Russia’s Attack on Ukraine
Debate between Chris Bryant and Nadine Dorries(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Ms Dorries
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. He may have seen that I published the letter that I wrote to Ofcom shortly after I wrote it last week. It has launched 27 live investigations into Russia Today. I hope that it expedites those investigations, and that they result in the removal of Russia Today’s licence so that it is never again able to have the platform to broadcast its propaganda into the UK.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I warmly commend the Secretary of State for the statement that she made earlier and on the tears that she was pouring out over journalists such as Clive Myrie, who are doing a fabulous job. I hope she will not be cross with me now—she likes being cross with me—but some of us are anxious about why we are not going further on the sanctioning of individuals. It is a mystery to me why Roman Abramovich has not yet been sanctioned. The Government know that he has been engaged in illicit activity and is a person of concern to the Government, which is why they have not been encouraging him to come to the UK. I do not know why Alisher Usmanov has not yet been sanctioned. He has been sanctioned by the EU, but not by us. He owns Sutton Place. I do not know why we have not seized that asset. I do not know why the UK has not yet seized a single yacht, flat or property of any kind while other countries in Europe are able to do that. Finally, I wonder whether the Minister will condemn John Terry today. I do not know whether she has seen this, but he has posted today a photo of himself with Roman Abramovich, who is one of Putin’s cronies. What will the people of Ukraine think of the former England football captain?
Ms Dorries
I thank my friend the hon. Gentleman for his warm words. I think I just held the tears back—I am a blubberer, as he knows—and I commend him. For Members who have not been on these Benches for many years, he is not a Johnny-come-lately to this issue; he has been campaigning on these issues for many years, including on Magnitsky, and he is a good friend of Bill Browder. He has been raising the issue of Russia for as long as I have been here, which is a very long time. I thank him. It is no surprise to me that he is like a dog with a bone on this, because it has always been one of his passionate interests, and MPs are always at their best and most effective when they campaign in their moment, and his time is here, on this.
I heard everything that the hon. Gentleman said. I heard what he said in business questions. I have heard everything he has said since this happened last Thursday, and I have been watching him carefully—that may disconcert him. Obviously I cannot name individuals in the way that he can, but I know that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is working on sanctioning. He knows that sanctions are its responsibility and that it is working on those sanctions. I also know that he knows about issues around the National Crime Agency and others, and we all know that this is the mother of Parliaments. We are a legislator, and we abide by the principle of law. He knows that, too, and I know he will find that frustrating.
In football, however, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we have tolerated the investment of Russian kleptocrats for far too long. Yesterday’s announcement showed that we have reached a turning point. We need to ensure that football clubs remain viable—that is an important point. I will bring forward our response to the fan-led review as soon as I can, as well as an independent regulator and a fit and proper person test for owners. The fan-led review was led by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and it could not have come at a more opportune time. I see that as a turning point and there can be no arguments against bringing it forward.
I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman said. He knows that I am limited in what I can do in my Department. I cannot mention names. I hope that we will see the Foreign Office come forward with the sanctions that he is looking for.
BBC Funding
Debate between Chris Bryant and Nadine Dorries(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Ms Dorries
We can all see how, once again, my hon. Friend speaks up for his constituents. I am interested in the survey and I would love to see some of the responses. He spoke about scrapping not the BBC but the licence fee, because I am sure that his constituents want to watch and enjoy the BBC. This is about how we fund the BBC in a modern digital landscape at a time when young people consume their television in different ways. How do we fund the BBC to protect and maintain it moving forward, but in a different way?
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I wish the Secretary of State would stop with the crocodile tears about the cost-of-living crisis, because £159 is a lot of money, particularly for my constituents, but it happens to be exactly the same amount, on average, as they will pay in extra national insurance from April this year. If the Government really cared about the cost-of-living crisis, they could do something about that. My real fear is that she simply does not understand how intrinsic to the nature of the BBC and its success around the world the licence fee is. It means that there is something for everybody—for all my constituents—including the poorest constituents, who cannot afford Sky. She says that the BBC gets lots of money, but Sky got five times as much money this year, and its revenues this year increased by 18.9%. Yes, this is an unpatriotic move to dismantle one of the greatest British treasures.
