Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support. I thought he was going to ask about the hospital in Watford, which I am delighted to say is going to be rebuilt, along with many others across the country. I congratulate him on being the Conservative Member of Parliament for Watford. I am delighted with all the work he has done for his constituency.

On the Bill, I am delighted that the House voted in favour of it. Unfortunately, as I say, it willed the end but not the means. The House of Commons has, alas, voted to delay Brexit again. We must now see what the EU says about that request for a delay, and I will be studying its answer very closely to see how we proceed.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Q11. Last Saturday, Haringey Borough football club players experienced racist slurs, were spat upon, and experienced the most disgusting behaviour during a grassroots football match. Will the Prime Minister congratulate the manager, Tom Loizou, on taking the players off, which was a very courageous decision, and can he explain to the House why bigotry has been emboldened under the current Government?

[The Prime Minister]

I was with the hon. Lady until her last point. I certainly think that racism in football is utterly disgusting and should be stamped out at every possible opportunity. She will have seen what happened in Bulgaria. I am delighted to say that the head of the Bulgarian football association was dismissed from his position as a result of what happened in that match. We will certainly be making sure that we do everything we can to stamp out racism of any kind, wherever it takes place in this society and whatever form it takes.

Debate on the Address

Catherine West Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is completely right. What we have is a choice between a semi-Marxist, if not Marxist, Opposition that would set this country back decades and a one nation Government who understand the vital importance of wealth creation.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I am very grateful that the Prime Minister has given way to a woman MP. In the Queen’s Speech there was very little information about the climate change emergency; will he give a little more detail on what the Government will do in relation to this pressing issue that is affecting so many young people and their mental health?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. She raises a very good point. At the heart of the Queen’s Speech is provision for a new independent environmental regulator that will invigilate this Government and any Government in the future as we achieve our climate change targets. That is how this country can hope to be carbon neutral—to be net zero—by 2050, and that is what we are going to achieve. That is our programme.

Brexit Readiness: Operation Yellowhammer

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely take my hon. Friend’s points. First, I think it has been the case that farmers’ unions across the UK—the Ulster Farmers’ Union, NFU Scotland, the Farmers’ Union of Wales and the NFU in England—have been clear that they would infinitely prefer a deal, as would I. As I had occasion to state earlier and will happily repeat again, the sector that is most vulnerable in the event of no deal is the agrifood sector, which is why we need to be conscious of its concerns.

With respect to Northern Ireland, I hope that nothing I have said suggests or implies that the Government take a lackadaisical approach. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Northern Ireland Secretary, Home Office Ministers and I have made regular trips to Northern Ireland, and are in contact with the Northern Ireland civil service. We are acutely aware of the difficulties that the Northern Ireland civil service would be in under a no-deal situation if the Assembly were not restored. I would also say that we need—and I hope we can get—greater clarity about what might happen on the other side of the Irish border, but that is a sovereign matter for the EU and the Irish Government. I do not make any criticism of them, but obviously it would be in all our interests if we were able to work to mitigate the impacts in the event of no deal.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Eighty per cent. of cheddar cheese is from dairy farms in Northern Ireland. It is manufactured in Ireland and then comes across at Holyhead into other parts of the UK. What assessment has been made of the impact on the dairy industry across Ireland and the UK? Can the Minister rule out food riots as a result of a lack of basics like cheddar?

[Michael Gove]

That was a very serious point but the final twist, I felt, was wrong. [Interruption.] The reason it is a serious point, to be fair to the hon. Lady, is that a significant amount of raw milk from Northern Ireland is processed south of the border. The two most vulnerable agrifood sectors in the UK are sheep meat, across the UK, and the Northern Ireland dairy sector. She is absolutely right to raise that. As for the prospect of food riots, I am afraid that that is precisely the sort of exaggerated language that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) pointed out, does nothing to enable us to focus on the real risks and challenges and the importance of mitigating them.

Prorogation (Disclosure of Communications)

Catherine West Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, may I first associate myself with the many comments about your role as Speaker in this House and the way in which you have performed it, certainly since I have been here? I did not have the chance to speak earlier, but I want to associate myself with those comments.

