Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Wes Streeting

2nd reading
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

That is a very helpful intervention because it gives me the opportunity to say thank you to my counterparts in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is a genuinely four-nations Bill, and through it, we have an opportunity to create a smokefree generation in every corner of our country.

I say to people who have an ideological objection to the Bill that if they believe in lower taxes, as they say they do, and in maintaining a national health service, as they say they do, they cannot duck this simple equation: an ageing population plus a sicker society equals more spending on the NHS, paid through higher taxes. The Bill is just one measure, but it will make a significant difference to the health of our society, and to the balance of that equation.

The question that opponents of the Bill must answer is this: if they want our health and care services to continue having to spend £3 billion every year on the symptoms of smoking, are they willing to accept that that means higher taxes or higher healthcare charges for their constituents? Are they happy for their constituents to shoulder the welfare bill for smokers falling out of the workforce? Those are the consequences of what we are voting on today. Higher taxes and higher welfare are not the Labour way.

There are arguments about liberty from those who oppose based on libertarian belief. They say that the state should not deny individuals the choice to smoke if they want to, but three quarters of smokers want to stop and wish they had never started. It takes a smoker an average of 30 attempts to quit before they manage it. By definition, an addict is not free; there is no choice, no liberty and no freedom in addiction. Nor is choice afforded to anyone inhaling second-hand smoke. Tobacco is not only highly addictive but uniquely harmful. Yes, some smokers can quit, but most who want to cannot. Those who have help to quit are three times more likely to succeed. That is why the Government are, as I said, investing £70 million in smoking cessation services—an investment that will pay for itself several times over—but prevention is better than cure, and that is why we are taking action, through the Bill, to stop the start.

In conclusion, this Bill marks the start of a decade in which we will shift the focus of healthcare from treatment to prevention; take serious action on not just smoking, but obesity; reform the NHS, so that it catches problems earlier and gives patients the tools that they need to stay out of hospital; harness the revolution taking place in life sciences; and fundamentally transform the NHS, so that it predicts illness and prevents it from ever taking hold. That is the future available to us, and it is the future we must realise if we are going to put our welfare system, health service and public finances on a sustainable footing. It starts with this Bill. Smokers are more likely to need NHS services, be admitted to hospital, drop out of the workforce and on to welfare, and need social care years earlier than if they did not smoke. By taking the measures set out in the Bill, we are putting the UK on the road to becoming smokefree, building a healthier, wealthier nation with a health service fit for the future and leading the world as we do so. I commend this Bill to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

TOEIC: Overseas Students

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Wes Streeting

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady will know that when it comes to court hearings, judges will decide whether people have a valid claim to remain in the UK. We continue to look at all the options, including whether there is a need for those who feel they have been wronged to be able to ask for their case to be reviewed. As I have said, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary intends to make further announcements in due course. However, it is right to reflect on the fact that this is a complicated issue, and it is right that we take time to make sure we get it right—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady may chunter at me from a sedentary position, but it is important that we make the right decisions and do not just give blanket promises that we will allow people to stay and will pay their costs, when it may be the case that they have cheated.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

The problem is that we are no further on. Although I acknowledge the time the Home Secretary and the Immigration Minister have given to meeting Members, no remedy is being offered to people—people into the whites of whose eyes we have to look in our surgeries—who had no reason whatever to cheat, given their written communication and English language speaking skills. I cannot go back to constituents such as Maruf Ahmed and tell them that we face the prospect possibly of a new Home Secretary and a new Immigration Minister looking at this afresh, and certainly of no action at all until the summer has passed. These people’s lives are being left in limbo.

Acknowledging what the Minister has said about there clearly having been some cheating, and acknowledging what other Members have said about some people clearly having been inadvertently and wrongly caught up in this, surely the best thing to do now, given the passage of time and the numbers of people involved, is just to let those people sit a secure English language test afresh to give them the opportunity to clear their names, and, if they cannot, to politely ask them to return to where they came from.

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that this evidence of cheating came to light in 2014, and evidence of people’s ability to speak English now may have no relation to their ability to speak English back then, given that we are five years on. However, I absolutely refute his accusation that we are no further forward. The written ministerial statement yesterday made it absolutely clear that the Home Secretary has asked officials to review Home Office guidance. The reviewing of that guidance relates to article 8 human rights claims to ensure that we make sensible decisions that are properly balanced in terms of any belief that deception was practised and of the individual’s wider circumstances. Where there are particularly compelling circumstances, we will also look at whether there is more we can do to help people put forward their claim. Given that this cheating was exposed in 2014, it is absolutely evident that people’s circumstances will have changed; they may well have established families in this country, and those children will have a right to an education here. We must put the priority of the families first. It is right that we should seek a mechanism to support people through an article 8 claim so that they can stay, when there are grounds for them to do so.

Overseas Students: English Language Tests

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Wes Streeting

Tuesday 30th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

As I mentioned earlier, the licence was revoked in July 2014, and the Home Office moved swiftly to revoke that licence. Action was taken against ETS but, because of the commercial sensitivities, I am afraid I cannot divulge details. However, I will ascertain from Home Office lawyers whether I can write to the hon. Lady and let her have that information.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

No one doubts that there was criminal behaviour and cheating, but it has been weeks since we were promised a decision by Ministers, months since we met the Home Secretary to outline concerns about people who had been wrongly implicated, and years during which these students have had their lives left in complete limbo, with them suffering mental ill health, financial hardship, family breakdown and a whole range of other detrimental consequences as a result of being accused of cheating—wrongly—by the British state. When will the Government finally get their act together? The longer this rolls on, and the longer people are caught up in expensive judicial action or lengthy, bureaucratic immigration appeals, the longer that is wasting their time, wasting their lives and wasting taxpayers’ money. Enough is enough.

[Caroline Nokes]

I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that those who were found to have a questionable result following the ETS investigations were given the opportunity to take a second test to establish their ability to speak English, so they could have taken that option. He was quite aggressive in his questioning, but I must reiterate that I think it is right, and the Home Secretary thinks it is right, to wait for the outcome of the NAO report, which we expect next month.

Windrush

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Wes Streeting

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

I point out to the hon. Gentleman that we have been generous in granting citizenship rights and have been determined, as I said a few moments ago, to find reasons to grant, not reasons to refuse. As I have said, the public consultation on the compensation scheme closes on 11 October, but I urge him to encourage all his constituents who may have been affected to take part in that consultation so that their voices can be heard.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

The Minister and the Government claim that the hostile environment is over, but in Westminster Hall shortly we will be describing the situation of international students who are currently victims of the hostile environment. Is it not the case that the Home Office is in this mess because it continues to come forward with cases on the basis of flimsy evidence; it is losing appeals left, right and centre, trying to deny people access to justice; and, perhaps worst of all, at the same time as victimising people in a David versus Goliath contest in the courts, it is wasting taxpayers’ money hand over fist that should be spent on our schools, our police and our hospitals? Why will she not reinstate the appeals, as the cross-party Home Affairs Committee suggests, and why will she not genuinely end the hostile environment?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman is indeed leading a debate later this afternoon about English language testing. We are very conscious that there was significant fraud. Many thousands of cases were found to have been fraudulent and many colleges not only closed as a result but were bogus colleges that we had already identified problems with. Where there is systemic fraud and abuse in the immigration system, as we saw with some language testing, it is important that the Government take action, and he will be aware that successive court cases have upheld our position.