Ms Dorries
The hon. Gentleman talks about £159, but the BBC wanted it to project to £180. This is one of the levers that we have in Government to help hard-working families, given the increasing inflationary pressures. We are here to help and protect the BBC, and the only way we can do that—[Interruption.] I ask the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) again: does she support the two-year freeze on the licence fee to help hard-working families? Again, no plan. The hon. Lady dodged that question on media this morning and she is dodging it here in the Chamber.
Covid-19
Debate between Chris Bryant and Nadine Dorries(4 years ago)
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Ms Dorries
I do apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is because I have not been here very often lately.
The hon. Gentleman made one of the best speeches I have heard him make in this House, probably because he agreed with every word I have been saying—indeed, I almost ripped up this speech. I applaud him for some of the comments he made.
Ms Dorries
Possibly; the hon. Gentleman is in a very difficult position now. I say well done to him for taking apart the Great Barrington declaration. I will now not go into it, as he did an excellent job.
Turning to herd immunity, without a vaccine how do we attain herd immunity? With no knowledge of immunity from coronavirus, how do we obtain herd immunity? I will share with the House that I was diagnosed with coronavirus on 7 March, I had a severe dose and my antibodies had disappeared 12 weeks later. I am no longer immune to coronavirus. That is not just my story; it is the story of many, many people. Many people who were donating their plasma post-coronavirus for convalescent therapy were told quite quickly, “We no longer need your plasma because you do not have any antibodies left.” Work is going on into immunity, and we have not reached a conclusive position yet, but I can speak from my own experience and from the experiences that we are hearing about, and if people do not have long-term antibodies and we have no vaccine, there is no such thing as herd immunity. I say that again because it is the truth.
On the comments about the measures we are putting in place, how restrictive they are and social distancing, all I can say—and this relates to the number of deaths in hospitals—is that back in March no one was wearing face coverings and no social distancing was being complied with by the public, and the rate of infection was doubling every three to four days. Now, it is doubling every seven to 14 days, because the public are wearing masks, they are hand washing and they are socially distancing, and that means that when someone contracts coronavirus, they contract a smaller viral load, which is enabling doctors to treat those patients once they reach an intensive care unit. In ICUs, people are now living, not dying, but we still need the ICUs and we still need the ICU beds in which to treat those people in order that they can live. The fundamental purpose of every measure we take is to protect the NHS and to keep those beds in ICUs, so that they are there to treat people and to keep people alive.
I described this to someone today who argued with me that face masks and coverings are unnecessary. If people are in the space of someone with no facemask—I will use a scale of one to 100—they will breathe in 100 droplets and a full viral load, but when someone has a mask on it is much less. This is not a scientific experiment; it is my own analogy, but the figure is probably 10. The hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) knows this much better than I do, and can confirm or deny it. Therefore, with a mask, people’s viral load is lower and it is far easier to treat them once they arrive in hospital at A&E and are transferred to an ICU, and there is a huge chance of success. That is what we are seeing in action now in our hospitals. If we all abandon our face coverings, stop social distancing and stop hand washing, we will be back to where we were in March, when the virus was doubling every three to four days.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) mentioned Sweden, but an article in The BMJ—a research study—concluded that Sweden and the US are the only two countries that are failing to reduce their numbers of deaths. In fact, it is far more accurate to compare Sweden with its Nordic neighbours. Sweden has 586 deaths per 1 million people, while its neighbour Norway has 279, so I am not quite sure why Sweden would be cited as a country of success.[Official Report, 24 November 2020, Vol. 684, c. 8MC.]
Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review
Debate between Chris Bryant and Nadine Dorries(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Ms Dorries
I absolutely will. My hon. Friend highlights how long it takes for women’s voices to be heard—since 1973—and I will do as she asks.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
May I add Owen Smith, my former constituency neighbour, to the list of those who campaigned vociferously, in particular on mesh? Medical innovation does save lives. I have sat next to a doctor who worked for many years in melanoma, and she said that, for nearly all of her career, when she met somebody with melanoma she basically had to manage their expectations of how long they were going to live. Now, because of medical innovation, she is able to save their lives, but she can do that only if the medication being provided is guaranteed as safe.
As I understand it, nearly all the clinical trials that were started at the beginning of this year in relation to cancer have been stopped. We need to get them started again so that people can be certain that they are safe. Is it not time that doctors, instead of writing to other doctors and copying the patients in, write to the patients and copy the doctors in, so that the patient is put in control of their own treatment?
