ME: Treatment and Research

Debate between David Drew and Alex Sobel

Thursday 21st June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Drew]

I agree, and the hon. Lady makes her point strongly. All I will say is that I will concentrate mainly on the medical side of things. However, everybody needs to be more aware because of the numbers—two in every 1,000 people are thought to suffer from the condition.

We have heard a lot about the PACE trial and the need for NICE to rewrite its guidelines, so I do not really want to labour those points, other than to say that it is not helpful that cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise therapy are still suggested as the appropriate way forward after ME diagnosis. We know for all sorts of reasons that that is not so. I am sure the Minister heard that and will want to comment on it.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituent was diagnosed with ME but, after going for a private test, it turned out to be Lyme disease. That shows the lack of knowledge and the confusion in the medical profession between those two conditions and others.

[Dr Drew]

If my hon. Friend reads Dr Shepherd’s book, he will see some of the overlap between Lyme disease and ME, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North West mentioned. That is why this whole area needs proper diagnosis and a proper investigation into some of the research implications.

On research, as has been made patently clear by other Members, most of the research is self-help. That is not good enough. This is a major condition that affects lots of our constituents, and yet they are asked to raise all the money for research themselves. That is not good enough, so we clearly ask the Government—as the Minister will have heard—and the research councils to give ME the priority that it deserves.

House of Lords: Abolition

Debate between David Drew and Alex Sobel

Monday 18th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I am pleased to say that I agree almost entirely with the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), but I come at the issue from a completely different perspective. We may come to the same conclusion, but we have different reasons for wanting the abolition of the House of Lords.

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was here in 2003—he may have avoided that—when we had the vote on the future of the House of Lords. A White Paper offered seven options, all seven of which the House of Commons voted down. We do not have a terribly good track record of addressing the issue. We looked again in 2007—I think the hon. Gentleman was with us then—and made some progress. Surprisingly, the Commons came to an agreement that we wanted our Parliament to be bicameral, with an elected upper Chamber and that hereditaries would be abolished. Sadly, the Government fell in 2010, and for the last eight years we do not seem to have made much progress.

It is about time we revisited the issue, because it is pretty obvious that this petition strikes a chord. People do not sign in such numbers—169,000 and mounting as we speak—unless they feel quite strongly about an issue. The petition may have been brought on by Brexit and people’s antagonism towards the Lords for the way it has performed, but the debate goes much deeper than that. As someone with an awful lot of friends in the Lords—I may have fewer after this speech—I think it is time that we looked at what we want to be done, not just by the Lords but by the Commons.

I think I voted in favour of an elected chamber last time around, but I now believe we must abolish the Lords. Why have I come around in favour of abolition? Quite simply, it is because I do not believe we will ever do anything unless we abolish the Lords. We would have to put something in its place, but we must start with the nihilistic approach, if I can put it like that, of getting rid of what exists. We cannot carry on in the way we have been going. The latest attempt at reform by the Lord Speaker’s Committee demonstrates why we cannot let the House of Lords reform itself. The proposal is minimalistic and unacceptable, and I am sure it will never get through the Commons, so I do not know why it was even brought forward.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I agree that we need to abolish the Lords and start again, but we have seen that we need a bicameral Parliament. The Lord Speaker’s Committee has broad agreement in the Lords, so it should be seen as a starting point. If we made a radical proposal, the Lords themselves would vote it down and we would not get any further. To quote Voltaire, I do not think we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need a proposal that can get through both Houses.

[Dr Drew]

That may be true, but I am an idealist, and I believe that we ought to seek out the best solution. Otherwise, we will always end up compromising—although compromises may well have to be allowed along the way.

Let me concentrate for a moment on the Commons. I have always argued that one of the problems with the Commons is that we pass too much bad legislation and we rely on the Lords to get it right through scrutiny and revision. If we got it right in the first place, we would not necessarily need another Chamber to do that. Again, that may be idealistic, but I feel strongly that the Commons must do its job better. There are all sorts of reasons why we cannot do our job satisfactorily: we are all too busy, so we all multi-task too much. We have Westminster Hall as a second debating chamber, which is great—those of us who argued for it thought it would open up debate for Back Benchers—but we are now criticised all the time by the public for never being in the main Chamber, and no one ever listens to our debates. We have to try to box and cox—we must realise that there is no perfect solution, but that there are solutions we can help along the way.

