Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

The paramount piece of legislation in this country is the Children Act 1989. We should be proud of it, as it is copied and envied the world over. That is how we in this country look after children who need the protection of the state for an assortment of reasons. In my book, the Children Act—I always carry it with me, and i have it here today—usually trumps everything else.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will, but I do not want to take too many interventions, because many others wish to speak.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We know from the people who arrive in hotels that perhaps 20% of the migrants will be children—or say they are children. We know that that will be the case among those who arrive at RAF Scampton. As the Government are talking about 2,000 people coming here, we may need 40 or 50 social workers, which we cannot afford in Lincolnshire. We do not have the resources to look after these people properly, to assess them, to work out whether they are children and to decide how they are going to be looked after. Is my hon. Friend not making the point that it is much better to disperse people rather than to shove 2,000 illegal migrants in one place?

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend has ingeniously inserted into this debate his particular constituency interest, of which, I think, the entire House and the entire world is aware, and I have some sympathy with him. I agree that there is a problem with dispersal. The dispersal system is not operating properly in this country, which is why Kent in particular, which is at the forefront, has seen more than 600 children come through already this year, of whom many are still within the care of Kent. One local authority cannot be expected to deal with that; we need a better dispersal system, whereby the support services, as well as the fabric, are able to accommodate these children.

There is a specific problem with adults impersonating children. The Home Office’s own figures say that something like 47% of age-disputed children turn out to be adults, which means that 53%, a small majority, turn out to be actual children, although it has not published the evidence for those findings. The JCHR report quotes the Helen Bamber Foundation survey of 2022, which stated that 70 local authorities had had 1,386 young people referred to them, of whom 63%—almost two thirds—were found to be children.

It is really important to have effective and accurate age assessments, and it is really important to do them quickly. The Government assured me that they were bringing forward age assessments. They take, on average, six weeks—I do not know why they take six weeks; it should not take that long to do a Merton assessment and, potentially, some X-ray medical interventions as well. The Government need to speed up that process. If a child is wrongly assessed as an adult and deported, that cannot be corrected.

We have problems with hotels and missing children—I recognise that. We have problems with children potentially going underground as they approach their 18th birthday, as they may well be transported out of the country under the Bill. We have problems with 16 or 17-year-olds, or those purporting to be 16 or 17-year-olds, absconding if they are not in the secure estate. These are the complex problems that the Government have to face.

We also have a problem with the existing law, as there is just 24 hours to detain children for the purposes of transporting them out, which is not enough. We therefore have a lot of problems. However, Government amendment (a) to clause 12 in lieu of Lords amendments 31, 35 and 36 leaves clause 10, which had a lot of Henry VIII powers leaving decisions up to the Secretary of State, largely untouched. The Government’s amendment in lieu retains the position that bail cannot be granted for 28 days to those who fall within the Bill’s scheme. It retains that position for unaccompanied children too where they are being detained pending a decision to grant leave, limited leave as an unaccompanied child, discretionary leave or leave as a trafficking victim.

That means that for the purposes of initial processing, unaccompanied children will be in exactly the same position as anyone else who falls within the Bill’s scheme, that is, there is no statutory limit on their detention and they cannot be granted bail before 28 days. Unaccompanied child arrivals are to be treated the same way as adult arrivals in terms of their detention for initial processing, and the amendment provides nothing for unaccompanied children detained for that purpose. It would only allow for potential bail of an unaccompanied child who has been detained pending a decision to remove them or pending their removal, where the Government are using their discretionary power under clause 3(2) to remove an unaccompanied child while they are still under 18.

In those circumstances, which the Government contend will be the minority of cases, the unaccompanied child will, with this amendment, now have the opportunity of being granted bail after being detained for eight days. Whether in practice the child could apply for bail after day eight would depend on multiple factors, one key factor being whether the unaccompanied child had been transferred to local authority care and subsequently detained prior to removal, or had only ever been detained since arrival in the UK.

Other factors impacting whether bail is obtainable in practice would include where the child was detained, whether any outside services reached the child in detention, whether such services could refer to a lawyer with the capacity to take on the bail case in light of the failure of the legal aid market and legal aid advice, and whether the child has the capacity to instruct a lawyer. There are strong reasons to doubt whether the possibility of bail after day eight would necessarily lead to many, if any, unaccompanied children being released from detention in practice.

There is a currently nothing on the face of the detention clauses about age disputes, which I was assured there would be. There are no additional safeguards for them on the face of the Bill at all. A putative child who is treated as an adult would only be able to get bail after 28 days in line with the Bill’s detention scheme. Much of what I say is on the advice of Coram, which is highly respected for how it looks after unaccompanied child asylum seekers.

Relations with China: Xi Jinping Presidency

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

Thursday 16th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is right again. Too often in this country, we seem to be playing catch up with some of the much more proactive and obvious measures taken by the US Administration, usually with unanimous support across all parties in Congress. Many of those laws are now having an impact on China and beginning to make it wake up to the fact that its actions have consequences. I fear that, too often, it is because people in this Chamber today and like-minded colleagues put pressure on the Government that, eventually, they might just catch up with some of the measures that should have been passed into our law at the same time as they were passed in the United States.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. I have to move the wind-ups at 2.28 pm, and I think Mr Carmichael wishes to speak. Is that correct?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

You might bear in mind your colleague.

[Tim Loughton]

I will approach my peroration forthwith on that basis. 

I will not mention Jimmy Lai because, again, the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned him. He also mentioned at length the Confucius Institutes, an example of how the tentacles of the Chinese Communist party extend everywhere—globally and within the UK in our boardrooms, businesses, schools, campuses, local authorities and in the bogus police stations, effectively, that China has set up. There was the disgraceful episode at the Manchester consulate, where the consul thought it was his job to beat up demonstrators. There was no pretence to try to get out of it. Is that not what he was there for? Is that not what the Chinese Communist party pays him to do? Never has a greater or more honest admission come from an official of the Chinese Government.