Ms Dorries
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about cancer trials. He may have heard the recent announcement that one of the Nightingale hospitals is to be used for processing cancer diagnoses. I believe that cancer treatments have started again, but I will come back to him with further information because this is not really in the scope of the report.
Under-Occupancy Penalty (North-West)
Debate between Chris Bryant and Nadine Dorries(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Chris Bryant
Absolutely, not least because one of the key things that all parts of the House agree about is that we need to get more people into work. Particular families and communities have historically found it much more difficult to get into work. The issue is not only about whether work pays—although that is key and is why we originally supported the national minimum wage, facing down the howls of those who said it would lead to mass unemployment—but the support mechanisms that someone has when they first go into work. Otherwise, benefits are seen as more reliable, and if someone thinks that, they will stick with them.
If someone has child care responsibilities or care responsibilities for an adult relative, they need other family members close by. All too often since the bedroom tax was introduced, we have seen people forced to move to areas where they have no support, which makes it more difficult for them to get into work. Perhaps we Opposition Members too often rant and rave at Conservatives for being cruel, out of touch and not having any interest in the working poor—that has not always been true of them, historically—but some of the policies advanced, particularly those of the Department for Work and Pensions, have effectively cut off a nose to spite a face. They have seemed like savings and cuts, but in practice they have just added costs to the social welfare budget, which is why the Chancellor had to announce last week that he was increasing the estimate for welfare spending for this year by £1 billion and for next year by another £1 billion.
People are living myriad different lives, with different congregations of families and different community set-ups, social understandings and cultural mores, and it is incumbent on Ministers, particularly DWP Ministers, to work with the grain of human nature, rather than against it. The policy fundamentally works against the grain of human nature and the housing market.
All too often the Government have presumed that, because they said in theory that the policy is all about dealing with the mismatch of some properties being under-occupied and many properties being over-occupied, they have to get the families that are overcrowded to move into undercrowded properties. If everyone could step on to the pavement on one day, immediately swap and move into the next property, that might be true, and if there was an exact match of overcrowded and underused in each area—whether geographical, local authority or housing association—that presumption might work.
The facts on the ground, however, as we know from all the different surveys that have been done over the past year, are that there is a total mismatch. People have no choice about moving, downsizing or going to smaller properties, particularly in the short term. It might take them two, three, four, five, six, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield said, seven years to move, and that is why the measure is a tax. In the end, people have no choice and have to surrender that extra bit of money.
The £16 might seem like nothing to Ministers in a Department that thinks that pensioners might spend their pot on a Lamborghini, but that is a significant amount of money to my and my hon. Friends’ constituents, particularly when real wages have been depressed and the number of hours and amount of overtime that people are allowed to work have fallen. Many more people have been put on zero-hours contracts. In that environment, £16—or £25, if it is two rooms—extra cost a week is a significant amount of money, and that is why the policy is unfair. It might seem fair to put all the overcrowded people into the underused accommodation, but if no one has checked whether there is enough accommodation to do that, it ends up being unfair.
The evidence of the unfairness is that the Government have had to provide discretionary housing payment schemes for local authorities. With discretionary housing payments, the word I dislike most is “discretionary”, because it means that someone living in one local authority on one side of the road in the north-west might be granted a DHP, while someone on the other side of the road will not get that payment, for the single reason that they live in a different local authority.
There is an added problem with discretionary payments, which is that the local authority knows—let us say it is getting £1 million over a year—not to spend any in April, May or June. That happens every time the Government introduce such a system. The authority will start spending a little only in July, August and September, because it knows that the big numbers will come knocking on the door in December, January and February. That means that there is no consistency across the year.
The Minister revealed that fact—I do not think she intended to—when she was attacking one of my hon. Friends from Manchester about the discretionary housing payment system there. She said that it was outrageous that we were complaining about the amount available to Manchester last July and September, because the city had not spent that part of the year’s money. Of course the city had not spent it, because no local authority does. Local authorities are prudent and save money for when they will have to spend more, which is in winter, at Christmas and towards the end of the year. They have to save against what might be a particular rainy day. The Minister, by her own admission, has laid out that the policy is unfair.
As my hon. Friends said, the Government never expected everyone to move. They said:
“In many areas this mismatch could mean that there are insufficient properties to enable tenants to move to accommodation of an appropriate size even if tenants wished to move and landlords were able to facilitate this movement.”
