Israel and Gaza
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Mr Mitchell
What the hon. Gentleman says underlines the fact that Israel is a pluralist democratic society where there are different views. He asked me what the British Government are saying to Prime Minister Netanyahu, and I can assure him that both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have frank, open and detailed exchanges on those matters.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
It is the position of the Liberal Democrats that the UK Government should give their backing to the ICC. If the Conservative Government do not believe the ICC has jurisdiction, which international institution or legal mechanism do they intend to look to in order to ensure that any breaches of the law of war on the frontline can be prosecuted?
Mr Mitchell
As the hon. Lady knows, we make our own judgments on international humanitarian law. We are quick to come to the House if anything changes, but nothing has changed since the Foreign Secretary made his comments in Washington, I think, in early April. On the subject of the ICC’s announcement today, I hope the House will accept that it is premature to respond further before the pre-trial chamber has considered the application for warrants.
Women’s Rights to Reproductive Healthcare: United States
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Amanda Milling
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The Prime Minister was pretty clear over the weekend about our views on the matter. He recognises that this is a matter for the US courts, which is not our jurisdiction, but is very clear about his view, which I share, that the move is a step backwards. I reassure the House that the UK has a long-standing commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights across the globe. We also have a proud record in terms of defending and promoting universal and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
The House will know that 50 new clinics have been targeted by protesters in England and Wales since 2018. Will the Minister commit to speaking to her counterparts in the Home Office to legislate for the protection of those visiting an abortion clinic?
Amanda Milling
As I said earlier, here in the UK we as women have the choice over our own bodies, should we want or need to have an abortion—often in very difficult circumstances. It is important that women are able to access those clinics.
Ukraine
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. How is it that the biometric process has held up the humanitarian effort? It feels as if there is a constant concern about security, but we know that the vast majority of those fleeing are women and children. As I said, this undermines our reputation globally.
More than two months on from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, this war has entered a new stage. What Ukraine needs now is no longer old, spare weapons from the Soviet era but new NATO weapons to prepare for Putin’s new fronts. We have to recognise that this war will now endure for months, possibly years. Now is the time for long-term thinking about how European security must be strengthened. Now is the time for the Conservatives finally to act on the recommendations of the Russia report. Now is the time for the Conservatives finally to stop their cuts to the armed services.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, although it is clear on the Order Paper that the Foreign Secretary and her Department will be responding to this debate, the relevant documents include petitions relating to visas and it would be helpful if a Home Office Minister joined the debate to hear Members’ concerns?
Mr Lammy
The hon. Lady makes her point incredibly well. We want a joined-up Government in this global emergency.
Now is the time to protect the most vulnerable from the cost of Putin’s war, whether they are the vulnerable fleeing Ukraine or the vulnerable in the global south who have to be part of the coalition helping us stand up to this Russian aggression. Now is the time to rethink the already outdated integrated review. Now is the time to make Britain, our allies and partners secure.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
As I said when I intervened on the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) earlier, although the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was identified as the responding Department, the debate is linked to two petitions related to visa issues. I am bitterly disappointed that we have not been joined by a Home Office Minister. I will now have to speak into the ether and send the Hansard transcript to the Refugees Minister, bringing the total number of letters that I will have sent unanswered to three.
I will talk about a number of cases in my constituency, and then put some questions on the record. I hope that the Minister may be able to answer them, but if not, that he will pass them on to the Home Office. I have a number of cases to do with the Homes for Ukraine scheme; quite frankly, the scheme is in a complete and utter mess.
A Ukrainian mother with two daughters applied five weeks ago. My team went to the MP hub in Portcullis House and asked if all the necessary documents were there. We were told that they were and there were no issues. Four days later, we were told that one of the daughters had a passport that had expired and it was no longer acceptable. Her father, still in Ukraine, had to go to the Ukrainian passport office—in the middle of a war—to pick up a new passport. His daughter’s application remains outstanding, despite his having sent a photograph of that passport to his wife two weeks ago.
The next example is of a mother, a father and a baby boy. The baby boy was too young to get a passport before he had to leave home. We were advised that it was possible to get the permission to travel document without that passport. Three weeks after being told that, we are now being told they need a new passport for that child.
The third case is of a mother and two daughters whose application was submitted. Three weeks later, they have been told they now have to attend a visa application centre to submit their biometrics. The passport had been attached to the online application, but it had been attached to the wrong section. They have to go and fill in the forms again, because it was attached to the wrong box on the form.