Internationally, what is China doing as part of the China 2049 plan? It controls something like 104 ports and has its teeth in infrastructure projects around the world. It effectively holds Governments to ransom, with huge loans imposed on them. We know what has happened with the port in Sri Lanka, the airport in Uganda and some of the schemes that have fallen to pieces. It places huge debts on many east African countries in particular, which is the real characteristic of the belt and road project. China has a stranglehold on rare earth mining, controlling 58% of critical minerals mining and 73% of the global production capacity for lithium, which goes into lithium-ion batteries and is crucial for anti-climate change measures relating to renewable and environmentally friendly sources of energy. I could go on—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Don’t.

[Tim Loughton]

But I will not, as you just cautioned me.

Lastly, I welcome the Government’s announcement today on the use of TikTok on Ministers’ devices, in so far as it goes. I do not have you down as a TikTok devotee, Sir Edward—I may be doing you a disservice—but did you know that in China, western TikTok is banned and the addictive algorithms used over here are illegal? Last year, the internet watchdog made it mandatory for domestic companies to give users the choice to opt out of their data being used for personalised content in China. Over here, we know the situation: TikTok and its parent company ByteDance have close ties with the Chinese Communist party and are required to comply with the People’s Republic of China surveillance demand under the cyber-security law. Under standard contractual clauses, data can be transferred to ByteDance or other entities in the PRC from users in the UK and the rest of the west.

We should be nowhere near that system, frankly. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office should initiate an audit under section 146 of the Data Protection Act 2018 to investigate whether TikTok can protect the data being transferred under the legal regime in the PRC. If not, the ICO should consider intervening and prohibiting the data transfer as it cannot be respected in the PRC.

Whatever the Government want to call it and whatever phraseology they use, China is the greatest threat to the peace and security of the globe, and we need to plan accordingly. If people do not believe me, I urge them to read the words of the lifetime dictator who is in control of that country.

Civil Partnership

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

Thursday 31st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I have a bit of a sense of déjà vu all over again on this Bill. It has been a long journey getting here, but this is a happy day that will lead to very many happy days for happy couples, starting on 31 December. I will be going out to buy a new hat in anticipation of those events shortly. Before I make my brief comments and put some specific questions to the Minister, however, I just want to take issue with the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler). It is a shame that the Opposition Front Bench has taken a slightly churlish attitude in this debate. There is a simple response to her question as to why this has taken so long. Very simply, it is because, having promised me that they would vote for it, Labour Members voted against the amendment to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 that would have achieved this several years ago. So she might like to look to her own side before she tries to cast aspersions on what has been a magnificent effort by the Government to get here today.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend. I have been campaigning on this for many years. I was approached by two sisters at the time of the passing of the original Civil Partnership Act 2004 by Tony Blair. The sisters had lived together for many years and faced being evicted and losing their home because they could not have a civil partnership. Will my hon. Friend say a bit more about that particular case?

[Tim Loughton]

That would probably be stretching out of order, but I appreciate that my hon. Friend took up the issue before I did. It is a cause with which I have some sympathy, and there have been measures in the other place for a Bill on that topic. This legislation is about couples and relationships and recognition and protections that are not available. The matters to which he refers, which relate particularly to siblings who are living together and are entirely dependent on each other, are largely financial ones, and that should be addressed in financial legislation. I would absolutely support him if that were to happen in the future.

I just want to pay some tributes, because this might not have happened today. If this debate had not happened before the end of this Parliament, the necessary regulations that form part of the 2019 Act, which received Royal Assent back on 26 March, would not have been completed in time for the first civil partnerships between opposite-sex couples to take place, as promised, before the end of this year. I am therefore grateful to the Chief Whip, the usual channels, the Minister, the Statutory Instruments Committee, which met hurriedly yesterday, and the officials, who worked tirelessly in order to get us to where we are today. Otherwise, the promises that we made to the people who were looking forward to having their happy day on 31 December might not have been kept.

I have constantly stated that many register offices around the country have been taking provisional bookings for civil partnerships, including on the very last day of this year. A lot is hingeing on this, and many people will be watching these proceedings and the news that comes out. The issue was that, in order for civil partnerships to take place by the end of this year, the regulations had to be laid and then there is a minimum of 28 days—it is not really a cooling-off period—between a couple registering their interest in a civil partnership before it is able to be conducted. That meant that if the regulations had not been approved before 2 December, that process could not have been gone through. I am therefore grateful to the Government, because it was always a big thing for me that this should happen this year, rather than there be yet further delay. The Minister, true to her word, was able to persuade the powers that be to agree to that. I am grateful to all the officials and Ministers who have made this possible.

It is something of an honour that this will be the last piece of debatable business in this Parliament and the last debatable business that you will oversee, Mr Speaker. You have been a big supporter of this change, although you would never admit it and show any degree of partiality, but I know, unofficially, that you have got behind this change, which has been of great help and comfort to people outside this House who see this as an obvious equality measure that should have happened some time ago.

The process has been expedited, but I just have a few brief questions for the Minister. First, will she confirm—I think she already has—that the fact that we are debating this well before 2 December does not mean that the 28 days start from today? If so, we may need to expedite the purchase of hats before the end of November, rather than the end of December, but I think she has confirmed that the earliest that the first civil partnership ceremony can take place will be 31 December 2019 for those who have registered their interest by 2 December. Emergency civil partnerships are an exception and, as happened with civil partnerships between same-sex couples back in 2014, could be approved in a matter of hours or days after 2 December. Some people who have been part of the equal-partner civil partnerships campaign and who have terminal illnesses are very much looking for the change to happen as soon as possible. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that for the benefit of those for whom the date is particularly crucial. Could the Minister also confirm the status of opposite-sex civil partnerships registered outside England and Wales, for example, on the Isle of Man, which was the first part of the British Isles to approve opposite-sex civil partnerships and where key people involved in the campaign have undergone a civil partnership? Will their civil partnership be recognised in our law from 2 December or 31 December, or will this still be contingent on further work on regulations that needs to take place?