If there was ever an ownership of the fact that the measure is a tax, that was it. It made clear that the Government know that many people will simply have to pay more money.
I disagree with the policy’s fundamental principles and also with how it was introduced. The Prime Minister more than once boldly stated at Prime Minister’s Question Time that no disabled people would be affected by the bedroom tax. He said that on countless occasions, but we know that two thirds of those affected, according to every survey that has been done in local authorities up and down the land, are disabled. The Prime Minister is closing his eyes to the truth, he does not know the truth or someone is not putting the truth in front of him. I do not know what it is, but the point is that the Prime Minister is completely and utterly misled. I am not saying that he has misled people; I am simply saying that he must be misled.
The other incompetence in how the Government have advanced the policy—we know the legislative incompetence: they brought forward the legislation quickly and then discovered a loophole some nine months into the process, or perhaps a little earlier—is that they are still going through this ludicrously bizarre process of denial about how many people are affected by the loophole. On one day earlier this year, the Minister for Welfare Reform, Lord Freud, said in the House of Lords that an insignificant number of people were affected, the Minister here replied to a written question saying that she did not have any idea how many people were affected, and the Secretary of State said that between 3,000 and 5,000 people were affected.
Yesterday, after the urgent question in the Chamber, the Minister let it be known that the Department will provide £2.1 million for local authorities to do the trawling. That is just for the process of trawling, and not for the payments that will have to be made to those who were illegally charged. She says, and said again yesterday, that the £2.1 million applies to 5,000 people. Sometimes she says it quite angrily and sometimes she says it more emolliently; we will see which version we get today, although it looks like it will be the angry one, given the furrowed brow I am getting. I presume that the Minister can calculate for me how much that is per person. Is a trawl really going to cost £420 per person? By her own admission, the Minister has yet again suggested that the 5,000 figure is not right. I do not know whether it will be 40,000 in total, but it certainly will not be just 5,000.
The Minister has regularly pooh-poohed the statistics that the Opposition provide, but we are only going by the freedom of information requests that we have made to local authorities. Let us look at how some authorities in the north-west replied when we asked them how many households had been affected. Burnley borough council said 60, Bury metropolitan borough council said 83 and Chorley borough council said 32. Eden district council said 30, while Fylde borough council said 80. For Lancaster city council, the figure was 35. Preston city council said 124. South Ribble borough council said 22, and Stockport metropolitan borough council said 126.
It is true that I do not have figures for all local authorities, because, despite our being long past the date by which they should have replied to the FOI request, only 15 out of 39 local authorities in the north-west have replied. Even so, there are 2,609 cases in the north-west alone thus far.
The Minister has criticised me several times, saying that the figure of 480 that I provided for St Helens is incorrect, but we have never provided that figure. We said that there were 178 confirmed cases in St Helens—178 cases where people have already been paid back. Not included in the figure for the north-west, however, is what Liverpool city council states it has already paid back, which is 1,300 households. It is absolutely clear that the 5,000 figure that the Minister cites for the whole country will probably be exceeded in the north-west alone.
It could be said that this is all neither here nor there and that it is dancing on the head of a pin and just about statistics, but what it suggests to me is that the Department for Work and Pensions simply has not done its homework and does not know. I would be quite happy were the Minister to stand up and say, “You know what? I really don’t know what the numbers are. They may be 40,000 or 5,000. Let us see what they are.” However, I object to the Minister’s simply going into denial and saying that nothing is happening because it implies a degree of callous disregard for what is going on in people’s lives. Incidentally, the total number of cases that we have received from local authorities is, with no spin from us, 23,309. That figure is based on the responses of fewer than half the local authorities asked, so it is likely that the final figure will be much higher than the Minister has suggested.
The danger is that if the Department has got this wrong, what else has it got wrong? I am absolutely certain that the Government’s predicted savings will nowhere near be met. Indeed, I suspect that the total effect, including people claiming other benefits, such as out-of-work benefits, will end up costing the taxpayer more. I hope that the Government will one day provide the full details.
