Climate Change Committee Progress Report 2021

Debate between Christopher Chope and Tony Lloyd

Thursday 21st October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd]

That is another important point. I think the Minister will accept my saying: I have been a Minister; never trust a Minister—partly because one day they will not be, and it will be someone else in the seat. Government should set the standards, but the delivery of that sort of information must be seen to be independent and to have sound validity for those involved.

When we look at delivery, one thing that is often missing from the conversation is the fact that central Government cannot deliver on many of these things. Central Government has to work through other agencies. That can be the private sector, but we need the strategic planning to take place at local, and sometimes sub-local, level. If we are going to not simply change attitudes but introduce the necessary infrastructure—the infrastructure of skilled training for the capacity to make the changes that we need—we must deliver locally. That does mean a much stronger partnership. Again, that is a recommendation in the report between central Government and local government. I say to the Minister that if that partnership does not include the proper transfer of funding so that local government can do this job, then we will be gifting the ambition but not delivering the tools with which to achieve it.

This is a very important report. Once again I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. He is trying to deliver a balanced judgment. He is probably a little more optimistic than I, but he did emphasise that the crisis is not looming; it is with us. This is a call now to move beyond planning. Words can be good in setting ambition, but it has got to be now about serious delivery on the ground. We have had so many wake-up calls. This call says, “Now is the time for action.”

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

This is a very interesting debate. There is a parallel debate taking place in the main Chamber, where there is a three-minute time limit on speeches, I suspect. Before calling the last Back-Bench speaker in this debate, if anybody in the main Chamber is following what is going on in Westminster Hall, I am happy to accept additional Back-Bench speeches if Members show up, notwithstanding the fact that they were not here at the beginning for the initial remarks.

Employment Opportunities Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Tony Lloyd

Friday 17th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend again makes a good point, and I shall try not to be too inhibited or, as we said earlier during Prayers, too eager to find favour in what I try to do today.

[Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)]

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is only in the foothills of his speech, and I am sure that we will enjoy every moment of it—at least its comedy, if not in reality. On a serious point, however, he notes correctly—as far as I am aware—that both the Lib Dems and the Conservative Front Benchers have never formally stood up in Parliament and said that they recognise the validity of the minimum wage. Does he believe that his Front Benchers have now changed their minds, or are they, like him, waiting for the right time? How does he square that with the position of Boris Johnson, who is not simply in favour of the minimum wage but wants to go higher and put people on the living wage?

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but I think that the Mayor of London would be very supportive of clauses 4 to 6, which basically call on the Low Pay Commission to look at the impact of different wage levels on regions and travel-to-work areas, because the Mayor recognises that the cost of living in London is much higher than in other parts of the country. In order to afford that cost of living, people on the whole in London need to have higher levels of minimum wage, or higher levels of wages, than people in other parts of the country. At the moment, the rigidities of the national minimum wage legislation and the regulations made thereunder exclude that flexibility.

[Tony Lloyd]

That is very helpful, because the hon. Gentleman says that in London people need to have a minimum wage, so I think he is buying into the concept of the necessity of the minimum wage. We may be debating this rather unhappy idea of a regional differential, but it is interesting that he is making progress in his support for the minimum wage.

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman will know that my Bill does not actually abolish the minimum wage; it enables freely consenting adults to opt out of it and calls on the Low Pay Commission to look at the market for labour throughout the country, having regard to the differences in individual travel-to-work areas. I hope therefore that, if he wants to oppose the Bill, he will do so on its merits, but following his intervention I am bound to observe that on today’s Order Paper he has his own maximum wage Bill.

I do not know whether that Bill is designed to curb the excesses of footballers or what, but as always he seems keen to intervene in the market rather than to allow the market to dictate what should happen and to allow people to make free agreements. I am as much in favour of allowing footballers to agree with their clubs terms that to most of us seem incredibly generous. Why should they not be able to do so if those terms are agreed freely? In the same way, why should not people who are willing to work for less than the minimum wage be allowed to do so freely?