I fully appreciate that this measure is not the end of the story; this enables new opposite-sex couples to engage in a new civil partnership and there is much work still to be done on the conversion for those who are already married, just as there was a conversion the other way round in respect of civil partnerships for same-sex couples. Looking through the regulations, which are detailed and technical, I appreciate the work that has gone into everything from gender recognition to the status of children, the warm home discount and digital switchover. All that legislation, extraordinarily, has to be considered in these regulations in order to get this right. Will the Minister therefore clarify the status of existing overseas or ex-England opposite-sex civil partnerships?

Will the Minister also issue guidance as soon as possible to registrars around the country that they should be open for business from 2 December? There has been confusion as to whether this would happen and some registrars, the more far-sighted ones, have been taking provisional waiting lists as from 31 December, whereas others have said, “It’s not happening, so don’t call us, we’ll call you after 31 December.” It is important that clear instructions are now issued. If she could signal from the Dispatch Box as well, that would be helpful, because people need to prepare. People who have been waiting years and years for this day to happen want to be able to get on with it, and we need to ensure that registrars know what they are doing in order to facilitate their request.

Finally, let me say that this is just but one part of my Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration etc) Act 2019. There are three other parts to it. I raised the issue of mothers’ names on marriage certificates with the Second Church Estates Commissioner, which has yet to be resolved by formal regulations. The second issue is about the Secretary of State giving the go-ahead for coroners to have the power to investigate stillbirths. The last issue is the review of sub-24-week stillbirths. They are all important parts of my multifaceted Act that still require further regulations. I appreciate that today we are dealing purely with the civil partnerships part of it, but it would be helpful if the Minister gave some indication that work is ongoing on those other important parts of this Act.

Once again, may I thank the Minister in particular for expediting these measures today, just in the nick of time? For many hundreds of couples up and down the country waiting on this, it is a really important and happy development.

Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 19th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

Quite.

I think that mine is a reasonable amendment. I think it is an oversight that it has not been included in the Bill, and I hope that the Minister will come to his senses, agree with the amendment, and add it.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I do not disagree with anything that my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has just said. If his amendment were incorporated in the Bill, I would have no worries about it. However, I am not sure that he should have as many worries as he has articulated. I served on the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee. Those who are involved in this project or have taken an interest in it may disagree on many things, but one thing on which they are absolutely agreed is that we must preserve, 100%, the historical and architectural integrity of this building. Indeed, my approach to the renewal and restoration of Parliament is based on that premise. I hope that when we return to this place after the work has been done, we will notice hardly any difference. No doubt there will be better disabled access and no doubt computer systems and lighting systems will all work much better, but in the architectural significance to which my hon. Friend refers, we should notice no difference.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is a valid point and I think we all agree with it.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham is wrong on one point, however. It is possible at the moment to get a wheelchair into the Crypt chapel and into that cupboard he was talking about through the Cloisters. Incidentally, the Cloisters have lain empty for a long time. They were used just as offices, but they are an extraordinarily interesting part of this building. That area is not on the line of route; the public are totally unaware of it. It is a medieval remnant; it should be open to the public, and should be used as public open space. We could have done that years ago; instead, the Cloisters have been empty since—I think—Conservative or Labour researchers moved out.

[Tim Loughton]

I would have mentioned that. The Cloisters are rather interesting because of the bomb damage during the war. The Labour research unit was there, and in one office—I doubt its occupants realised this—is the medieval altar of one of the early Plantagenet kings from when this was a royal palace. Nobody ever sees it; it is not appreciated, and it is not in the guidebooks at all. That sort of thing needs to be flagged up and made accessible.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

My hon. Friend has done a service in flagging up these historical vignettes, because they are extraordinarily interesting. I think everybody agrees with him that this place is not a museum; the whole point is that it is a living building. History is being made at the moment in our debates, at a most interesting political time, and all these little historical facts need to be incorporated into the restoration and made available to the public. I am perfectly happy with the amendment. I suspect that the Minister might say that it is not necessary, but this issue has been flagged up and it will be an important part of the debate.

You, Mr Deputy Speaker, will not want me to engage in past controversies about whether we should decant or associated issues, but—this is particularly relevant to new clause 1, and I refer to my days on the Public Accounts Committee—I have long thought that this will be the biggest feeding frenzy in the Exchequer for years and that there is a real risk it will get out of control. This is where the SNP has a valid point. The public will not forgive us if we allow this work to become a feast for the architects, surveyors and all the rest. Without getting into all the controversy over whether we should decant or not—I accept that we have to decant for a time—what has worried me is that once we leave this building and we lose control, it will be possible for the Delivery Authority to become a sort of self-perpetuating institution, spending taxpayers’ money without our having any adequate control, as guardians of the taxpayer. We should always spend this money not as if it is somebody else’s money but as if it is our money. We should always think, “What would we do if it was our money? Would we do this work in this way?” The SNP has a perfectly valid point.

I do not agree with the SNP plan to make this place a museum, however. Even if it became a museum, we would still have to do all the work, because this is a world heritage site. We have to make this building safe from fire and flood and to repair the general dereliction that comes with time. We as parliamentarians should not worry too much about whether we should decant; we should worry instead about the taxpayers and about doing a good job. We are repairing this building and not trying to create anything new and fantastic. I am very happy to improve disabled access and so forth, but that is where we should start, and we should constantly take control of costs, which is where new clause 1 comes in.

Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

It is good to see you in your place for this debate, Mr Deputy Speaker. In proposing this Bill, I have not made things easy for myself. It contains four separate main proposals spanning four different Government Departments and potentially four different Ministers. It is not a Government handout Bill, and to complicate matters, three of the four original Ministers involved were moved as a result of the recent reshuffle. It has been a stressful few weeks. I know how hard it is to get a private Member’s Bill on the statute book, even when it contains a straightforward single measure, let alone four, so on the face of it I am being greedy—but for good reason.

In more than 20 years of entering the private Members’ Bill ballot at the start of the Session, my name has never once come out of the hat, and it probably will not again in whatever years or months I have left here. So as this is likely my only opportunity, I have been ambitious in trying to include as many of the good causes that I have tried to promote in this place, in two cases through ten-minute rule Bills in recent years. So I am a private Member’s Bill novice after almost 21 years in this House and I ask the House to be gentle with me.

It has not been easy to keep all the ducks in a row across four Government Departments, but I am grateful that they have all in turn met with support from Ministers such that the Bill can now proceed into Committee, with the will of the House. I freely admit that it has not been an easy process and at times it has been a very frustrating one. I place on record my thanks for the advice, support and patience of Farrah Bhatti in the private Bill Office, which has been invaluable.

The frustration has been that, from the very start, I offered to be as flexible as possible with Ministers with the wording of the Bill, and to sit down with departmental officials to agree on the terminology so that we could make progress with a Bill that had Government support. While at various times I secured agreement in principle to the main contents of the Bill from the revolving cast list of Ministers, it has literally been only in the past week that officials have sat down with me to talk turkey and final details have been thrashed out. Hence my apologies for the very late publication of the Bill just in time. It is only in the last week that we have secured the lead Minister, and I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), to the Dispatch Box; I am sure that all is going to end well.

The upshot of all this is that there is not as much detail and commitment in the Bill as I would originally have liked. There will be much work to be done in Committee and thereafter, but I am confident that we have a Bill containing robust principles that we can pass on to closer Committee scrutiny, with the will of the House. Notwithstanding those reservations, I am grateful to all those who have helped to produce the Bill today, especially those individuals and organisations outside this place who have campaigned long and hard on the various issues, based on powerful and often heartbreaking personal experiences.

To summarise, the four component parts of my Bill are as follows. The first is a provision intended to undertake further work on how the Government can extend civil partnerships to opposite sex couples as per my previous amendments, ten-minute rule Bills and presentation Bills. Equal civil partnerships are unfinished business from the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, and change requires only a straightforward amendment to the Civil Partnership Act 2004, which this House enthusiastically passed, with my support.

The second is a provision that mothers’ names, or second parent names, should be included on marriage and civil partnership certificates, based on previous Bills introduced by a number of hon. Members, which would bring England and Wales in line with Scotland and Northern Ireland, for the first time in about 180 years.

The third is a provision on the registration of stillbirths. My previous ten-minute rule Bill would have amended the definition of a stillborn child in the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 to include the formal recording of a child who is stillborn in the usual way but before the current threshold of 24 weeks’ gestation. The fourth is an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 to give coroners the power to investigate late-stage stillbirths if, for example, there is suspected medical negligence.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

If the Bill makes progress, people will be able to get married to, or have a civil partnership with, anybody of any sex. I have been written to by two sisters—this is also a long-standing campaign of my own—about the burning injustice in this situation. The two sisters have lived together all their lives, but when one of them dies, the other one will have to move out of their home because they will not be able afford the inheritance tax. Only the Treasury stands in the way of righting this injustice; it is about money. I hope that when my hon. Friend works on the detail of the Bill, he will try to ensure that it helps siblings to stay in the homes in which they have lived all their lives.

[Tim Loughton]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concern, which has been raised on several occasions. It is not my intention, at this stage, to extend civil partnerships to people other than cohabiting couples who are in a relationship. I want to mirror the existing terminology in the Civil Partnership Act 2004. I hope that we will entertain proposals such as my hon. Friend’s in Committee and on Report, and I have no doubt that he will want to raise the matter.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that it is an injustice for everyone apart from siblings to be able to have whatever legal relationship they want? I am not asking him to say now that he will include the matter in the Bill, but does he at least accept that this is a worthy cause, on which I have campaigned for many years?

[Tim Loughton]

I understand that it is a worthy cause, but it is different from enabling people to have their relationship recognised by the state. There are clear financial disadvantages and implications in the situation that my hon. Friend describes. I entirely sympathise with his view and I think that the injustice needs to be dealt with, but I do not propose to deal with it at this stage in my Bill. Doing so would make the Bill even more complicated than it already is. In addition, it is highly likely that the long title of the Bill will need to be amended in Committee, particularly to reflect the change that will be required to the electronic record of marriage certificates.

Let me start with the extension of civil partnerships to include opposite-sex couples. The 2004 Act was long overdue, and it was enthusiastically supported by me and the great majority of hon. Members from all parts of the House. At its heart, the Act tackled a clear obstacle to equal rights for loving couples who just happened to be of the same sex.

Subsequently, the House decided in 2013 that it was time for equal marriage. That has happened, the skies have not caved in and we have moved on. I certainly do not want to reopen the bruising debates that we had at the time, especially across my party. However, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 gave rise to an unintended new inequality, and it is surely time for equal civil partnerships—a natural extension that was supported across all parties when the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill was introduced and that has just as much support now. In the consultation that the Government conducted before the introduction of that Bill, 61% of respondents were in favour of extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. Alas, for some inexplicable reason, the proposal never made it into the Act. If it had done, the Act would have been better; that is why change is necessary today.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Britain is producing excellent white wine, but there is a real problem with increased alcoholism and liver disease. Does my hon. Friend think that the solution would be to introduce unit pricing, to try to freeze young people out of the market for very high-alcohol drinks?

[Tim Loughton]

No, I think the answer is to encourage people to drink wisely and in a balanced and responsible way, and to drink higher value and higher quality English and British products.