One of the reasons I would get rid of the Lords is that we have a fundamental problem with this building, which we will have to vacate sometime soon. Now is the time to look at what sort of structure we want. It would be daft to have that debate after we came back into the new building—it will be new, because it will in effect be rebuilt from the bottom up—whatever form it takes. It would be sensible to have it now and to establish what the second Chamber should look like, if we want one.

The one thing I disagree with the petitioners about is their assertion that the decision should be handled by a referendum. Anyone who read what I said last week will know that I do not agree with referendums being used for anything at the moment, given what happened with Brexit. It is about time Parliament reasserted its authority and decided what it wants to do. We would then face the consequences, because the electorate would either vote for us or not. As I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), I am not happy with what the Lord Speaker’s Committee has come forward with, which seems like a temporary solution—an aberration—when we need a radical overhaul of the way our Chambers operate.

If I do not want the second Chamber to continue as it is, how do I see it operating, and how do I see that situation being arrived at? Its role should be to scrutinise and to take an overview of legislation. The Lords does that well at the moment, but I do not want a second Chamber that in effect replicates the Commons. I was told many times while Labour was in government, “The Commons won’t agree to this, but don’t worry—we can get it through in the Lords.” That always made me look pretty stupid, because I would argue the case in the Commons and lose, only for that decision to be overturned in the Lords, where common sense prevailed. That may seem a jolly good reason for having the Lords, but I think it is a negation of what should happen in the Commons. We should take authority, debate and deliberate on things and then pass legislation, but we should do a better job of that.

I am not in favour of an elected second Chamber. I would make it a selectorate, keep it to about 200 people and allow those people to be representative of different ethnic groups, regions and interests. How would that be arrived at? I think Select Committees should interview appropriate people. I do not know whether hon. Members remember the people’s peers. I think we created about six and then the whole idea died a death. That was a daft idea—it was one of new Labour’s “Let’s share it with the people” compromises—but in a sense it is about time the Commons decided who is an appropriate Member of the second Chamber. I would make those Members’ period in office time-limited, and they should rotate so there is always some expertise but people move through. People should apply for the role, as they do in other walks of life, and Select Committees are the obvious bodies to interview them. Again, that would put the onus on Members of the Commons.

I am basically saying that we should take the politics out of the second Chamber. That may be idealistic, but I want expertise in that Chamber. I want people who know about science and the arts—people who know about the finer details of legislation, including the law, religion and so on—but who will not challenge the Commons. That is the problem—in effect, we have two Chambers challenging each other. We see that in the attrition over Brexit, but it has happened time after time, because traditionally the Lords has championed opposition to the Government. In normal circumstances—this is not the case at the moment with a hung Parliament—the Government believe they can get their legislation through. Abolishing the Lords would put the onus on the Commons to get that legislation right. If it did not, the Government would pay the consequences.

In conclusion, I feel that this is the right time to have this debate, so I welcome the petition, although I do not want a referendum—I want the issue to be decided by Parliament. That may be where the Lords comes in with its blocking role, but that is for it to decide. It would lose its credibility completely if it were seen to stand in the way of efforts to evolve what I think is the proper bicameral arrangement, in which one element of Parliament is democratically accountable and the other provides expertise and helps the process of the elected people.

My final point is that whatever money we save from the House of Lords should be given to MPs—not in pay but to run our offices. We are all overwhelmed with constituency work. That work gives us our grounding, and it is why we are different. We know what is going on in our constituencies because our constituents tell us. The problem is that we need additional resources to do a decent job, but our resources are capped. I would therefore put the money we saved from the Lords into running our offices, which would allow us more time to do our job in the Commons as we should.

Sale of Puppies

Debate between David Drew and Alex Sobel

Monday 21st May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairing, Sir Roger, even though you would rather be on this side of the room talking in the debate. I know you feel passionately about it, as does Mr Austin, who was in the Chair before you. I congratulate the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), who carefully introduced the debate. We have also heard contributions from the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns), my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), and the hon. Members for Clacton (Giles Watling), for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), for Aberdeen South (Ross Thomson), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), and the SNP spokesperson—I will try and get her constituency name right—the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron). I am pleased to see the Minister in his place.