In the case of another of my families—a mother and two daughters—the daughters both had expired passports and they were told they had to get passport extensions, so they did. When they went on to the Homes for Ukraine forum online, they could not upload the new extended passports because they had already uploaded the expired passports, so they uploaded them into the travel and residency section. My constituent, who is trying to help this family, phoned the Ukraine Home Office helpline three times to ask if this was okay, and was told three different things: on the first call, that the family should travel three hours for a biometrics appointment; on the second call, that nothing further was required; and on the third call, that the new application would need to be submitted a week later. My team went to the Portcullis House hub and asked what the real answer was, and we were told the documents were on file and nothing more was needed. They have now suddenly been told, once again, that they have to go to a biometrics appointment.
When we have mothers and children or mothers and babies fleeing war on our continent, it is absolutely heart-breaking, frustrating and angering that the response of the Home Office is “Computer says no”, but that is what we are facing. I recognise that the Foreign Secretary said earlier that she would take up the specific case raised by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), but we all have cases—we have so many cases. I have given just a few examples, and I have many more. The system is not working, and we would like to know what will be improved.
I have a number of policy-related questions to put on the record. I have discovered that a number of applications between 18 and 25 March remain outstanding, even though applications put in after 25 March have been processed and approved. It would be good if the Government explained in what order applications are processed and why later applications are being processed when there is a window within which a number of applications appear to have disappeared into the ether.
Secondly, why are there delays, often of up to seven or 10 days, between visas being approved and permission to travel documents being sent? I tabled a named day question last week, asking the Home Office to provide an explanation for that delay. I should have received the answer this evening, but I received a holding response. Thirdly, why is the online system so clunky that my constituents, and the families they are trying to bring to safe harbour, cannot even change an email address or home address, or something along those lines? I have a constituent who is upsizing and moving to a larger flat so that he can bring in a family from Ukraine. He cannot update his home address, and he has been told that he has to start the application process all over again. The system is absurd!
I have been in touch with my local council, which also has questions. It is being given the numbers of families who are applying through the Homes for Ukraine scheme, but not the numbers of people coming under the Ukraine family scheme. It cannot get that information, so it does not know how many people to expect. It asks whether funding will be provided to local authorities to support Ukrainians who have come under the family scheme. No funding has been provided, yet those people can access benefits, health and education. The council also wants to know—it is still awaiting guidance on the matching process under the Homes for Ukraine scheme—what happens if the sponsor and Ukrainian family relationship fails.
Alison Thewliss
Does the hon. Lady agree it is important that councils know who is coming so that they can plan their services accordingly? For example, tutors in English as an additional language might be required in schools.
Daisy Cooper
The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and it is critical that local councils know how to plan their services.
The final point from our local council was that refuges apparently cannot swap from the Ukraine family scheme to the Homes for Ukraine scheme if the accommodation does not work. I have put a lot of questions on the record, and I sincerely hope that the Government have listened. I have already sent two letters to the refugees Minister, and tomorrow I will send a third. I am bitterly disappointed, as my constituents will be, that we do not have a Minister from the Home Office to respond to the debate. I am begging the Government: please listen to these concerns, and please, please fix the system.
UK Telecommunications
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Dominic Raab
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend. I agree with the second part of her question, and I have laid out at length the legal, regulatory and fiscal measures that the Government will consider taking to prevent this from happening. I and the Government do not believe that an outright ban would address in a targeted way people’s legitimate security concerns about high-risk vendors. It would be a very blunt tool to address a very specific problem.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
The Government make a distinction between the core and the periphery, but many people have made the point that as the network continues to integrate, that distinction will disappear. What reassurances can the Secretary of State provide on that? The periphery, where Huawei will be committed to operate, includes radio masts that are used for emergency services, search and rescue and distress signals, and by 100 community RAYNET—Radio Amateurs’ Emergency Network—organisations. What assurances can he provide on that?
Dominic Raab
I thank the hon. Lady for those good, focused questions. The core of the network is the nerve centre for our national telecommunications network. It is for the most sensitive functions, relating to things like protecting sensitive data, and that is how we can identify very clearly the specific requirements needed to protect them. The access network—the periphery or the edge, as it is called—is the infrastructure connecting customer devices and equipment to mobile phone masts, transport and transmission networks. There is a clear distinction. She is right to say that technology is fluid and this may change over time, but we are very clear on the functions that we have identified and the way that we are going to protect them.