I rise to support this application in the name of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). At the heart of the application is the simple principle that the Executive should be honest and open with Parliament so as to enable this House properly to scrutinise the Government’s policies and decisions. That should be a given, but it is not, and I am afraid that that speaks volumes. Two important decisions underpin this application. The first is the decision to prorogue the House for five weeks, at what should be the most important and intensive part of the Brexit negotiations. The second is the decision to deny the House the assessment of the preparations for a no-deal Brexit—the Yellowhammer analysis.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, at the very least, Members of this House should be aware of the cost of a no-deal Brexit? That information is crucial to understanding whether the cost is £2 billion or £8 billion.

[Keir Starmer]

I do agree with my hon. Friend.

It is regrettable that we are compelled to use this process of a Humble Address, but the reason is obvious. Today’s measure speaks to a wide truth, which has been touched on a number of times by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield, and I am sad to say that it is the basic lack of trust that now exists between this House and the Executive. That has changed in recent weeks. That lack of trust arises very much from the actions of the Prime Minister over the last weeks, which have contributed hugely to it. That alone should be a profound cause of concern to all Members of this House, because in my experience—only four years plus—this House operates on the basis of trust. That trust is going, day by day, and that is why this application has had to be made. That is a concern to all of us and it should be a concern to the Secretary of State.

Let me take the two issues one by one. At this stage of the Brexit process, the House should be sitting as often as possible. Frankly, we should be sitting every day until 31 October. Instead, we have a five-week Prorogation. The Prime Minister and other Ministers say that this is to allow for a Queen’s Speech and a new legislative agenda. If anybody believes that, they will believe anything. As the Secretary of State is likely to try to make that case—I say “try” because I do not think he will succeed—I have two questions. First, why now? Why prorogue now at such a crucial time? What is wrong with proroguing in November when we know the outcome of the negotiations and have a decision? Secondly, why five weeks? There is no requirement for Parliament to be prorogued for five weeks.

Prorogation of Parliament

Catherine West Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 269157 and 237487 relating to the prorogation of Parliament.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I will read the wording of both petitions into the official record. The first petition is titled, “Do not prorogue Parliament”, and states:

“Parliament must not be prorogued or dissolved unless and until the Article 50 period has been sufficiently extended or the UK’s intention to withdraw from the EU has been cancelled.”

That petition received 1,721,119 signatures within a very short space of time. The second petition, which has already closed, is titled, “The Prime Minister should advise Her Majesty the Queen to prorogue Parliament”, and says:

“The Prime Minister should advise Her Majesty the Queen to prorogue Parliament suspending the current parliamentary session until 2nd April 2019”—

that is clearly out of date now—

“to prevent any attempts by parliamentarians to thwart Brexit on 29th March 2019. Preparations for no-deal/WTO will continue. The Prime Minister’s deal has been rejected. No further deal is available from the EU. Remaining in the EU is not an option. Extension or revocation of Article 50 is not an option. I believe the British people voted to leave with no mention of a deal and that WTO rules, to which Britain will default on 29th March 2019, are in Britain’s best interests. We may get a better deal after, but not until, we have left.”

As I said, the second petition is out of date; events were moving so quickly at the time that it was difficult to schedule a debate on it and to keep it topical. Naturally, with the Prorogation of Parliament upon us tonight, as I believe has been declared, it was deemed suitable to bring the two petitions together.

It is important that the Petitions Committee should always try to allow people to have their views aired. There is a reason why debates on petitions in Westminster Hall are some of the most read and watched debates: it is because we are talking about what people want us to talk about, rather than what we want to talk about. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the two coincide in this case. I have noticed that over the last three years we have wanted to talk about Brexit quite a lot; and because of the topicality of the issue, and because the Prime Minister has been clear that we will leave the EU by 31 October, come what may, people want to express their opinion, whether they want to stop no deal or stop Brexit in its entirety. It is important that we discuss that in the House of Commons.

There is a clear reason why Prorogation is a sensible idea. The Prime Minister was elected by members of the Conservative party, and people have asked what his domestic agenda will be. It is therefore right that we debate the wider domestic agenda, as well as Brexit, in this place. That can be done through a Queen’s Speech, in which the Prime Minister can set out clearly what he wants to do in the coming year, in a new Session of Parliament, to move the debate on, move Parliament on, and move the bandwidth of the media away from Brexit as we leave on 31 October.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I thank my London colleague for giving way. Does he believe that 100,000 votes from Tory party members is enough of a mandate for making such important decisions?

[Paul Scully]

I will come back to the question of mandate, because in about five hours the Prime Minister will ask Members to vote for a general election. We have all said that we do not want one at this time, because we want to get on with the job in hand, but at the moment, that is the best way not only to resolve the conundrum that we face in the lead-up to 31 October, but to move on and to show that there is a mandate for the domestic agenda.

