Oral Answers to Questions

Brian Leishman Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend mentions a vital area. There is an important role for youth services as part of this, but we also need to do much more around safeguarding. The provisions in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill on multi-agency child protection measures and much more besides, and the additional investment that we are putting into the system around children’s social care, will make a real difference in tackling the unacceptable exploitation that sadly blights the lives of too many children across our country.

[Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)]

4. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to implement the findings of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman report on women’s state pension age.

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

The Government have made and published their decision. We accepted the ombudsman’s finding of maladministration and apologised for the delay in writing to the women affected. We have started working with the ombudsman to make sure that lessons are learnt, and we will develop a plan for effective and timely state pension communication.

[Brian Leishman]

It is fair to say that people are disillusioned with politics and politicians because they feel that things do not change—not for the better, anyway. The Tories would not compensate the WASPI women, and it looks like neither will we. The Tories here and the Scottish National party Government in Holyrood abandoned the workers of the Grangemouth refinery, and I have to say that, so far, our Government have not fared any better. My question is a pointed one: do the Secretary of State and the wider Government not realise that if we do not provide the positive change that we promised and improve living standards, the next Government could be a hard-line, far-right effort that looks to impoverish society further?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that we have been elected on a manifesto of change, and change is we what will deliver. We have been working hard on Grangemouth. On the question of WASPI, we do not think that compensation is appropriate. The evidence is that 90% of those affected did know that a change was coming, but we cannot work out now who did and who did not know. Among those investigated by the ombudsman, nobody lost out financially from not knowing, so we could not justify paying out up to £10 billion in compensation. Instead, we are going to work to make sure that the problem never happens again.

Outsourcing: Government Departments

Brian Leishman Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship today, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) for highlighting this issue and securing this debate.

The faith that the private sector will always deliver value for money and the standard of service that we require and desire is rooted in a political ideology that knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Like many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, I was delighted by our party’s pre-election pledge to oversee the biggest wave of insourcing for a generation, so that we can see a change in culture from the continuous erosion of service provision, the reliance on the private sector and the race to the bottom.

I pay credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) for highlighting the need for prison maintenance insourcing and her call for the Government to bring all prison maintenance back in house at the earliest opportunity.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East said, it is well documented that our prison estate is crumbling after years of neglect, with prison maintenance privatisation being an example of escalating costs while service provision deteriorates. For our prisons to be the rehabilitation facilities that society needs them to be, they cannot be the decrepit and fetid facilities that so many are currently. Likewise, no worker—especially not hard-working prison officers, who have a physically, mentally and emotionally demanding job—should be expected to go to their place of work, and carry out their duties to the standard they want, and is expected of them, in an environment that makes their role so much harder and unpleasant.

Like so many problems the Government face, these are not issues that are of our making. However, they are our problems to sort now, and a problem like prison maintenance does have a solution. The Government should take the leap, and stop the overwhelming reliance on the private sector to provide services. It is time the Government trusted themselves to provide a solution. We can then invest in people and provide a quality of service that looks after workers, communities and the infrastructure of our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brian Leishman Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Can Members who are just roaming around the Chamber remember that there are other people here and have a little more courtesy?

[Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)]

If the Grangemouth refinery closes in 2025 and the recommendations of Project Willow will not be ready for years to come, thousands of jobs will be lost—the very definition of an unjust transition. How can the Government possibly claim to have a credible industrial strategy for Scotland if they allow that to happen?

[Ian Murray]

The closure of the Grangemouth refinery is regrettable. My hon. Friend needs to reflect on the fact that the previous Government and the Scottish Government had 32 years combined to do something about Grangemouth and did not lift a finger. Since we came into government in July, we have got the £100 million Falkirk and Grangemouth growth deal over the line and delivered some short-term help for the workers at Grangemouth. We continue to work with the company and the trade unions on the Grangemouth refinery. We look forward to Project Willow coming to fruition this month, and the Government are fully committed to ensuring that we see that through.

House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill

Brian Leishman Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

When I was a shadow Minister for many years, I found that some of the Labour Ministers I shadowed did the job I just described very well, and some did not. When I became a Minister, I saw that some Conservative Ministers engaged in the kind of process I have described, and some did not. There has always been variability in the way that power has been exercised across political parties. I invite the hon. Gentleman to speak to any of the people who shadowed me when I was a Minister to see if they would validate how I described the way I acted in those days. The authority of Parliament, the authority of our constitution and the authority of Government are all at stake as we consider these matters.

I return to where I started in terms of efficacy. The last time we considered these matters, Members will remember that I quoted Proust. It was a bit too rich a diet for the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. He is not a Proustian. I think it stretched the canon of his reading matter beyond breaking point. Today, I am going to test him a little more and refer to G. K. Chesterton, who I think might be more within his scope. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, he is acknowledging that. Chesterton said:

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”

It is certainly true that, based on their mandate, the Government have the right to bring this legislation, but I am not sure that they are right in doing it, measured against my tests of dignity, legitimacy, continuity and authority. For as Chesterton also said, before you take a fence down, you consider why it was put up in the first place. The balance that exists at the moment, both within the House of Lords, and between the House of Lords and this House, is precious. It works. It ain’t broke and we don’t need to fix it.

Before I finish, let me say this to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar. We must vote against the Bill on Third Reading, because whether we are in favour of more reform—as some of my colleagues are—or no reform, the Bill does not meet the standards we would expect of good legislation. It is therefore vital that the official Opposition make their position crystal clear by opposing this undesirable and unnecessary legislation.

[Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)]

For the record, when we talk about more reform, it is with a lower case “r”.

For many people, the other place in its current format embodies what Britain really should not be: it is undemocratic, it is unelected and—to touch on this only very lightly—it has had its fair share of controversial appointments. There is a suggestion of nepotism here and a dash of financial scandal there, not to mention a sprinkling of oligarchy. Therefore, it represents what a classist society of haves and have-nots can produce. As we know, some Members are there on a hereditary basis, and some are there on the whim and wishes of political leaders who, of course, have their own political motives for having them in position. It is also clear that the different regions that make up the United Kingdom do not have fair representation. The other place does not just have a geographical imbalance, but a gender one—none of which I care for.

I believe that there should be an upper Chamber. In Scotland, we have seen some ill-thought-out political policy that has been financially costly. An upper Chamber would likely have prevented that with the benefit of added scrutiny.

Like British society, the other place needs transformational change. What the Government propose is only a step in the right direction to what I, as a Labour party member, will continue to campaign for from within the party, which is ultimately to change the other place into an elected Chamber where class and privilege are not the entry requirements, but where talent and ability are what get you there.