I also welcome the extension of the rail discount card to those aged between 26 and 30. However, there is a flaw in that arrangement because the cards cannot be used at peak times, when many people need to travel to work. A bigger problem is the fact that many 16-year-olds who have to get to school or college or to their jobs often qualify for adult rate fares on buses and trains. I urge the Chancellor to have a look at that as well. I also urge him to look again at the case of the WASPI women, who continue to suffer the biggest injustice as a result of the change in pension ages. Perhaps at the very least he could extend the free bus pass to those women who would have qualified for their pensions at an earlier age.

Finally, one area that does not get much of a mention in the Budget relates to families and early intervention. I know that the Chancellor sympathises with this issue. Family breakdown in this country costs £49 billion a year and it is also one of the sources of the housing shortage, with families living in fragmented circumstances. We need to invest much more to deal with the problems of broken and troubled families, as well as with perinatal mental health and with child neglect, which alone costs this country £15 billion a year. Just as the Chancellor invests in roads, infrastructure and business in order to boost the economy, so we should invest more in our young children, as they represent the most valuable future of our nation and our economy.

Post Office Closures

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton]

That is a very important point that I would like to come on to; it is a question about why the Post Office is not growing rather than retrenching.

In 2016, the Post Office announced the closure of 31 Crown post office branches— even though the Crown offices are now breaking even, after making a £46 million loss four years ago. Some of those post offices have not been converted into the new type of post office and their future is still uncertain. In January this year, a further 37 Crown post offices were identified for closure, including the last two remaining Crown post offices in my constituency, which were in Lancing and Shoreham. That caused huge concern among my constituents and gave rise to lots of petitions and demonstrations by people from all parties. I found it particularly disrespectful that the first I heard of it was when a constituent rang me up to ask what I was doing about it; the Post Office had not even had the courtesy to let the sitting Member of Parliament or councillors know what it was planning.

I organised an urgent meeting with the Post Office and it went through the procedures. I was reassured that firms such as WH Smith had taken on more than 100 of the franchises and everything was supposedly working well. I gather that the other firms that have taken post offices on include a chain called Bargain Booze, an off-licence with some 30 post offices—some hon. Members may have concerns about how appropriate that is. I was told that both the Crown post office branches in my constituency were unprofitable, which was why they were to be franchised out, yet the Lancing branch, along with one very small sub-post office right on the fringe of the village of Lancing, now looks after a population of 27,000. Not surprisingly, queues are frequent. It also services the second largest business park in the whole of West Sussex, with 228 firms that employ more than 3,000 people. The village has lost almost all its bank branches; we were told that when we lost them, we could do all our banking at the post office, so there was no great concern. If the post office branches are not making a profit, that suggests that they are not being run very well—it is certainly not for lack of usage or lack of demand from the local population.

I was told today that one of those Crown post office branches is to be transferred to a nearby convenience store, which is much smaller than the existing post office and has operated since only 2013. On the upside, there will be extended opening hours on Saturdays and Sundays and new disability access, but on the downside, nobody believes that the store is big enough to house a replacement Crown post office. It will have fewer serving positions, when there are already serious concerns about queues, and it will not be able to offer the biometric enrolment service for Home Office applications. There are also concerns about staff transfer: we know that in the post offices that have so far converted, only 10 of the 400 staff have been TUPE-ed across and they are often going into minimum wage jobs. There are question marks over ongoing training for staff who now work in non-Crown post offices, which have tended to have a big turnover of staff. In many of these shops, staff hours get cut and, after initial promises about extended opening times, the shops tend to retrench.

What happens if the model fails? Some 8,000 sub-post offices are now in convenience stores, which have seen a 4% reduction in staff hours since the national living wage came in. Some 30% of businesses also face challenges with the revaluation of business rates. The Daltons website currently shows 705 post office branches for sale. There is a lot of change and churn in the sector, so longer-term questions arise about the viability and sustainability of the new arrangements.

Both my Crown post offices are co-located with sorting offices. Although the sorting offices are run not by the Post Office but by Royal Mail, they are very conveniently placed next to the post offices. Experience has shown that without those anchor partnership tenants, sorting offices are relocated to out-of-town sites, which are much less convenient for people who need to get their deliveries, particularly in places with many elderly people who may not be so mobile.

There is going to be a consultation on my post office. It will be extended because of the election, but we all know that not a single consultation has overturned any of the proposals to transfer these post offices, so I fear that it will be something of a token exercise. The measurements of an access door may be changed by a few inches or the sweet counter may be relocated because it gets in the way of guide dogs, but frankly the consultation will be a token exercise.

I am aware that Citizens Advice does a good job as the oversight body and that some of its research has suggested that in some cases there have been some improvements to access and to service with the new format, but overall the fears are that the queues will get longer, transactions will take longer and the service will be less consistent. People are dealing with different and new staff, and it is just not as good as it used to be.

That brings me to my second point. Where exactly is the Post Office going? Everything that the Post Office has done—I have cited the statistics about making it more efficient, reducing losses and so on, and perhaps extending some opening hours—is all based on retrenchment, which is a policy that sees the post office, especially the directly owned post office, getting smaller and offering fewer services to its customers. There are now fewer than 300 post offices that are directly owned Crown post offices.

The financial services part of the Post Office, which should be a big money-spinner, is diminishing. At the beginning of the year, 150 financial specialists were made redundant. There was a specialist financial office in the Lansing post office, but it was closed earlier this year. I gather that the specialist mortgage advice that the Post Office gives, because of its relationship with the Bank of Ireland, generates a one-off payment of just £800 for brokering mortgages, and there is no ongoing revenue. The Post Office seems to be selling itself very cheap in that regard and it is caught in that relationship until 2023, and it does not sound as though it is a very profitable one for the Post Office.

