolutely right that if serious politicians in the mainstream political parties do not talk about immigration, we vacate the scene and leave it to extremists from other political parties and those who have no desire to foster good community relations.

Sometimes the debate gets heated, although I suspect it is not going to get very heated this evening if the proceedings so far are anything to go by. Some talk about immigration in this country is undoubtedly racist, but I have never subscribed to the view that just because somebody thinks immigration is the single most important political issue facing the country, that makes them racist. If I were to think that, I would probably be telling most of my constituents that they were racists. That is not because the Rhondda is full of people who have come to this country in recent years. In fact, I believe that of all the constituencies in the land it is the one where fewest people were born outside the UK, but that does not mean that my constituents are not directly affected by many of the issues that are enveloped in the whole issue of immigration.

There is a great deal of misunderstanding. Many have confused asylum with immigration, and serious politicians have always wanted to keep those issues apart, as the Minister for Immigration has.

I asked the Minister whether the Government had decided where they were going on the threshold salary that somebody should have if they were to bring in a dependant. He said it was a “good try”, but I asked solely because I thought the Government had an announcement to make today. I suspect that they were originally going to announce something, which was why they decided to hold this debate, but suddenly there were other important matters to be discussed, the announcement disappeared, and with it went the Home Secretary.

It is a simple fact that because world travel is now so much easier for the vast majority of people, there is inevitably more migration. People can physically move around the world and relocate, and many more do so. Occasionally—I am sure all hon. Members have heard of this in their constituency surgeries—people go abroad on holiday, meet somebody and fall in love with them and want to bring them back to this country. For that matter, my parents met not in this country but in Spain—they were both British—and came back to the UK.

Many other things have affected migration in recent years, not least the fact that countries that were once closed to the rest of the world have opened up, Spain being a classic example. Under Franco, Spain was closed to many, and people could not easily get a visa to go there or vice versa. Similarly, most of the eastern bloc of the EU was closed, as were Portugal and many other places.

In addition, the UK, which is primarily a trading nation, has always had much inward and outward migration. In Wales, we are particularly conscious that, at the turn of the 20th century, when there were no jobs in south Wales, many Welsh people went to live in Argentina, which is why there is a large community of Welsh speakers there. Indeed, William Abraham tried to migrate to Argentina but could not get a job there. He ended up coming back here and became the first MP for Rhondda.

The Minister referred to the fact that many British people go abroad, but it strikes me that British people abroad are often far and away the worst at integrating into local communities—one has only to visit Buenos Aires, where there are more piped bands than there are in Stirling and Edinburgh put together, to recognise that enculturation is not the primary focus of British people when they go to other countries.

For that matter, one has only to look at areas of south Wales to see that inward migration has been a vital part of the economic success of the past. Calzaghe is a not-unknown south Walean name, because people came from many places to work in the mines at one time. The English-Welsh word for a coffee shop is “brachi” because many thousands came from Badi in Italy in particular to work in the mines as that was where the work was. Likewise, many came from Ireland and even a few from England.

The problem, of course, is that migration has very many different vectors. It is not, as some have assumed, that migration to this country has been stimulated because we have a supportive welfare system or a strong NHS. In actual fact, the vast majority of migration is caused by elements that push people away from their home country, be that war, famine or political instability, which often leads to asylum. I remember a debate a few weeks ago with the Immigration Minister on migration from north Africa. He was optimistic that the situation developing in the Maghreb would mean that many fewer would come to the UK than were originally expected either for asylum or other reasons, but the most recent figures show that there has been a significant migration to the UK and a significant increase in the number of asylum cases. That issue will inevitably have to be kept under review.

One other potential vector, which other hon. Members have addressed on other occasions, is climate change. If the seas of the world rise because of climate change, there is a strong likelihood that some of the poorest people in the world will not only want to move but have no choice but to do so, because many of their homes are in the most exposed areas.

I agree with the Minister that migration is not always good. Very often, refugees end up extremely disoriented when they arrive in this country, either because their language skills are not brilliant or because they do not understand the system—they might not even understand what side of the road we drive on and things like that. I was struck by that the other day. There was a fight in Tesco Metro and a young man, who had clearly been drinking, was shouting at the shopkeepers, “You have no understanding. I am in this country. I am allowed to be in this country, but I am not allowed to work.” It turned out he was Albanian. Who knows how he will manage to get himself home? The pain of many of those who are forced to travel the world because they are simply seeking a better place for themselves can be writ large.

