Points of order
Debate between Dawn Butler and Eleanor Laing(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for withdrawing that accusation, because it lets us at least take that part out of this specific issue. It may be that somebody made that comment, but I really do not care what they said or how they said it. They should not be saying anything at all while seated when someone else is asking a question or the Prime Minister is answering it. Everyone in this House ought to bear in mind that what is said and done in here has a much wider audience, and we ought to be setting an example of being reasonable and careful in the way that we use words and phrases, and never being inflammatory.
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. My point of order also relates to Israel and Gaza. ITV News recently broadcast a video showing the killing of an unarmed civilian in Gaza who was waving a white flag—the international symbol of peace. It is not the first time unarmed people have been killed in Gaza while raising white flags; in fact, three Israeli hostages were brutally killed while topless and waving a white flag. This is deeply concerning to me, as I am sure it is to many people in this House. An Israel Defence Forces commander has indicated that the IDF was responsible, saying,
“There are mistakes, it is war.”
This incident could potentially constitute a war crime. How can we ensure that the Government come to this House to assure us that this incident will be properly investigated and that UK-supplied weapons were not used, and to set out the steps being taken to ensure that Israel follows the ruling from the International Court of Justice?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I have listened carefully to the hon. Lady, and the point she makes is not a point of order for the Chair—not at all. She is making a very serious point about a tragic incident among many thousands of tragic incidents that have occurred over the past few months, but it is not a point of order for the Chair.
The hon. Lady is raising a point that she wants to raise with Ministers. The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), was recently at the Dispatch Box making a statement on Gaza, and I anticipate it is very likely that a Foreign Office Minister or a Minister from the Ministry of Defence will be here again within a few days to make a further statement. If not, Opposition Front Benchers and others have been most assiduous in asking urgent questions to ensure that Ministers come to the House to answer these important questions.
The hon. Lady is not asking a question that I can deal with from the Chair; she is asking a question that she wants to ask of a Minister. If she wants to ask a question of a Minister, there are various ways she can do that: she can put down an urgent question; she can ask for an Adjournment debate; she can speak to Members on her own Front Bench about having an extended debate in Opposition time—I will not list them all. There are many, many ways in which the hon. Lady can do that, but I cannot answer her question from the Chair. It is not a point of order.
Points of Order
Debate between Dawn Butler and Eleanor Laing
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. My dad, God rest his soul, said to me that there are not many levers to tackle injustices, but boycotting is one of them. That is why I could not vote for the Government’s Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill yesterday, which Ministers and lawyers have said would likely place the United Kingdom in breach of international law obligations. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns)—I have informed her that I will be mentioning her—said in an intervention on the Minister:
“The Foreign Office’s own legal advice states that the Bill could breach UNSC 2334. How am I being told repeatedly from the Dispatch Box that that is not the case, when that is what Government lawyers are saying themselves?”
She said,
“please do not repeat that this does not change anything when the Government lawyers themselves say it does.”—[Official Report, 3 July 2023; Vol. 735, c. 656.]
Conservative Members seem to have been informed that the Bill could breach international law, while Government Ministers state the opposite. I am minded to believe the hon. Lady, but could you advise me, Madam Deputy Speaker, on what I can do to ensure that the Government place all their legal advice in the Library, so that we can all have a read and discover who is telling the truth?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving me notice of her point of order. No, the Chair does not have the power—nor has it ever in the whole of our constitutional development—to require the Government to place any document in the Library, and certainly not legal advice. The hon. Lady, who is well versed in these matters, has rightly used the opportunity of a point of order to put her opinion on the record, and I am sure that it will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench. As I say, she is well versed in these matters, and she will know it has been the long-standing practice of Governments of every political persuasion not to publish their legal advice. That is the normal course, and I certainly have no power from the Chair to compel the Government to do otherwise.
Government PPE Contracts
Debate between Dawn Butler and Eleanor Laing(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Dawn Butler
My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. I spoke in Committee this morning. I am not going to read the book but I think we have to scrutinise it and cross-check the information that the Minister gave in Committee against what is in the book. The new Ministers who have come into post should be a little more humble, because what has happened is shocking. The cronyism and the corruption that has happened in the Government in plain sight is truly shocking. The Government are now spending £10 million burning PPE. It is like they are burning the evidence—we wonder why. [Interruption.] Sorry, the Minister said that I have just criticised the Minister for storing PPE. He is right. I would not want the Minister to spend nearly £1 million every day storing PPE. I also do not want him to burn PPE. He should be using the PPE—give it to people who are travelling on the tube. We are having a flu epidemic and it will help to resolve that, so don’t heckle me when this is your responsibility—[Interruption.] I mean the Minister. Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Government are incompetent as well as corrupt and it is not just cronyism. The situation is so ridiculous—[Interruption.] Am I not allowed to call it what it is, Madam Deputy Speaker? It smells like corruption to me.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. It is perfectly in order for the hon. Lady to say “incompetent”, but I would be grateful if she would find another form of words, rather than saying “corrupt”.