My question to the Minister, which I hope she will be able to answer to enlighten us, is: why is the Post Office not making more of banking and financial services in particular, given that it is a trusted name and a presence on the high street, at a time when conventional banks are disappearing from high streets?

Post Office revenues roughly break down as follows. I gather that about 47% of the revenue of post offices is from stamp sales, but increasingly stamps are available to buy anywhere. There are also Government services, including Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency services, fishing licences and the Department for Work and Pensions card account, but of course those services are all being squeezed and the revenue from them has been diminishing. The Post Office also offers access to current accounts. Banking protocols have been sorted out so that there can be cross-fertilisation of different bank services within a post office, which had been a problem. And then there are the Post Office’s financial services, but again that seems to be a declining market for the Post Office.

Why is the Post Office not copying the challenger banks, for example? Banks such as Metro Bank and Handelsbanken are making a really good fist of expanding into new markets. Metro Bank now has 915,000 customers; it has taken £8 billion in deposits and has 110 branches, and it is growing. Alternatively, as hon. Members have asked in these kinds of debates before, why are we not doing what has been done in France? One thing that we might want to copy from France is La Banque Postale, which was founded in 2006 specifically as a tool to help to tackle financial exclusion and in 2016 had a turnover of €5.6 billion and a pre-tax profit of just over €1 billion. There are similar examples in New Zealand and Italy. There is surely a fantastic opportunity for the state-owned Post Office to take advantage of changing markets and changes in how we conduct our financial business, as a body that is trusted and that is already on the high street. For some reason, the Post Office is not taking that opportunity.

Similarly, why is the Post Office not making more of click and collect services? Everywhere I go now there are shops sprouting up on high streets specifically for people to collect their Amazon and other deliveries, because they are not at home to receive them. The Post Office is already on high streets and surely could offer that kind of service, and yet I gather that 80% of post offices do not have those kinds of facilities. There will be even fewer post offices with them if they are moved to smaller premises that just not do have the room to store and collect parcels.

The overall commercial revenue of the Post Office has been virtually stagnant in the last few years. So it is a great mystery why it is not expanding and becoming more profitable, which would be better for the taxpayer and customers, rather than following a long-term strategy that appears to be based on retrenchment and shrinkage.

Finally, I have some questions for the Minister, in addition to the bigger question of what the big game plan is for the Post Office. The network transformation programme is due to end by March 2018, by which time some 7,500 traditional sub-post offices will have been converted to the new model, but what comes after March 2018 in terms of subsidy and further transformation revenues? In opinion polls, 85% of the public have expressed support for the Government—the taxpayer—continuing to subsidise the Post Office, and not just to deal with the obvious challenges that face rural post offices, which will always face the sparsity challenge. Are any further reductions in Crown network offices planned for the next year? Citizens Advice has suggested that there should be an automatic break if 5% of branches announce that they are to be closed without breaking the access criteria, which is quite hard to do anyway. Will that happen?

The biggest question is: why is the Post Office not taking current opportunities to expand instead of retrenching, particularly as it has the security of Government backing for its revenues and is a trusted name? In 2010, when the Government promised to transform the Post Office—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. I have a list of 12 Back Benchers who wish to speak.

[Tim Loughton]

I am on my final sentence, Sir Edward. In 2010, the Government promised to transform the Post Office into a genuine front office for the Government and that there would be a significant expansion of the Post Office’s banking services, but they have failed so far to implement those measures, as the revenue from Government services has fallen by 40% and income from financial services has stagnated. Closing down flagship branches, getting rid of experienced staff and putting counters into the back of a WH Smith store or a Bargain Booze outlet is surely not a plan for greater innovation, which I think is what our constituents want to see.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Destruction of Historic Sites (Syria and Iraq)

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

At 2 o’clock I must chair the Public Accounts Commission, so I will not be able to stay for the debate. I apologise to the House and I will try to come back.

I very much wanted to take part in the debate to talk about my personal experience, having visited both Syria and Iraq. I also felt that it was right to support my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). I support everything he said in his most impressive speech and I will not repeat all the excellent advice that he has given to our Government.

This issue might seem a long way away, but it is of the most dramatic importance. It is not just a cultural catastrophe, as my hon. Friend has outlined, but a humanitarian catastrophe of the first importance. One cannot divorce the preservation of artefacts from the preservation of local community. Only on Monday, Archbishop Warda of Irbil was at a meeting in the House of Lords, which I attended. He also gave a sermon in Westminster cathedral yesterday. He spoke most movingly about the trauma suffered by his community, which is of appalling proportions. The problems we have in our own country, the issues we were debating and getting very heated about in Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday and the budget I will be discussing later in the Public Accounts Commission all pale into insignificance when one listens to a man such as Archbishop Warda talk about his local community.

Twenty-five thousand Christian families have fled the Nineveh plain and 125,000 people—men, women and children—are without their homes. That is not happening in 1915 or 1940; it happened in August of last year. I have been to these places and I shall describe them a little in a moment, because I feel passionately that having started all this we have a responsibility to finish it.

Let me first follow on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Newark was saying about Syria. I have been to Syria, but I must admit it was not a recent visit. I have also received an invitation to speak at Damascus university on the plight of Christians, but I think that perhaps discretion is the better part of valour in not going to speak in Damascus at present. However, I have been to Damascus in the past and I visited the house in Straight street where St Paul was converted in the home of Ananias. Apparently that house is in good order and has not been destroyed. Whether that is because it is in a part of Damascus that is controlled by Assad forces, I do not know.

As my hon. Friend said, the destruction in Syria has been truly appalling. According to the United Nations, 300 cultural sites in Syria have been affected by the civil war. The United Nations Institute for Training and Research has accumulated a great deal of knowledge on what has been going on. Focusing on 18 areas of particular importance, UNITAR found 24 sites destroyed, 104 severely damaged, 85 moderately damaged and 77 possibly damaged. Those are sites of world heritage status. Such status is not granted casually; they are vital sites.

