Christmas Adjournment

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I do not know how you feel, Mr Deputy Speaker, but it seems to me that everything in this country at the moment is broken and bust, including the Passport Office, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the asylum system, which even the Home Secretary says is broken. The Royal Mail never seems to deliver letters in a timely fashion any more, including those from GPs or for doctors appointments. There are repeated medicine shortages in several key areas. People cannot get an appointment with their GP, an ambulance never turns up on time and cancer results turn up weeks late. Trains are cancelled all the time—and that is when there are no strikes.

We have ploughed millions of pounds-worth of crops back into the fields because there are not enough people to harvest them. We are not training enough people to be GPs, dermatologists, radiologists or radiographers. We are wasting millions of pounds on agency staff, meaning nurses are working alongside agency nurses who are not able to do the same job but are being paid twice as much. We have a 7.1 million-person backlog in the NHS in England, and that is not all the fault of covid: it was 4.8 million before covid even arrived. Bars, restaurants and people who work on building and construction sites are desperate for additional staff. Lots of bars and restaurants are not opening on Monday evenings, or are closing early, because they cannot get enough staff.

Inflation is running at 10.7%, despite the fact that in February the then Prime Minister—it was a few of them ago—said we should not be worrying about inflation. Well, lots of families are, because they have also seen mortgage rates rise, in large part due to the actions of the crazy Government we had a few weeks ago. Public sector staff are understandably angry, worried and determined, because they have faced real-terms cuts in their living conditions year on year for 12 years now. People are losing their homes: the number of people who have turned up in my constituency office in recent weeks who are terrified of eviction over the next few days is worrying.

Frankly, I just think it is time we pressed the reset button in this country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) said, I do not think that will happen until there is a complete change of Government. We need not just the endless recycling of Government Ministers we have had this year but a proper change of Government, so I want to say to everybody on the Government Benches, in the words of the Sugababes: “Push the button”—it is time for a reset.

I want to talk about energy, because a quarter of the constituents who have come to my office recently are really worried about the price of their energy. Everybody knows that the cost of energy has grown very dramatically, but the service that some of the energy companies are providing is absolutely shocking. I am sure other Members will have heard the same. The customer service from OVO, British Gas and ScottishPower is just terrible. Replies to MPs’ correspondence regularly take several months—even to correspondence market “Urgent” or “Extremely urgent”. One constituent of mine died waiting for a reply from her energy company; another is still waiting for the resolution of a relatively minor matter six months after they got me involved. Companies make it very difficult for people to move to prepaid meters, which is what many of my constituents are desperate to do because they want actual control of their energy costs. Energy companies give up on a case after a single missed call; that is not customer service. They need to completely rethink it.

In addition, Rhondda homes are often very difficult to insulate. It sometimes sounds like a kind of Dickensian television programme but it is true: I have constituents who will sit all day long in a onesie, covered by a duvet, and who will put an electric bar on for only 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening to take the absolute chill off the house. That is going to lead to people in my constituency losing their lives.

Another problem that the Government have failed to address relates to local authorities, many of which have enormous gaps in their budgets for next year. They do not know what they are going to do about keeping open swimming pools, leisure centres and schools. Lots of schools are thinking about letting staff go because they simply have to pay very much increased bills. It is shocking that the Government have not yet come forward with a plan for what is going to happen in relation to non-domestic properties after March.

I want to talk briefly about what I call the botched, bungled Boris Brexit. Let us face it: it has been an absolute disaster for this country on every single level. It is not just that UK performing artists are not able to put together a viable tour around Europe any more—something that we used to be really good at and that the Government repeatedly say they are going to sort but still have not. It is not just the fact that we were promised frictionless trade—that was a fiction, not frictionless trade.

Even the Office for Budget Responsibility says:

“Comparing our recent overall trade performance with other advanced economies suggests that the UK saw a similar collapse in exports as other countries at the start of the pandemic but has since missed out on much of the recovery in global trade.”

In fact, we are 12% below pre-pandemic levels. The Minister who was talking about trade the other day could not decide whether we had done £800 billion or £80 billion of trade deals in recent years. That is leaving out the fact that since the Minister who was in charge of some of these trade deals was sacked, he has now confessed that he thinks they were terrible deals in the first place.

Let me turn to two final things. First, on standards, we still do not have an independent adviser on ministerial interests. That means we still do not even have a correct list on the Government website of who Ministers are and their financial interests. The most recent list was produced in May, which is obviously quite some time ago and several rounds of Ministers ago.

Secondly, the Government’s arguments about personal protective equipment contracts have now completely collapsed. They kept on saying that they were all fine and hunky dory and that everything was done properly. We have been arguing for a long time that there was massive corruption in the way the contracts were dealt out. We now know that even the Government largely agree with us, because they are suing one of the companies in question.

Finally, as you may know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am very committed to trying to get a better result for people in this country with acquired brain injury. I have been co-chairing the Government’s programme board, which is trying to get a national strategy together. It is great to see that rugby and football are just beginning to take the issue seriously, but there are far too many people in this country whose lives we magnificently save and who could be given a real quality of life if only we put in place all the support that they need. Up to now we have failed to do that. I hope that by next summer I will be able to say that we have a national strategy for acquired brain injury.

I wish the House a merry Christmas and a prosperous new year.