Often the receiving communities are ill equipped, either financially or culturally, to welcome people. When the number of asylum claimants in the UK was at its highest—not necessarily because of anything that had happened in this country, but because of factors in other parts of the world at a time of particularly unstable international relations—many communities in this country found it genuinely very difficult to take on board the number of people who went to live there, even though they wanted to be welcoming.

In addition—this is what I am most aware of in my constituency because a number of constituents have raised it with me—many feel that there are few jobs out there at the moment as it is, particularly at the lower end of the scale. There are few jobs for manual labourers, and when they get them, they are sometimes turfed out after just three or four months because somebody comes from another EU country and is prepared to do the job more cheaply. A constituent came to me last week. He was delighted when three months ago his son got a job in Gloucester—he travelled there and back every day—but then his son and the five others who were employed were sacked and their jobs taken immediately by people from Poland. The vast majority of my constituents simply do not understand why that should be so and feel that there is a fundamental unfairness in the system.

No hon. Member will today suggest that we should change all the EU’s provisions. Labour Members have already accepted that we should have introduced transitional arrangements for the countries that joined the EU more recently. We should have gone along with countries that did so, and we underestimated the number of people who would come to this country. Of course, two more countries will have full rights in 2014, and it will be interesting to hear the Government’s estimate of the number of people who will come to the UK from them.

Although it is easy to identify some of the problems in relation to immigration, it is not always easy to identify the answers. I have been lobbied quite ferociously by quite a lot of lesbian and gay organisations on what they term “gay asylum”, which is when somebody comes to this country because they will be persecuted for their sexuality in their country. Those organisations believe that nobody should be sent back to their country to face discrimination and a difficult life. Although I wholeheartedly agree that we should not send lesbian and gay people back to Iran to face almost certain imprisonment, it is very difficult to have a simple, straightforward open door for anybody who chooses to claim that they are lesbian or gay. I suspect that the problem is not as simple as people would want it to be.

Similarly, I raised the issue of family members coming to this country. Nobody in the House would believe that somebody bringing a spouse or a member of their family to this country should be able to do so and then put a burden on the state. The question though, as the Migration Advisory Committee has pointed out, is what placing a burden on the state means exactly. Does it mean that someone should not be in receipt of benefits or does it mean that at no stage in the future should that person receive anything from the state? That determines the level at which the threshold would be applied.

Some of the poorer constituencies and communities are of course concerned that the rule will allow rich people to go abroad, fall in love and bring someone back, but poorer people will not be able to do that. The danger is that the rule is unfair.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman referred to being a burden on the state, which also makes me think of problems connected to education and the NHS. It is not just whether migrants are employed; it is also their need for services that we ordinarily expect for our citizens.

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed, and in a sense that is the conundrum that the Government have to try to resolve. At some point, they will obviously change the threshold from its present low level, but if they go for a significantly higher figure, the danger is that it will introduce an unfairness. The strange thing is that while people might be intrinsically opposed to individuals in general being allowed to bring others into this country, they tend to adopt a slightly different attitude when confronted by individuals that they have got to know.

The NHS also has specific needs in relation to migration. Several hon. Members have approached me about problems that their local accident and emergency units are having, because these days many doctors do not want to work in those units—there can be violence, many people are drunk and there is no ongoing care for patients. Many trusts, and many local health boards in Wales, have been looking to recruit internationally, but it is impossible for them to do so because of the way in which the rules are structured. That is placing a very precise burden on some accident and emergency units. Of course it would be better if we planned better so that we did not have skills shortages, but in some parts of the country they do exist.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Debate between Bob Stewart and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely.

Then there were the subsequent civil cases, which could only be brought once The Guardian had run its story suggesting that there were many more victims of phone hacking. Some people started writing in to the Metropolitan police and then suing the police to force them to give them the information, so that they could then take action against News International and get full disclosure from it. It is only as a result of those cases that the cover-up has effectively been smashed apart.

There remains this issue of the material that was gathered and put into a file in 2007, including various e-mails and other pieces of paper, and given to Harbottle & Lewis. Only this year, it was shown to the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, who said that, within three minutes of looking at it, he could see that there was material relating to the payment of police officers that should always have been given to the Metropolitan police. That seems to me a far greater criminal offence than the original criminal offence of phone hacking. That is why my concern is about the cover-up at the heart of this.

Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch was asked whether he was responsible and he said, “No,” but I am afraid that in this country we have to have a much stronger concept of responsibility. It is not just about whether something happens on one’s watch—that is ludicrously broad. If someone has taken all due diligence steps to try to ensure that criminality has not happened, then of course they are not personally responsible. But if someone’s argument is, “Our company is so big that I could not possibly be expected to know whether my journalists were being arrested for criminal activity or whether I was paying out £2 million in hush money,” one must question whether they have a proper corporate governance structure or system in place to make sure that the same thing does not happen again next year or next week—or even that it is not happening now.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

This is the difference between responsibility and fault. Rupert Murdoch was responsible for what happened in his corporation, but he may not have been at fault for what happened. However, that responsibility includes the real responsibility for checking that things were done properly. I think I support what the hon. Gentleman is saying.

[Chris Bryant]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman, whom—this will ruin his career—I think of as a friend. He knows that if the colonel of a regiment had not done everything in his power to make sure that his privates understood the law on how somebody in Abu Ghraib was dealt with, for example, that colonel would be negligent and therefore, in part, responsible for that.

Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Chris Bryant

Friday 11th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Surely this is all about fairness for constituents who have a Member of Parliament. It is also about a Member of Parliament’s right to represent their constituents.

I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that it will be difficult to sort out the problem. As we have heard, the problem goes all the way back to Simon de Montfort. Equally, we must remember the problems with the Irish Home Rule Bills in the late 19th century, which were solved—kind of. We had Stormont until 1972, which I can recall operating when I was a soldier.

The issue will become increasingly important as power, particularly the power to raise taxes, is dissipated down. As I understand it, the Scottish Parliament might be able to raise 2p in the pound on income tax. Is that correct? I think that it is. The Scotland Bill may allow more discretion on that. When one starts talking about money as well as issues such as health, education and prisons, there is a big difference. It is important that we find a way ahead, but it will not be easy.

I have had a few tangles with the Table Office, when I used what I thought were plain words in a question. I have had to go there several times after my homework was sent back, but I am sure that the clever people in the Table Office can design a form of words that will help. Surely it should be possible to identify whether a Bill concerns England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

[Chris Bryant]

That has not always been my experience of the Table Office, which is often directional and forceful in saying that one cannot table a particular question in, for example, Welsh questions. In such cases, it is often drawn into rows.

Earlier, I suggested that Labour won more votes than the Conservatives in the 2005 election. Actually, we were 70,000 votes short but 92 seats ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my hon. Friend—well, not my friend, but he could be, if he is nicer. I thank the hon. Gentleman.

It will become increasingly important that we address this problem. I am sure now, too, that that problem will be helped by some sort of solution, such as that suggested by my right hon., learned and former Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who is not in his position, but whom I shall make it up with. Before you were here, Madam Deputy Speaker, I called him “old friend”, and he said, “Not as old as you.” [Interruption.] I am so sorry; I am getting into more trouble now. Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was referring to my right hon., learned and somewhat gallant Friend the Member for Kensington, who produced an elegant solution that would not be a big problem to sort out: the double vote, which my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who shares the same name as me and who must be slightly Scottish, as I am, suggested that he endorsed as well.

[Chris Bryant]

I keep on thinking up more reasons why I dislike that double mandate, so I will suggest another one: one of the reasons why, traditionally, we have granted that a Bill should be given a Second Reading is so that it can be amended. Quite often, hon. Members will allow a debate on Second Reading to proceed because they want to amend something. That is the danger. Many hon. Members might want to amend a Bill to include Welsh or Scottish provisions, but they might have been prohibited from taking part in the debate on Second Reading, and that rather conflicts with the whole purpose of such a debate.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for, once again, being so perceptive as to pick a few little holes. I accept that this is not an easy problem; there is no easy fix. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) is suggesting a gradual, slow change, which I support. But I also support the idea that, when the commission sits this year, as we learn, it considers a solution. I prefer evolution, rather than revolution. I would prefer that we start to address this problem, and I am attracted to the idea presented by my new friend, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, who has departed for a coffee. I endorse in the meantime my hon. Friend’s Bill.