Dawn Butler
This is so ridiculous, Madam Deputy Speaker. When the Netflix series comes out, nobody is going to believe it is a true story. I know we are not supposed to speak about the Conservative peer too much, but we learn today that they are taking leave of absence from the Lords. I am not saying this in jest, but I hope she is not on her yacht trying to do a runner because a lot of money has gone missing. In a previous Minister’s own words, he was being “bullied” into giving this contract—[Interruption.] No, I don’t feel sorry for him, but he was being bullied. Two Ministers were being bullied, so it is important that we investigate the VIP lane.
As I said earlier, the National Audit Office said that companies were put there by mistake and were still given millions of pounds. Surely that shows us that due diligence was not done; the company was there by mistake. How did it get all that money? When the Minister gets to his feet, could he tell the House how many of these companies existed before the pandemic? If he cannot, of course, we look forward to that information being available in the Library or when this motion passes today, which I hope it does.
For the avoidance of any doubt, we all know that the VIP lane was a bit dodgy—that is just a fact and on record—but this has all come to light not because Parliament managed to force the Government to reveal everything that happened, but because a bank reported unusual activity and dropped a certain person and her husband in fear of reputational damage. That is what has brought this particular scandal to light and the National Crime Agency has now investigated.
As others have said, this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. The Serious Fraud office is also investigating contracts won by another company, Pharmaceuticals Direct Ltd, which paid a whopping £20 million fee to a middleman, Surbjit Shergill, who worked for Samir Jassal. Together, they had a hotline to the then Prime Minister’s special adviser, Munira Mirza. We also know—we have seen the emails—that they were helped by the right hon. Members for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) and for Witham (Priti Patel).
If a company has to go through due diligence and believes that it is participating in a proper process, why would it agree to pay a politically connected middleman £20 million? That does not make any sense. If everybody is treated the same, there would be no need to pay somebody £20 million to move up the list. As you said, Madam Deputy Speaker, I cannot say the word “corruption” —I am trying to think of other words; hopefully more will come to me and I will use them—but it feels very much like cash for covid contracts. What happened to that money is a mystery. The Serious Fraud Office continues to investigate the case 18 months after it was referred.
I could speak about so many more cases. For those who are interested, there is a thread on my Twitter account about some of the other companies where there are huge questions to be answered. The Government need to open up their books and ensure that there is proper scrutiny. Yes, of course we accept that mistakes were made and that some of them were unavoidable, but the Department of Health and Social Care did not do the fraud checks that it was supposed to do; we had to push it, and that did not come out until a whole year later. There has been negligence, but there has also been something a little more sinister happening in Government.
Those people who stole money from the public purse during a national crisis should be ashamed. They should not say, “I was doing it for the country” as they are not when they are pocketing millions of pounds. It is not patriotic; it is a word that you are not happy with me using, Madam Deputy Speaker. Those people took the money unlawfully, really—they were helped by Government Ministers—and they will have had plenty of interest payments from their ill-gotten gains. Now is the time, during the cost of living crisis, to give that money back. That includes the donations given to the Tory party by those people who had a bung from the covid crisis—they need to come back into the public purse.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I will have to put on a time limit of four minutes.
Conduct of the Right Hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip
Debate between Dawn Butler and Eleanor Laing(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Anneliese Dodds
No, I will not give way. [Hon. Members: “Withdraw!”] And I most certainly—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. We have had a perfectly reasonable exchange between the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) and the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). We do not need shouting about it. We are dealing here in facts and good argument, not shouting.
Dawn Butler
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the Government have lost every court case when they have been taken to court in regard to procurement contracts and corruption, does that mean that the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) needs to apologise for what he has just said and withdraw it?
Madam Deputy Speaker
No. I appreciate what the hon. Lady is saying, but it is not a point of order; it is a point of debate. Perhaps she might like to address it later in the debate.
Points of Order
Debate between Dawn Butler and Eleanor Laing(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you could help me to ensure the ministerial code is followed and the Minister corrects the record in the House.
On 17 November, the health Minister, the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), gave misleading information to MPs on the Government’s handling of contracts during the pandemic. The Minister said:
“The National Audit Office has reviewed the testing contract, and it has confirmed that all the proper contracting procedures were followed.”—[Official Report, 17 November 2021; Vol. 703, c. 596.]
That is not correct, and it is severely misleading.
The NAO issued a report on 18 November 2020 evaluating 20 contracts awarded during the early stages of the pandemic. This included multiple covid testing contracts. The NAO’s report concluded that
“we also found specific examples where there is insufficient documentation on key decisions, or how risks such as perceived or actual conflicts of interest have been identified or managed.”
It went on:
“In addition, a number of contracts were awarded retrospectively, or have not been published in a timely manner. This has diminished public transparency”.
A High Court judge found that the former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), acted unlawfully in failing to promptly release the details of Government agreements with private firms. The NAO noted that the Government created a VIP lane, where firms were 10 times more likely to be awarded a contract. It found:
“The sources of the referrals to the high-priority lane were not always recorded on the team’s case management system and we found a case where a supplier was added to the high-priority lane in error.”
The NAO reported:
“We found inadequate documentation in a number of cases on how the risks of procuring suppliers without competition had been mitigated.”