This is a debate in which we largely agree, so I will not take up time agreeing with hon. Members who made passionate contributions on what is—let us be honest—heinous animal cruelty, and one of the worst, because it is about making money. It is in no way about trying to provide a supply of animals for which there is a demand.

I was shocked by the figure of how many registered providers there are—only 12%, and about 70% of what is provided—so the vast majority of people get their pets through fairly dodgy provision, and the simple fact is that, unless the Minister can tell us, we do not know how many people are out there operating. That is an awful thing to say, and it is because many of them do not operate in this country at all. As has been said, they operate through the south of Ireland and eastern Europe, so the animals get here after the most perilous of journeys. One presumes that many do not get here at all because they suffer in transit.

I agree with what has been said. I will not go through some of the more gory stories, but we have to recognise that they are there and take them up. I hope the Minister will take away from the debate the need for action. Most of us agree on the need for a ban. Regulation is always called for, but a complete ban seems to be the way forward in this case. Labour would support that as part of an animal welfare Act, which could likewise deal with other evils out there. As always, I am aware that it could become a Christmas tree Bill, which we stick on things to ban—we all have our favourites—but that would be appropriate in this case because people feel passionately about it.

I thank those who introduced the petition and who support Lucy’s law. The message is that the Government need to act quickly and comprehensively, because this is a trade that should not be allowed to continue in the way that it has. Puppy smuggling is one of those animal welfare issues about which one thinks, “Why does anyone do it?” As I say, they do it purely because they want to make money. There is no other reason why the trade continues.

The Animal and Plant Health Agency has done some sterling work, alongside the Dog’s Trust. I thank the Dog’s Trust, Battersea Dogs Home, Cats Protection, various other organisations and other private contributors, who have given me lots of information, which I do not intend to impart. We all know that this is a well-trailed area. It is known exactly what is going on and what should be going on.

Sadly, where the Government have acted—for instance, with the pet travel scheme—there is evidence that it has not helped, because people have perhaps used that as a device to bring in animals where other means would not have been allowed. Of course, we would strongly argue that we need additional border guards. Whatever one’s view on Brexit—no doubt the Minister and I will debate Brexit again—we need to patrol and maintain our borders, because this unacceptable trade goes on daily. Whatever we feel about a ban, we could do more to crack down on what is coming through, because it is clearly unacceptable. I hope the Minister will say something about that. Surely we must have a means to deal with that, notwithstanding the need for a ban on the third-party provision of puppies, as well as cats and other animals, as has been said. It is not just puppies; we could get into rabbits, guinea pigs and so on. Sadly, these animals are being abused, because they are being bred purely for the worst of reasons.

International studies have shown that puppies obtained from pet shops have, as has been said, a lower life expectancy than other puppies and suffer much more from disease. That is made worse if they come here from other parts of the world, as they have already faced the problems of transit. Labour would support banning third-party sales, and we hope we can get on with it. It is no good just promising it; people now expect us to take action through Parliament, so we cannot allow a delay, and obviously this is also about welfare standards, traceability, transparency and accountability.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

What does my hon. Friend think would be the right sanction for those who broke a ban? Does he feel that they should face a custodial sentence or a fine? I want to ask the Minister the same question when he speaks, but I would like to hear from the shadow Minister first.

[Dr Drew]

I could have done with advance warning. That is a bit unfair; we are supposed to be on the same side. I think we should have strong sanctions in this area. It is not just a question of banning people from taking part in this trade; we should have the toughest sanctions. This is about animal cruelty. This is as bad as dogfighting or some of the cruelties inflicted on horses left in the worst possible conditions through the winter. It is awful and, as a nation of animal lovers, we should feel strongly about it, so I hope there will be the possibility of criminal sanctions, because these people are acting criminally. This is not some minor trade; people make serious money out of it, so they should be dealt with by the full force of the law, because of how these animals are bred and how they are kept, in the worst of conditions.