In one world heritage site in Syria, the old city of Aleppo, UNESCO believes that 121 historical buildings have been damaged or destroyed—equal to 30% to 40% of the area covered by the world heritage designation. The minaret of the 11th-century Umayyad mosque has been toppled, while the citadel of Aleppo is being occupied by military forces and has suffered at least three violent explosions.

The oldest surviving Byzantine church, that of St Simeon Stylites, built on the site of the famed hermit’s pillar, is at risk given its location 19 miles north-west of Aleppo. There is also damage to Krak des Chevaliers, which was created by the Hospitaller order in the 12th century. I should declare an interest because I am a Knight of that order. We are still around after all these centuries, trying to do good work in hospitals around the world, particularly in the middle east, and the work is extremely challenging. Illegal excavations are occurring in the Valley of the Tombs and the Camp of Diocletian—some of them undertaken using heavy machinery, bound to do a great deal of damage. The damage in Syria has been absolutely appalling.

I now turn to Iraq. When Saddam Hussein was in power, I visited the Christian communities there. I also visited Babylon, which, of course, is one of the great wonders of the world. Alexander the Great chose it to be the capital of his world empire. Following the mistaken invasion of Iraq, the coalition, unbelievably, created a military base right on top of the archaeological site, 150 hectares in size.

Babylon is a strange place. There is a lot of pastiche renovation undertaken by Saddam, but the damage to Babylon has been appalling since the invasion and it is getting worse, so I think that we do have a certain responsibility. Looters have attacked cities such as Nimrod and Nineveh, whose names resound with biblical and literary echoes that have rolled down the centuries, and they are now at the centre of destruction.

Let me quote from the prophet Nahum, whose tomb I visited in the village of al-Quosh. Of all the villages that I visited in the Nineveh plain in 2008, only two of those Christian villages—and I visited several—have not been occupied by ISIS forces. They are the villages of al-Qosh and Sharafiya. In the village of al-Qosh one can still find the tomb of the prophet Nahum, and what he wrote all those years ago still resounds today:

“Take ye the spoil of the silver, take the spoil of the gold: for there is no end of the riches of all the precious furniture. She is destroyed, and rent, and torn: the heart melteth, and the knees fail, and all the loins lose their strength: and the faces of them…are as the blackness of a kettle.”

That was Nahum talking thousands of years ago, and his tomb is right there, in one of the only two Christian villages that have not been pillaged and had their population expelled and churches trashed.

Unbelievably, in 2008 I was saying much the same thing. I organised a debate in Westminster Hall on the plight of the Christians and the Christian sites in the Nineveh plains. I also quoted Nahum, who said:

“Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them.”

I said in that debate—it is there in Hansard—

“When I went to the Nineveh plains, what struck me was that there was a sense of security in those ancient, entirely Christian villages. I met many displaced people who had come up from Basra and Baghdad to settle in the Nineveh plains, and I heard some absolutely heart-rending stories.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 26WH.]

I went on to describe them.

It is extraordinary that, having started all this mess, having invaded Iraq—Saddam, for all his faults, was protecting some of these sites—

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Nicking stuff from them.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, but they were not actually being looted and the population was not actually being dispersed. Although things were bad under Saddam—I am no apologist for Saddam—I can tell my hon. Friend that they are infinitely worse there.

Back in 2008 I was given various reassurances by the then Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Bill Rammell, who told me:

“It is difficult to separate this issue from the broader picture in Iraq which, as a result of improving security and progress towards reconciliation, is a far brighter one than we have seen for several years—certainly brighter than it was a year ago.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2008; Vol. 485, c. 41WH.]

We have a responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has given some practical ideas of what we can do, but I have visited those churches and I have listened, in those churches in the Nineveh plains, to services being held in Aramaic, the ancient tongue of our Lord, and I know that it is impossible to separate the expulsion of a people from the issue of the protection of those sites. ISIS, as a result of coalition bombing, has retreated from quite a few villages on the Nineveh plains. The Christian population could possibly be enticed to go back there—because the best way to protect the villages and the archaeological sites is to get the original population back—but they are too terrified to return because they do not trust the Iraqi army.

When ISIS enter a Christian village, they tell the Christians that they have three choices—“You leave, or you convert to Islam, or you die”—so most leave. If ISIS discover that someone is a Shi’a, they give them no choice; they kill them. I am afraid, however, that the Christian population in the Nineveh plains do not have confidence that the Iraqi army, dominated by Shi’as—because many Sunnis have joined or collaborate with ISIS—can protect them. It is therefore down to us.

I am not suggesting that we send some regiment from Aldershot to those burning hot plains where they will make themselves a target, but surely there must be a way forward. Having, in a sense, destabilised Iraq and put the Christian population at risk, can we just walk away and say, “We have fulfilled our side of the bargain by just putting in six planes”? I think we have to do far more than that. We have to arm the local Christian population; that is what they are asking for. I asked that question specifically of Archbishop Warda on Monday. He said, “That is what we want you to do—send in the international peacemakers, protect our people, let our people go back to our villages, and then we can protect their sites.” The same thing, surely—although it would be an infinitely more difficult and complicated picture—applies to Syria.

I will end on that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark has done a great service to the House in directing our attention to the appalling problems and humanitarian and cultural disaster going on in that part of the world. I hope that people in our country feel that, given our history, we have some sense of responsibility.

Protecting Children in Conflict

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The whole House will be grateful to the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) for initiating this debate on protecting children in conflict. She was right to deal with the Palestinian situation, but I will not follow her example in any detail as I do not want to get involved in the debate about the rights and wrongs of the Palestinian issue, except for noting the suffering of both the Palestinian people and the Israeli people in a very difficult conflict.