Priorities for Government

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for all the good work that he has done to promote investment in such start-ups. I look forward to further conversations with him about ways that we may encourage that investment.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister says that he believes in the London living wage, yet so many cleaners in Whitehall are still not paid it. Will he commit today from the Dispatch Box that every single entry-level worker and cleaner in Whitehall will be paid the living wage, regardless of whether they work for the Ministry of Justice, the Department for International Development or any others?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady for that important point. I have to say that—[Interruption.] The answer is yes. I was very proud when I was running London that we massively expanded the living wage. We made sure that it was paid not just by Greater London Authority bodies but by their contractors as well, and that is what we should be doing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I believe that the BBC got a good deal in 2015. Indeed:

“The Government’s decision here to put the cost of the over-75s on us has been more than matched by the deal coming back for the BBC.”

Those are not my words, but the words of the director general of the BBC after the deal in 2015. I think that taxpayers now expect the BBC to do the right thing.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Q10. In February 2018, a homeless man tragically died outside Parliament. Ten months later, another homeless man died in exactly the same place. Will the Prime Minister deal with that terrible Dickensian situation and, in the dying days of her premiership, address the “burning injustice” of homelessness, whereby we have to step over bodies to enter Parliament?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course we are all concerned about homelessness and rough sleeping, and when we hear and see the stories that the hon. Lady cited. The latest figures on rough sleeping show that the number of people sleeping on our streets is down for the first time in eight years. That is because action has been taken. It is a step in the right direction, but of course we need to do much more. That is why we have set up the new strategy to end rough sleeping altogether, which is backed by an initial £100 million. We are determined to make sleeping on the streets a thing of the past.

EU Parliament Elections: Denial of Votes

Catherine West Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

Oh dear; well, I will not thank the right hon. Gentleman for that question. The reality is that we have an independent Electoral Commission and an independent police force which does not—and should not—operate under political guidance. Despite the right hon. Gentleman’s obvious disagreements with the referendum result, the relevant bodies have obviously looked at the evidence and come to their conclusions. It will be a dark day when Ministers at the Dispatch Box instruct the police and the Electoral Commission how to behave.

As I say, the UC1 form implements a requirement under European Union law. As for the right hon. Gentleman’s figures regarding the vote itself, they are not figures that I recognise because they normally imply that my party is somehow supporting remain.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Seven weeks ago, Mr Speaker kindly granted me an urgent question on this exact topic, but the warnings were not heeded. Scores of EU voters were in touch with my busy office and with the electoral registration officer on Haringey Council on the day, just as predicted by many Members in this House on 25 April. Will the Minister lay out exactly what investigations his team will undertake now to put this situation right once and for all?

[Kevin Foster]

The Electoral Commission will do a report and present its conclusions—as it does with all major electoral events in this country—and it will do so independently, not under the direction of a Minister. We will then consider its conclusions carefully. To resolve the issue completely, we will look to implement the 2016 referendum result, as we have pledged to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me thank all members of the Conservative party across the country who campaign regularly in elections of all sorts. We have just heard about the group in Redditch Borough Council who succeeded in getting excellent results in the council election. I thank all those Conservatives for the time and effort that they put into promoting the Conservative cause.

Secondly, let me say to Conservatives up and down the country who are concerned about delivering Brexit that this is a Government who want to deliver Brexit, and have been working to deliver Brexit. Sadly, so far the House of Commons has not found a majority to do that. If everyone in the House of Commons had voted alongside the Government and the majority of Conservative Members of Parliament, we would already have left the European Union.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The people of Hornsey and Wood Green are completely distraught because a British Council worker, Aras Amiri, has been suddenly imprisoned in Iran. The Foreign Secretary is kindly having a meeting with me and the family on Friday, but will the Prime Minister please condemn this action by Iran, and will she please speak to President Rouhani urgently about this terrible situation?

Electoral Registration: EU Citizens

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Minister for the Cabinet Office if he will please make a statement on the electoral registration process for EU citizens for the 2019 European elections.

[The Minister without Portfolio (Brandon Lewis)]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising this issue. It is important that we ensure that everyone is aware of what they can do to ensure they are able to exercise their right to vote, should that opportunity arise. We have been clear on our intention as a Government that we want to leave the EU as soon as possible and not have to hold these elections.