So many areas of the policy have been incompetently laid out, not least what counts as a bedroom. Last year, the Minister tried to say that people should take a sledgehammer to walls and knock them down and that that would change the rules. According to the Department for Work and Pensions guidance, however, it does not. Liverpool city council was sent an e-mail by the Department that flatly contradicted what the Minister said in the House yesterday afternoon about who qualifies to inherit a tenancy. According to the e-mail, those qualified include any child or relative of a “polygamous marriage”. I thought that polygamous marriages were illegal in this country, but that is the advice that the DWP has provided to the council. Perhaps the Minister can respond to that specific issue.
Some people who have been illegally forced to pay the bedroom tax will now, because of the loophole, have been given discretionary housing payments. What is the Minister’s advice to local authorities? To how many people does she think that it will apply? How much is it costing? Is the Department paying it or do local councils have to pay it? Will individuals have to pay that money back or are the Government writing it off? If so, how much will that be?
We have already heard about some of the problems caused by the faulty policy. Thousands more people are in arrears, which is a real problem for local authorities and for social landlords around the country. Thousands more have been evicted—not only a tragedy for the families and individuals concerned, but also a problem for social landlords.
The policy fails to address some big, long-term issues and has made them worse. When I come up to Westminster from south Wales, it often feels that there is something of an economic recovery going on and I can see house prices rising magnificently, but my experience elsewhere in the country is completely and utterly different. My anxiety is that an economy that is already heavily overloaded towards London and the south-east will become more so. It is a problem for the people of London and the south-east as house prices get further and further out of reach for ordinary people in ordinary jobs. I worry that the Government’s policies will make that worse.
In the 1980s, contrary to my party’s policy at the time, I completely supported the idea of people being able to buy their own council house or social housing. It was actually first piloted by a Labour authority in Newport. [Interruption.] That is not in the north-west, as I think you are about to warn me, Ms Dorries.
Chris Bryant
I can read your mind.
What was a mistake at that time in the north-west and everywhere else in the country, however, was that local authorities were not allowed to build more social housing, and we are paying the cost of that now. The previous Labour Government did not get it right either, but unless we build more houses and provide more supply at a time when demand is increasing every year, partly because more households are breaking down into smaller units and partly because there are simply more people, we will fail in the future.
I end with two remarks. First, the Government should repeal the bedroom tax for the people of the north-west and the whole of the country. If they do not, we will, and we have costed that commitment. Secondly, we need to do something to tackle the root problem in housing benefit, which is that antisocial landlords, who often provide substandard housing, are effectively being subsidised by the taxpayer. That must be wrong and that we will change.
Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)
Order. Mr Bryant, please do not interject from a sedentary position. Mr Bryant may not have said “on the back of a fag packet”, so perhaps the Minister will quote the words he did say to make the point. Mr Bryant, if you want to make an intervention, please do so, but do not interject in that way.
Esther McVey
Whether, in colloquial terms, the hon. Gentleman said that it was developed on the back of a fag packet, a cigarette packet or an envelope, it was discourteous, given the hundreds of hours of work that have been put in. I think he used the phrase “on an envelope in the shower”, but that was not the case, because many hours went into developing the policy. That might be how the Opposition make their benefits policy, because so far it seems they do not know what they are doing—what are they agreeing with, or not, and how are they helping the guarantee scheme, or not?
What the Government have done has had a profound effect on what is happening in the country: there are record rates of employment; youth unemployment has fallen for the past six consecutive months; there are record rates of women in work; and, as in the news today, the number of workless households is falling considerably. Far from our policy being made on the back of an envelope or cigarette packet, it is having significant effect. For a moment, I want to think about those people who have now got a job and are fulfilling their potential, supporting their families, getting their foot on the career ladder and working their way up. I meet such people every day, and they say how their lives have been transformed, so it is important that we listen to them as well.
As I said, 86 local authorities applied for extra money, although not all of them spent the extra £20 million, and not all councils felt that they needed it. Many of the Opposition scare stories did not happen at all and, despite the dire warnings, nor did the arrears. The report from the National Housing Federation stated that it is difficult to observe a rise in outstanding arrears. In fact, more than half of all working-age tenants in receipt of housing benefit were already in arrears before the new policy came into effect. While we are talking about people and their lives, moreover, there are lots of examples of people moving and downsizing. Among such people is Suzanne, from south Yorkshire, who had four children who are now grown up and have left home. She did not want to move, but she said that now that she has and has downsized, things are totally different. She has less of a heating bill—less in the way of bills altogether—can manage her cost of living and live within her means. It is key that we look at everyone’s requirements.