The sad thing is that these are often the animals that are bought as pets but end up in the shelters or rescue centres because of their health problems and other problems. Many of the wonderful voluntary organisations in this sector are full to bursting, because of these animals that have been discarded. Again, it would seem sensible to investigate further where those animals come from before they arrive in our shelters, because that is a serious worry. Whenever staff from the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home come here and talk to us, they say that they cannot take any more animals. They are forever having to make difficult decisions about how many animals they can keep, because they are inundated with people who think it is fun to have a pet for three or four months, but then realise that they cannot look after it and so dispose of it. Hon. Members have said this, but we need to think about the education process—“A dog isn’t just for Christmas, it’s for life”. People need to understand that it is a lifetime commitment.

This is also about resources, and I totally agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who asked where the resources are. It is no good having a ban if we do not enforce it or follow it up with prosecutions and so on.

I will make a final couple of points. As for this idea that people should take an animal only if it is with its mother and has clearly been bred through that particular animal, it is difficult to tell that, but registered and properly run breeders would pride themselves on providing that information, and they would be able to prove it. In a sense, they would have to be able to license themselves, by showing that a puppy was the offspring of the mother. That is where the care and the proper breeding process could be seen in its entirety.

As I have said, we are not talking about Brexit today, but it would be interesting to know whether we could go ahead and introduce a ban without having to go through all the EU regulations, because clearly elements of this are subject to EU oversight.

To conclude, I hope the Minister will say that this is something we all agree on. There is a consultation, but one hopes that everyone is saying that a ban is appropriate and can be progressed, and so we just need to get on with this, rather than waiting. We would prefer a ban as part of an overall animal welfare Bill, but it might be something we could introduce because of the level of agreement that exists, because of the harm being done and because of the duplicity involved. People end up with these pets, thinking they are doing something good for themselves and their children, when all they are really doing is fuelling this terrible trade. If we could get some clarity on where the Government are going on this, we will give our support in terms of any time that is necessary, but a ban is right, a ban is appropriate and a ban is needed.

Higher Education

Debate between David Drew and Alex Sobel

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

This will be a short speech about why I support the motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and why the Office for Students is not fit for purpose.

I am a former student union executive officer and NUS full-time elected officer. The Government are excluding student representation on entirely spurious grounds, so it is not an office for students but an office against students. On 20 March, The Guardian reported that university leaders described the Office for Students as the “Office for State Control,” warning that it would prove disastrous for higher education and is “dangerous for democracy.”

The Government’s power grab is not being challenged by people in the sector, as they fear reprisals from Ministers, so it is for us in the Opposition to speak up for them. An anonymous vice-chancellor said:

“It is a huge problem if we feel we cannot criticise government. A lot of VCs feel that if they speak out they risk being ripped apart by the media. If there is a lack of leadership at UUK that is a massive problem.”

How have the Government managed to create both a culture and an institution akin to the Ministry of Love in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in which university vice-chancellors, the leaders of this country’s great institutions of learning and research, cannot speak out? In a modern democracy, that is a shameful indictment of the Government. This chapter, on how the state has treated universities in this country, will live long in the history of infamy. This motion is not only necessary but essential if we are to guard universities’ academic freedom. We must think again about how the Office for Students is constructed.

I understand but strongly disagree with the Government’s need to turn higher education into a complete market economy in which students do not fulfil their desire to learn and grow but are consumers there to fulfil a future economic need. There is a drive for deregulation, the free marketeers’ dream.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that, as one vice-chancellor told me, there is at least a suspicion that we are moving back to the binary divide between the Russell Group and the new universities? That is a worrying development because it will play out in terms of value for money, and it will end up with the Russell Group charging higher fees and new universities having to charge lower fees.

[Alex Sobel]

I have a 1992 university in my constituency and I am a graduate and former student union officer of a Russell Group university, and I agree with my hon. Friend. The rot will set in when we start to have differential fees, which some of us here opposed at the time.

We need to create an institution that supports our bastions of learning, rather than one that tries to sanitise them. We need to transform how students view their institutions and the Office for Students. We need to view these institutions differently from other actors in the free market—they are not a shop or retail outlet but places where people come to learn and grow.