Electoral registration officers have a statutory duty to ensure that people who are eligible to vote in relevant elections have the opportunity to do so. With regard to the potential European parliamentary elections, that includes ensuring that EU citizens from other member states who are resident in the UK and registered to vote are aware that they need to complete a declaration, commonly referred to as a UC1 or EC6 form, in order to do so. I will place a copy of that form in the Library of the House today. To vote in the UK, citizens of other EU member states need to be registered to vote, and to complete the declaration form stating their wish to vote in the UK, by Tuesday 7 May 2019. This form is accessible on the Electoral Commission website and on local authority websites. This is to ensure that EU citizens do not vote twice—here and in their member state of origin—because it is obviously illegal to vote twice in the same election.

The Electoral Commission has issued advice on what action to take on this, and it was circulated to all local authority electoral officers on 4 April. The Electoral Commission’s guidance advises that, while the law does not require electoral registration officers to send the form out to all EU citizens, it has in previous years advised that EROs should identify those local government electors who are EU citizens and send them a UC1 form, to help to ensure that they understand their options and are able to exercise their right to vote, should they wish to do so. It further advises that, if the date of the poll is confirmed, electoral registration officers be encouraged to take other steps to raise awareness, such as through social media channels and elsewhere. The Electoral Commission said that it was also looking to support EROs in this and to work with partners to spread the message more widely. The commission’s advice is that EROs

“should think about how you can make EU citizens clear of the options available to them: the information on the UC1 form should help you to do this”.

While the Government support the work to encourage electoral registration, the legal process of registration is obviously the responsibility of electoral registration officers rather than the Government. Prior to the extension of article 50, we had already encouraged EU citizens to vote in their home countries in the 2019 European parliamentary elections. We expect that most EU citizens in the UK will have followed previous advice to ensure that they can vote in their member state of citizenship.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West]

I am concerned that EU citizens living in the UK have to undergo a two-stage process to vote in the European elections. Even if they are already registered to vote in the local elections next Thursday, they are separately required, unlike UK nationals, to complete an additional form to vote in the European elections three weeks later. That added layer of administration is rightly designed to prevent EU citizens from voting twice. However, the Cabinet Office has also inferred that preferential status must not be conferred to EU citizens in the process. That scenario only really applies when the EU registers are open, but there is no uniformity among EU member states. Indeed, the majority of EU registers have now closed.

Under normal circumstances, had the Brexit shambles not taken over, councils would have written to EU citizens in January, when all EU registers were open, to confirm the UK register in good time. They would have sent out reminders and issued polling cards to electors who are already on the register for the local elections, but we are not in normal circumstances. Our participation in the European elections was confirmed by the Prime Minister very late in the day, and the additional EC6 process is largely superfluous given that the majority of EU registers have already closed.

Far from giving preference to EU citizens, these unusual circumstances and the Government’s lack of action have helped to create an artificial barrier to the enfranchisement of EU citizens. Indeed, we are already hearing reports of a formal legal challenge to the Government. This is yet another Brexit mistake. In July 2018, the integrity of our democracy was questioned when Vote Leave was found guilty of breaking electoral law. Today, our democracy faces another threat: Government- sanctioned barriers that could prevent EU citizens from registering to vote.

There are now 13 days until the voter registration deadline. Given the shortness of time, and the late hour at which local authorities were informed of this major U-turn in Government policy on participation in the European elections, can the Minister answer one clear question? Will he confirm that local authorities will be permitted to register automatically EU citizens who are already registered to vote in next week’s local elections, on 2 May, so that they can participate in the European elections a mere 21 days later?

[Brandon Lewis]

I have a couple of things to say to the hon. Lady. First, we obviously would not be in this position if she and more of her colleagues had voted for the deal on 29 March, because we would not be holding these elections, and there still may be an opportunity not to hold them. Secondly, local elections are different, because residents can vote more than once, in different places where they pay council tax. The structure is very different—[Interruption.] I can see the hon. Lady gesticulating, but people can vote more than once in local elections, as Members of Parliament often do. Things are different in European elections, and it is right that we do what we can to ensure that people vote only once.

As for the process, if colleagues look at the UC1 form—as I said, I will lay a copy in the Library today for colleagues who have not seen it—they will see that it probably takes 30 seconds to a minute to complete. The same process was used in the 2014 European elections, and it dates back to the European Parliamentary Elections (Franchise of Relevant Citizens of the Union) Regulations 2001, so some Labour Members will have supported it when they were in government.