Britain in the World
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
It is a great honour to make my maiden speech following many other accomplished and passionate speakers. My constituency of St Albans is very proud of its contribution both to Britain’s history and to Britain’s place in the world. Alban himself is the first recorded Christian martyr and Britain’s first saint. He was executed for giving shelter to a stranger fleeing persecution, and his grave is a site of pilgrimage to this day. Then there is Magna Carta, the great charter of liberties, which has shaped democracies around the world. The very first meetings that led to the drafting of that charter were held in St Albans Abbey. Today, the abbey is surrounded by pubs—lots and lots of pubs. St Albans has more pubs per square mile than any other place in Great Britain and they are steeped in our nation’s history, too.
Daisy Cooper
You are very welcome. The war of the roses started on the doorstep of The Boot, and Oliver Cromwell stayed the night at the inn now known as Ye Olde Fighting Cocks. These two pubs and many more in St Albans and around the country are under threat like never before. They have suffered a crippling rise in business rates, and the measures announced in this Queen’s Speech to help small retail businesses will not benefit those pubs whose business rates are calculated differently and which have a higher rateable value. In St Albans and around the UK, there are pockets of pubs that have had rate increases of between 100% and 2,000%. They need urgent help if they are to survive the next few months, let alone the centuries to come. It would be a cruel end indeed if these pubs, which have withstood the English civil wars, were finished off by a broken, outdated and unfair system of tax.
To keep our pubs going, the Save St Albans Pubs campaign has mapped out many pub crawls. These crawls will take you through the 100-acre Verulamium park, with its Roman walls and ruins, and to the abbey, home to medieval art hidden for 500 years, until now. Visitors and locals alike can walk through the Sopwell ruins. More alarmingly these days, we can also walk along the often dried-up riverbed of the River Ver, one of the most precious chalk streams in the world. Indeed, my predecessor, Anne Main, warned in her maiden speech in 2005 that the River Ver was in danger of drying up, and yet here we are. I would like to say, despite our many political differences, that Anne contributed 14 years of public service to St Albans and to Parliament. I would like to pay a sincere tribute to her for that.
St Albans is not just a place of history; it is a place of international innovation. St Albans is in Hertfordshire, the county of opportunity. Around the city, we have a number of beautiful villages. Bricket Wood is home to the world’s leading building-science centre, the British Research Establishment, and dotted in and around are many other villages that are home to tech and research businesses. These cutting-edge British-based businesses are harnessing technology and knowledge to produce new products, new jobs and new solutions. Technology offers great potential to tackle many of our modern global challenges, and modern technology, science and research are international. British business requires the easy movement of people and skills across borders. This country has benefited from its EU membership, and our research and development sector is just one example of that. My fellow residents in St Albans do not wish to lose the benefits of such close collaboration and alliances.
Close international collaboration and alliance between Britain and our international cousins is essential if we are to tackle the biggest threat of all: the climate crisis. My fellow constituents in St Albans want tough action to avert climate disaster, including a complete moratorium on airport expansion, including at nearby Luton airport. We want to protect our local natural environment. In St Albans, a significant chunk of our green belt is at risk from the monstrosity of a rail and lorry freight terminal. Our chalk streams, including the River Ver in St Albans, are now in crisis, from both over-extraction and the changing climate. Some 85% of the world’s chalk streams are located in England, and most of those are in Hertfordshire. They are known as England’s Amazon for a reason. These precious ecosystems are a unique global asset. Even without further harm, it will take decades for them to recover.
As hon. Members can see, St Albans is blessed with a rich cultural history, cutting-edge businesses, wonderful pubs—did I mention the pubs?—and beautiful green belt. You can see why St Albans is often described as a wealthy, leafy, commuter town 20 miles north of London, but, like many places across the UK, we only have to scratch the surface to see that some people in St Albans are really, really struggling. There is a rising use of food banks and a growing presence of homelessness. There is palpable frustration at how public services, including the NHS and schools, are chronically underfunded and alarm at the rapid increase in crime from county lines. The St Albans-to-London commute should be easy but is often an unreliable, uncomfortable and increasingly unaffordable ride.
To conclude, St Albans has a lot of history to draw upon, but our outlook is to the future. Over the centuries, our magnificent history has continued to inspire. From martyrdom to Magna Carta and the uprising of Iceni’s Boudicca, St Albans has a timeless tradition of being at the heart of our country’s fights for greater democracy, liberties and freedoms. We believe in St Albans that Britain should be open and internationalist. We believe we should work with our closest international neighbours to tackle the global climate crisis. We believe in our responsibility to take in those fleeing persecution and war, as Alban himself did and as St Albans has continued to do, taking in children and families from 1940s London to 21st-century Syria. I am honoured to represent my fellow residents of St Albans here in Parliament and fully intend to honour our traditions and values during the months and years ahead.