The NAO also stated that there were examples of work starting before contracts had been awarded. Given all that evidence from the NAO—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Is the hon. Lady coming to an end, because this is a very long point of order?
Dawn Butler
I am really sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, but there is so much evidence from the NAO that the Government have not followed procedure, it is vital the Minister come to the House and correct the record, because it is totally misleading, incorrect and wrong.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order, and I appreciate that she wanted to put it in great detail, although I discourage such long points of order. I also appreciate the point she wants to make and that she wants to draw her argument to the attention of the House and to those on the Government Benches, which is perfectly reasonable.
I have to say to the hon. Lady, however, that the content of what Ministers say here in the Chamber is not a matter for the Chair. It may be—it may be; it is not for me to judge—that the Minister considers what she said correct, but that the hon. Lady considers what the Minister said not correct. The hon. Lady has produced evidence from very worthy and dependable bodies challenging what the Minister has said, but that is not a point of order for the Chair; it is a matter for the continuation of the debate. However, the hon. Lady has every right to bring her points to the Chamber. I encourage her to speak to the Clerks and the Table Office, and to consider ways in which she can reopen this very important subject.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Further to that point of order? I doubt it.
Dawn Butler
I wonder how we are supposed to operate in Parliament if Ministers do not come to the House and tell the truth.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Ah. Now, now, now. We must be very careful here. I am sure the hon. Lady does not want to rise in her place and say that a Minister, whom she has identified, has not told the truth. Will she assure me that that is not what she is saying?
Dawn Butler
The Minister is re-writing history and I think we have a problem with that. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
I will accept that. The Minister re-writing history is a matter—[Interruption.] No, I do not need any advice from the Treasury Bench right now, thank you. The hon. Lady is alleging that the Minister is re-writing history. She may make that allegation. I was not happy with her saying that an untruth had been told and I am grateful to her for changing the way in which she has made her point. I am very grateful to her. We must keep moderation here in the Chamber.
I say again to the hon. Lady that what she clearly wishes to do, and it would seem on perfectly reasonable grounds, is reopen the debate. There are various ways in which she can do that. The Clerks and the Speaker’s Office will help her to do so, because it is important that Ministers are held to account, and that if the hon. Lady believes the facts laid before the House by a Minister are not correct, they be corrected at the earliest possible opportunity. The Minister’s colleagues will have heard what I have said and what the hon. Lady has said, and I hope that that will be acted upon. If the hon. Lady needs further advice on how to bring this matter forward, I am more than happy to help her in private.
International Women’s Day
Debate between Dawn Butler and Eleanor Laing
Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. Members for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this debate.
Every 16 minutes, a woman or a girl is abused. Every three days, a woman is killed by a man. We heard the list read out by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). We must get to the root of this crisis. Inequality in society is fuelling the killing of women. The bullying and silencing of women’s voices contributes to the abuse that women receive. If a man was killed every three days, there would be investigations at every level of society. Unfortunately, though, at every level of society, a man still holds the power—whether it be economically, politically, in the media or the judicial system. One woman is killed every three days, but let us ask ourselves this: what are we really doing about it.
It is time for all those with power to stop being bystanders in this pandemic and get involved. Just yesterday, we read about Sarah Everard who it seems has been sadly killed. The suspect is a policeman who roamed the corridors of Parliament. I have made a freedom of information request to establish how many police officers—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I must caution the hon. Lady to be very careful about what she says, please. I will not say any more than that. Perhaps she could go on to the next part of her speech.
Dawn Butler
I take the point, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I have made a freedom of information request to establish how many police officers have been investigated for domestic violence. Recognised journalist Alexandra Heal won a Paul Foot prize for uncovering the shocking stories of how police forces handle domestic abuse complaints against their own officers. Justice for Women highlighted the injustices face by women who kill abusive partners. Why are so many women charged with murder as opposed to manslaughter if there is strong evidence of domestic violence? It is because, predominantly, men are making the judgments.
There was the recent case of Anthony Williams, who was sentenced to five years in jail for strangling his wife to death. She had her keys in her hand and was trying to escape. Judge Paul Thomas said that, in his view, Williams’s mental health was
“severely affected at the time”.
This is ridiculous. In 2019, Judge Hayden said:
“I cannot think of any more obviously fundamental human right than the right of a man to have sex with his wife”—
really, Justice Hayden? How about the fundamental right to life, or the fundamental right to say no? Lord Chief Justice Burnett said that the small number of sexism cases in courts gives a false impression. I say that all sexism in courts must be eradicated and judges removed.
We need more men tackling male violence against women. We need judges to be barred if they do not understand that any violence against women and girls is wrong. I welcome Baroness Helic’s amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill and I hope that the Minister will say that the Government will support it. We need to challenge and interrupt abuse at every level in society, so today, I challenge the judiciary. The pool from which judges are drawn is too narrow. Retention of women is dismal because of the abuse they suffer at every stage. Our judiciary is poorly served because of misogyny and discrimination. We ultimately need a wider pool if we are going to change the culture and structure. Let us start with three Ps—prevent, protect and prosecute.