On the loophole that has been mentioned, we have been through this on various occasions. The person in question has to have been in the same house and continuously on housing benefit since 1996 to be part of the loophole. The Opposition were right: we did not know the entirety of the numbers. What we deemed to be roughly right, however, was the figure of £5,000, and we said that we would cover those costs, so we agreed with the local authorities—£2 million to do the extra work necessary. We agreed the amount of money to do the administrative work to support those people. Far from screaming and yelling, we have gone into the issue in our discussions. Indeed, we debated it yesterday, so I think it has been covered.
What is key is that we have to think about the policy into the future, and to support people who are in overcrowded accommodation, whether they are on waiting lists or already in social rented housing. It is about how we best go forward and provide support. We are dealing with the issue, which Labour did not want to do when in office—they were happy to see the housing bill double over 10 years and the waiting lists and overcrowding increase.
Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)
Order. Will this intervention relate to the north-west, Mr Bryant?
Chris Bryant
How much will the total amount of money be throughout the UK and, in particular, how much will it be in the north-west? We need to know the amounts of money the Minister is talking about for writing down purposes.
Health and Social Care (Re-committed) Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Nadine Dorries(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Nadine Dorries
I absolutely will—that is why I am here—but it is important to explain the context and the background to some of misinformation that Members have received in their inboxes. This is my opportunity to correct the misinformation MPs have been fed about the amendment.
The amendment has created a divide that was not present before, including in 2008. The Guardian and The Times and the union-funded Abortion Rights have mounted a campaign against the amendment. I must say that the core Conservative vote newspapers, The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and so on, have been supportive, so this chasm and the politicisation of abortion has begun as a result of the amendment and as a result of the unions and the left-wing media.
Nadine Dorries
There are lots of comments being made from a sedentary position, Mr Speaker, but The Times has actually fed that divide directly and repeated much of the information it has been given. I want to answer some of the accusations made about me in response to the amendment. I do not have the press barons’ money to mount and fund a campaign. I have not received a penny. In fact, I am broke. My office has not received a penny in funding.
Nadine Dorries
No.
I have also been accused of being a religious fundamentalist. Like 73% of the country, I am a member of the Church of England and have Christian beliefs, but I am not sure when that became a crime and prevented me from having an opinion. On Saturday, The Guardian printed a flow chart showing the conservative Christians who are supposed to be mounting a sphere of influence with the amendment. I did not know who 95% of the people mentioned were or the organisation they represent. If I followed Islam or Judaism, I wonder what the response would have been to such a flow chart in The Guardian. I found the chart absolutely reprehensible and disgusting.
Nadine Dorries
I absolutely will not.
I want to mention some of the other lies that have been printed about me. I have been accused of wanting to reduce the number of abortions by introducing the amendment. That is absolutely not the objective. However, if any individual in the street was asked about the amendment and told that it might bring down the number of abortions, would they say, “Well, that’s a good thing,” or would they say, “We’re proud of the fact that 200,000 abortions a year are performed in the UK”? That is the highest number in western Europe. Would the individual in the street say that that is a good thing? No, they would say that it probably would be a good idea if something could help to bring that number down. I do not want to restrict access to abortion. The amendment is not about restricting access. I do not want to return to the days of Vera Drake-style back-street abortionists. That is not what the amendment is about. I am pro-choice, although I am presented as pro-life in every newspaper. The pro-life organisations are in fact e-mailing pro-life MPs to tell them not to vote for the amendment. I am pro-choice. Abortion is here to stay.
It is absolutely ridiculous that the amendment has been portrayed as something that would restrict access to abortion. The amendment is about medical practitioners making to a woman who presents at their surgery or organisation an offer of independent counselling, not compulsory counselling. Every single day I have read a headline stating that the amendment is intended to drive women into the arms of religious fundamentalists via compulsory counselling. That is absolutely not true. Any Member who rose and claimed that the amendment would make counselling compulsory would be being untruthful. It is nothing more than an offer. It is an offer made to some women who, when presenting at a GP’s practice, may have doubts, may be confused and may feel that they would like to accept. That is all it is—an offer. I find it very difficult to understand how anyone can object to a vulnerable woman being made an offer of counselling when she is suffering from a crisis pregnancy.
Nadine Dorries
That is precisely the next point in my speech; my hon. Friend must have been looking over my shoulder!
