Whitsun Recess

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, but I hesitate to do so after the contribution of the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who I thought made an excellent speech and spoke with considerable compassion about the death of her constituent. I am sure that the Minister will want to respond in the most appropriate manner possible.

I seek to raise four issues on the Whitsun Adjournment. The first relates to the future of the custody suite at Harrow police station, which serves my constituency. I heard in April that the Metropolitan police were planning to close the custody suite in October. There are rumours this week that the decision has been put on hold and that a final decision on closing or saving it will be taken in the autumn. There certainly appears to be a considerable body of opinion within the higher levels of the Met in favour of closing the custody suite. That would leave Harrow with no custody suite, and one of only two London boroughs—both in the suburbs of London, as I understand the other is Richmond—without one. To date, there has been no proper explanation from the Metropolitan police of why they think Harrow’s custody suite, which has 13 cells, should close.

I raised this issue on the Floor of the House during Home Office questions, and—understandably—the Home Secretary replied that it was an operational matter for the Metropolitan police. At first glance, she is absolutely right, Nevertheless, I encourage Ministers to use their influence to ask the Metropolitan police to reconsider.

As I have said, Harrow’s custody suite consists of 13 cells. There are 5,000 “visits”, as they are called in the jargon, to those cells each year. Potentially, therefore, 5,000 prisoners would have to be held in other custody suites. I understand that the Metropolitan police want those who are arrested in Harrow to be housed at Kilburn and Wembley police stations. On one level, I am not concerned about where a prisoner from my constituency is housed. What concerns me and many of my constituents is that if prisoners have to be transported to those other custody suites for the purposes of an investigation into whether they have committed the crimes of which they are accused and preparation of paperwork for court appearances, substantial police officer time will be wasted. That would inevitably have an impact on the quality and number of investigations that can take place at Harrow. Travelling to Kilburn during the rush hour can take more than an hour, and travelling to Wembley on cup final day can take a long time as well. According to one estimate, based on that figure of 5,000 visits a year, between 10,000 and 20,000 police officer hours could be wasted in transporting prisoners to the two new custody suites.

I understand that shortly after a custody suite closes, the CID team in the Met go to the replacement custody suite. Given that more than 100 CID officers are currently based at Harrow police station, my constituents are understandably concerned that those officers may find themselves permanently based at Wembley police station in Brent. That, too, would reduce the level and quality of policing in my constituency.

In an attempt to establish the reason for the Metropolitan police’s decision, I tabled a freedom of information request asking them for details of all their custody suites, including the number of cells and the staffing levels. There are some 44 custody suites in London; 14 contain fewer cells than Harrow police station, and at many substantially more staff and police officers are based than are based at Harrow. The decision by the Metropolitan police to close the Harrow custody suite therefore does not appear to have been made on cost grounds. I am told that the Met may have had in mind the quality of the cells at Harrow and that some capital investment is certainly needed, but I am also told that there is no difference in quality between Harrow and Kilburn.

I was not consulted on, or even formally told of, the decision in advance. I have written to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who has told me that an assistant commissioner will be writing to me to explain why Harrow police station has been singled out. I have not yet received that letter. I welcome the fact that the Met may well reconsider the decision, but I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will use his influence to encourage Home Office Ministers to have a quiet word in the ear of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and urge him to reverse it.

The second issue is the proposed airport in the Thames estuary. On behalf of the airports serving my constituency, notably Heathrow, I have concerns about that proposal. There are several noisy cheerleaders for the Thames estuary airport, even though it does not make sense in air traffic control terms, it would require hugely costly investment in roads, housing and other infrastructure, and years of architects’, planners’ and traffic and environment consultants’ time, and it certainly would not solve London’s immediate need for extra airport capacity. Many rival airports, notably Schiphol in the Netherlands, have experienced a significant increase in business in recent months. Given that the Thames estuary airport has not begun to go through any of its planning, environmental, financial or air traffic control assessment processes, owners of such rival airports must be licking their lips at the prospect of the months or even years they will have to attract international business away from London’s airports while the debate about a Thames estuary airport continues.