I want to make some general remarks about how the British Government could try to improve the protection of children in conflict areas, particularly when it comes to education. Education is the subject on which I want to focus and I would be grateful if the Minister could deal with that problem when he replies.

I should perhaps declare a family interest. I am speaking today because both my elder daughters work for charities in Africa and have worked in Kenya, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic. They keep me informed of their work and what is going on and, a few years ago, I visited the Congo with War Child to look at the appalling privations that children faced, particularly because of the conflict and the use of child soldiers. My visit had a deep impact on me and I am sure that, even despite all the excellent work of my hon. Friend the Minister and other Ministers in the FCO and DFID, there is still more that we can do.

As I say, I want to concentrate on education, but why are children particularly vulnerable? It is an obvious point, but they are vulnerable because they are young. When a three-year-old loses their parents in a bomb attack, it is virtually impossible for them to survive alone. If a 25-year-old loses a parent, it is a tragedy, but they can survive. It is right that the House should focus particularly on the appalling impact of conflict on children, which is much greater than its impact on mature people.

Of course, children suffer appalling and severe trauma from witnessing events. They do not have the life experience or emotional maturity to integrate a particular scene into the rest of their life. We have been brought up in a very comfortable environment, but we all know how even quite small events from our childhood can have a traumatic effect later on. Imagine a child in a conflict situation witnessing their mother being raped or their brother being dragged off as a child soldier or witnessing murders or the appalling scenes that have happened in Syria. That trauma will live with those children for ever.

Children are targeted in conflict situations for sexual attacks. Girls and boys make up more than half the rape cases in such conflicts and that is an appalling statistic. Imagine the appalling emotional trauma of that. Children are also targeted by military groups that are keen to expand their ranks quickly and we have seen that in particular over the years in Congo. As I know from my visit to the Congo and as we all know, it is appalling to talk to former child soldiers who have been dragged into these events. They have committed terrible things and terrible things have happened to them, sometimes when they are just 13 or 14-years-old.

War destroys livelihoods, and children are often seen as a way for distressed families to get income. Girls can be married early for a price or used as sex workers and boys can be sent out to work in fields and factories or to collect rubbish from the streets. I occasionally visit the middle east, and we see the desperate struggle for survival, particularly for Syrian refugees in Lebanon or Jordan when there is no social security available to any significant extent. In conflict situations, families are desperate to survive, and we all know that children have to be used as part of that.

The point I want to stress and focus on for the rest of my speech is that it is children and not adults who lose their opportunity for education. Once that opportunity is lost, it is lost for ever and can never be repeated. Education is essential for children and particularly for children in conflict areas. It is a life chance that comes only once and a reasonable level of education is even more important for children who will be expected to build a peaceful recovery from conflict. Education keeps children safe. Obviously, if a child is in a school or in an educational environment, it is less likely that they will be married early, raped, abducted or recruited by armed groups. All that is much more unlikely when schools are open.

Actually, education is prioritised by families in conflict areas. We have seen on television, such as during the Iraq conflicts, and from our own experience how families that are often desperate and have nothing—owning nothing, surviving on nothing—still make the effort to dress their children in immaculate uniforms to walk through bombed-out streets to get school. Education is extraordinarily important for them.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling case based on his experiences in Africa. It is deeply humbling when we go to developing countries in parts of Africa and elsewhere and see children who have walked miles and miles and miles to attend a classroom where they have no seats, but may have rocks to sit on, if they are lucky, and which have corrugated iron roofs. Their parents have made a contribution out of what limited resources they have, because they absolutely value education as the way out of poverty and conflict. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is deeply humbling for those of us here who take education for granted?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

My hon. Friend has made that point very movingly. We live in such a comfortable environment here where education is, frankly, of a fantastically high standard and is free—paid for by the taxpayer—that we simply do not appreciate the appalling sacrifices made in places where education is not free by parents who have nothing. They make that huge effort to try to educate their children, because they know, as we know, that education is everything.

We can establish a case that education is absolutely vital, therefore, in terms of taking children out of conflict situations and giving them life chances. So, having made that case, we would expect it to be prioritised by humanitarian agencies and Governments, but analysis of the 2013 United Nations appeal tracking data shows that only 1.9% of UN humanitarian appeal funds went to education. That seems to me to be very low, and I was surprised when I saw that. I cannot believe that the figure is so low, but that is what I have been told. Donors simply did not prioritise that part of the UN appeals.

Finance Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tim Loughton

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend allow me?

[Tim Loughton]

I briefly give way to my hon. Friend, who has been a great champion of this measure for many years.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Not just the Prime Minister in a faraway place, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in my own home, not 300 yards away, in front of 40 MPs, gave a solemn pledge that this was going to be brought in before the general election. This will and must happen.

[Tim Loughton]

So the mystery is why on earth it is not happening and the Prime Minister has not been able to say, “We back this amendment.” However, I trust what he has said. Those I do not trust are those who oppose the amendment, because those who oppose it as some sort of 1950s throwback are the ones who are being judgmental about how certain people choose to live their relationships. That view has been endorsed on many Labour party members’ blogs. Disgracefully, they seek, in effect, to pit working mums or dads against stay at home mums or dads, who are of course no less, and often more, hard-working.

My support for a transferable married couples tax allowance has never been based on some moral stance on types of relationship. My concern, as might be expected, is based on what is best for children. That is why I have suggested that it is limited in the first instance to families with children under the age of five. Two statistics say why. For a 15-year-old living at home with both birth parents, there is a 97% chance that those parents are married. For a five-year-old with parents at home, there is a one in 10 chance of those parents splitting up if they are married, but a one in three chance if they are not married. The cost of family breakdown is £46 billion and rising. That is what we need to attack.

Marriage accounts for 54% of births but only 20% of break-ups among families with children under five. We must recognise that in the tax system and we do not. That is what this modest amendment seeks to put in statute as a starting point to appreciate that.