I now turn to the counselling provision available to women today. Many women do not want or need counselling. They find out that they are pregnant and know exactly what they want to do, but those are frequently the women who are supported—who have partners, family and friends who will support them through that awful situation. No woman wants to have an abortion, but many know that they have to, for various reasons, and this amendment is not about them. A mystery shopper, however, recently approached several abortion clinics posing as a young woman who was pregnant and unsure of what to do. Every time I mention BPAS there is a howl from Opposition Members, but I am going to mention it in this instance, because this is irrefutable evidence.
The individual posed at a central London clinic as a 26-year-old pregnant woman who did not know what to do, and she asked for counselling. I shall come on to the difference between counselling and consultation, but she said that she did not know what to do, because she had been given the immediate consultation, was not sure whether to go through with the pregnancy, and therefore wanted an abortion. She was told that, at that very busy clinic in central London, one hour of counselling was available at one set time per week. I believe that when she revealed her identity she was offered another hour.
In fairness to BPAS, it says that it has flexibility in the system and can offer more hours. Why did it not do so? If it has flexibility, how much is there?
Chris Bryant
I am very grateful—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady says something from a sedentary position. I wholly deprecate the fact that she has had threats made, but it is inappropriate to bring forward this amendment to this Bill, because if we are going to consider abortion we should be considering the whole issue in the round, not just appending something to this kind of Bill. As she knows, I disagree with her, but she will also know that the whole point of counselling, in any circumstance, is to allow a person to come to the right decision for themselves. That is precisely what BPAS, Marie Stopes and others provide, because any counsellor who does not do that is not worth their salt.
Nadine Dorries
I would love to hear how the hon. Gentleman knows that that is what happens in Marie Stopes and BPAS. He always speaks on such issues as someone with huge experience, but I am highlighting at this moment what happens. If he thinks that one hour per week, at a set time at a busy London clinic, for the entire throughput of women having abortions, is enough counselling, so be it; that is his opinion.
Sex Education (Required Content)
Debate between Chris Bryant and Nadine Dorries
Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require schools to provide certain additional sex education to girls aged between 13 and 16; to provide that such education must include information and advice on the benefits of abstinence from sexual activity; and for connected purposes.
I am sure that many Members will be aware of the broadcaster Dame Joan Bakewell. I always had the impression that she and I were on separate sides of the political divide, but I was intrigued a year ago to read something that she had written in the Radio Times and in the newspapers, in which she said that Mary Whitehouse, who campaigned against declining moral standards on television, was right to fear that sexual liberation in the 1960s would damage society.
Dame Joan was a long-time and fierce opponent of Mary Whitehouse, and that is why her piece was intriguing. She has now changed her mind in terms of her opposition, saying that the freedom granted by the introduction of the pill has been abused, resulting in the sexualisation of young girls and the prevalence of pornography. She said:
“The liberal mood back in the ’60s was that sex was pleasurable and wholesome and shouldn’t be seen as dirty and wicked. The Pill allowed women to make choices for themselves. Of course, that meant the risk of making the wrong choice. But we all hoped girls would grow to handle the new freedoms wisely. Then everything came to be about money—so now sex is about money, too. Why else sexualise the clothes of little girls, run TV channels full of naked wives, have sex magazines edging out the serious stuff?”
In fact, in some newsagents now there are more sex magazines available than any other kind of magazine.
Nadine Dorries
That is a typically glib comment from the hon. Gentleman, who just does not understand and will oppose this measure. Indeed, it will be interesting to see a man stand and oppose a Bill that is about empowering young girls.
Dame Joan said that our society is saturated in sex: a typical prime-time hour on TV contains 2.6 references to intercourse, 1.2 references to prostitution and rape, and 4.7 sexual innuendoes.
Let us move on to look at some of the examples that are now available. Primark, a store that is frequented by many young girls, including my own daughters, was recently chastised for selling padded bikinis for seven-year-olds. Without going into too much detail, I am sure that everybody in the House understands why women would buy padded bikinis, but to make them available to and target them at seven-year-old girls seems to epitomise how far the sexualisation of young girls has gone within our society.