[Tony Lloyd]

Has the hon. Gentleman read his own Bill? He said that the Mayor of London might want a minimum wage in London set higher than the national minimum wage, but that is not what clause 4 states. It allows for a recommendation

“that the minimum wage in any…area should be set at a level below the national minimum wage,”

but it does not mention “above the national minimum wage”. Seriously, if the hon. Gentleman promises to read his own Bill, perhaps we can debate its real merits.

[Mr Chope]

If we have a national minimum wage, we should be able to opt out of it. If the hon. Gentleman is arguing that there should be not a national minimum wage but a regional minimum wage, that is a completely different proposition, and it would need a different Bill, but I suppose that my Bill might be amended to reflect his wishes, were that the wish of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Lloyd]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Chope]

I will not.

[Tony Lloyd]

It may be helpful.

[Mr Chope]

Okay then.

[Tony Lloyd]

Or it may not. The hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that I have long held the view that he is putting forward. It is ludicrous that there are Zimbabweans whom we will not return to Zimbabwe—quite rightly because of the situation in that country—but who are prevented from working for themselves, their families and, frankly, the rest of the country. That makes no sense. He might be surprised to learn that there is a lot of support for that view among Opposition Members.

[Mr Chope]

I am delighted to learn that that was a useful intervention, and I am glad that I gave way. When I gave the example of my constituents, I had a Zimbabwean in such a position in mind.

Obviously, in putting forward a proposal such as clause 1, one needs a statistical basis to show how many people would be affected. It seems as though all the statistics produced by the Home Office in this regard are completely unreliable. The Daily Telegraph reported on 26 April that 25,345 new asylum cases submitted since 2008 still awaited a conclusion. The Home Affairs Committee reported on 24 May that the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency agreed that there was a new backlog, but did not know its extent. He advised that he might find out what the extent of it was in due course. We know that the Government were going to achieve the target of completing 90% of asylum cases within six months by December 2011. My understanding is that that target has been abandoned in favour of what is described as a “basket” of 11 alternative indicators. The National Audit Office report of 15 March indicates that up to 181,000 people might have overstayed their work, student or family reunion visas in the past four years. We also know that migrants are arriving in this country at a rate of between 500,000 and 600,000 a year. That is more than 10,000 a week.

There is a problem here. I think that the most deserving people who come in as migrants are genuine asylum seekers and refugees. However, the UK Border Agency makes it quite clear on its website, under the heading “Employment”, that asylum seekers are not allowed to work:

“You will not normally be allowed to work while we consider your asylum application, except in very limited circumstances.”

It continues:

“Currently, most new asylum applications receive a decision within 30 days.”

That is what the website says, but it is not borne out by the statistics to which I have referred. So what actually happens? Instead of allowing asylum seekers to obtain employment, we, as national taxpayers, give them support. We provide them with cash, housing, access to the health service and access to our schools when children are involved. We are paying out a lot of extra money to support people while denying them the opportunity to support themselves.

Does that make sense? In my book, it does not make any sense whatever. I therefore hope that the Government will look carefully at my proposition.

We know that in Sweden, for example, asylum seekers are given the right to work. We can contrast the situation there with that in Greece, about which I have recently received a lot of evidence in my capacity as this year’s chairman of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The situation in Greece is desperate, because the Greek authorities will not allow the tens of thousands of asylum seekers in the country to work. As a result they cannot get their cases dealt with quickly, and some have been waiting there for many years. Now there is a outbreak of lawlessness, including murder and a lot of robberies, in Athens and surrounding areas, committed by desperate asylum seekers who do not have the means or ability to lawfully seek jobs. They are locked into Greece because they cannot get into any other country. They cannot go back to Turkey, through which most of them arrived. The situation for asylum seekers there is chaotic and desperate. I do not want to see that replicated in this country.