On 5 March 2010, explicit videos were shown in schools which depicted to seven-year-olds a cartoon graphic of a couple having sexual intercourse. This resulted in some children being removed from schools that showed those videos. It will not be a surprise to any mother, or parent, in the House that seven-year-old children do not want to see a cartoon of a couple having sexual intercourse. I have never yet met a mother who said, “I want my seven-year-old to see cartoons of couples having sexual intercourse”, so why on earth would schools think it appropriate to show such videos to seven-year-old children in the classroom? Some children were reported to be frightened, alarmed and disturbed by the videos.
In July 2009, a Sheffield NHS trust released into secondary schools—to children from the age of 11—a pamphlet which told them that sex every day keeps the doctor away. It also said that for too long experts have concentrated on the need for “safe sex” and loving relationships. Alongside this, there was a slogan saying that
“an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”.
It also said:
“Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes’ physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?”
This is a pamphlet going out to 11-year-olds at secondary modern schools in Sheffield.
We have to ask ourselves whether, in the midst of this kind of society, with the over-sexualisation of children, we have got our sex education in schools right. It is often argued that compulsory sex education and effective teaching of “safe sex” will help to tackle a high pregnancy rate among teenagers and underage children. Sadly, the evidence suggests that this is not the case. The British Medical Journal found that 93% of teenagers who became pregnant had seen a medical professional prior to the pregnancy and 71% had discussed contraception. The journal found that
“teenagers who become pregnant have higher consultation rates than peers and most of the difference is owing to consultation on contraception”.
According to data published by the Office for National Statistics in 2007, Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe, so we must be doing something wrong. That is why I am introducing this Bill.
I believe that the answer to ending our constant struggle with the incredibly high rate of teenage sexual activity and underage pregnancies lies in teaching our girls and boys about the option of abstinence—the ability to just say no as part of their compulsory sex education at school. I recently spoke to a 16-year-old who used these very disturbing words: “The thing is, if you reach the age of 18 and you’re still a virgin, and you meet somebody you’d like to be your boyfriend, he’s going to think you’re a freak.” It never enters the minds of young teenage girls, who are taught in sex education classes about “safe sex” and about making their decisions on whether to have sex based on how they feel that day or on their wishes—“feelings” and “wishes” are the key words—that they are empowered and have the ability to say no. That is not taught alongside information on making the decision based on their feelings and wishes and on “safe sex”, but it should be an equally viable option.
We have to re-examine thoroughly the content of sex education that is provided in schools, and consider whether what is currently offered is in the best interests of our children and society as a whole. Children learn about puberty and intercourse at the age of seven, and about pregnancy and contraception from the age of 11. Teaching a child of seven to apply a condom to a banana, without telling them that they do not have an obligation to go and do it, is almost like saying, “Now go and try this for yourself.” At no stage of the curriculum does the teaching cover anything about relationships and the option to say no. Girls are taught to have safe sex, but not how to say no to a boyfriend who persists in wanting a sexual relationship. They are given no guidance on that whatsoever.
In a letter to the Daily Mail, a 14-year-old, Josie Parkinson, described the sex education that she had received at her local secondary school:
“As a 14 year-old girl, I have had to attend four talks in the past nine months from a woman from a family planning clinic. I have been taught three times how to put on a condom; how easily pupils can acquire condoms free at a clinic; how to recognise sexually transmitted diseases and have them treated confidentially at a clinic; and that we do not need to tell our parents, GP, the police or anyone else in authority about being provided with contraception, or even having an abortion. There was not one mention of abstaining or any discouragement of sex.”
For a girl or boy to have sex before 16 is unlawful, but they are told in school, “It is unlawful, but it’s okay. You can have the condoms anyway.” They should be told, “It is unlawful. You can have the condoms anyway, but why don’t you consider, because it is unlawful, saying no and waiting until it is lawful?” That just is not taught to girls at school.
One factor constantly ignored by society is that peer pressure is a key contributor to early sexualised activity among the children of our country. Society is focused on sex. Our sex education teaches children how to have sex, not how to say no to sex. We ignore at our peril the fact that many girls feel pressurised into having intercourse when they are far too young, when what they actually need is their childhood.
In our sex education programmes, we need to promote the notion of abstinence and all the advantages that it brings, such as self-respect and not making relationship mistakes. It needs to be seen as a safe alternative. We need to let young girls know that to say no to sex when they are under pressure is a cool thing to do; it is as cool as learning how to apply a condom. It is as important as all the other issues that they are taught in sex education. It has to be taught alongside everything else so that young girls can say, “I have been told to say no.”