National Air Traffic Services has quietly pointed out the considerable additional problems a Thames estuary airport will cause in London’s already congested airspace. It would sit directly under the central route into London’s airspace, so aeroplanes carrying thousands of passengers a year would be taking off and landing at the new airport through one of the world’s busiest airspaces. In short, a Thames estuary airport is about as sensible as building a new crèche in the middle of a motorway. It would also shift the eastern boundary of London’s air traffic holding patterns, in turn opening up the need for negotiations with other nations about changes to UK airspace, which, at best, would mean another delay to any new airport’s start date. Worse still, there is the risk of creating an investment hiatus at London’s existing airports, as the business community waits to see whether the idea of a Thames estuary airport can really be made to work.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I am listening very carefully as I was brought up in London. I have always been astonished that we are the only capital city in the world where the Head of State and the Prime Minister can be woken up at 5 o’clock on Christmas morning by planes flying over. Everywhere else, airports are situated some distance away, so planes do not need to fly over city centres. I wonder whether my hon. Friend is right to dismiss the idea of shifting everything a little eastwards, with planes flying into the wind from the east, rather than over the capital city. Also, if there was an accident involving a plane flying over central London, that could be incredibly dangerous.

[Mr Thomas]

Nobody wants to lose any passenger through an air traffic incident, and, of course, we would want to minimise disruption to anybody, whether a Prime Minister or not, but we have to look at these issues in the round, and I gently say to my right hon. Friend that, notwithstanding the noise level that the Prime Minister currently has to deal with, he should consider the range of issues mounting up against the idea of a Thames estuary airport.

I am worried about the Thames estuary airport proposal stalling investment at Heathrow. Many of my constituents work at Heathrow, or in the businesses that thrive in the economy associated with it. Leaving aside the considerable financial, air traffic control and other such reasons for not going ahead with the Thames estuary airport, I cannot see how an airport there could be in the interest of west London, as Heathrow would, in effect, be downgraded from the major international hub airport it is now and would lose the jobs and investment that a major airport brings in its wake. That is what would happen if a Thames estuary airport were built.

My last point about the problems with the Thames estuary airport relates to the environmental challenges it would generate, which do not appear to have been taken on board yet. I gently suggest to Ministers that the proposal for an airport in the Thames estuary is a distraction from, not a solution to, the issue of airport capacity. It has the potential to damage the economy that serves my constituency in the area around Heathrow, and I urge Ministers to bring it to a close.

The third issue that I briefly wish to discuss is Sri Lanka, and the report that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has just released on human rights across the world, which touches on Sri Lanka. I very much welcome the report, and I commend the FCO for continuing the tradition of publishing a report on human rights in the countries in which we all, as a House of Commons, have a considerable interest. The report noted the considerable number of disappearances and abductions that are continuing in the north and east of Sri Lanka, in particular, with a sharp rise at the end of the year.

A number of my constituents have brought to my attention the unexplained death of a young Tamil man, Easwarathasan Ketheeswaran, who was deported back to Sri Lanka from the UK. I have tabled questions to the FCO and the Home Office on the matter. I asked the FCO whether it has had discussions with the regime in Sri Lanka to press questions about the quality of the police investigation into this young man’s death. I asked the Home Office whether this unexplained death of someone deported back to Sri Lanka from our country will affect its policy on the deportations of Tamil men, in particular, back to Sri Lanka.

The FCO report gave detail about the human rights situation in Sri Lanka, and recalled that the Sri Lankan Government’s own Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission report had noted a serious lack of investigations by the Sri Lankan police into disappearances and human rights abuses, particularly in the north and east of the country. The commission went on to note the failure of the Sri Lankan police on some occasions to register complaints when people had come to see them to point out disappearances, abductions and human rights abuses. Indeed, as the FCO’s work pointed out, that commission report also highlighted the continuing substantial military presence in the north and east of Sri Lanka, which it said was making the northern province, in particular, unsafe for women. The FCO report went on to note the number of war widows in the northern and eastern provinces—approximately 90,000.

Many hon. Members will be familiar with the huge number of deaths in Sri Lanka at the end of the conflict in 2009, which prompted United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to appoint a panel of experts to report on both the scale of the killings and the level of human rights abuses in the run-up to the last months of the conflict, when more than 40,000 people were killed. According to the UN report, many of those people lost their lives as a result of the Sri Lankan military’s use of cluster bombs and as a result of the intense bombing of areas, even those designated as “no-fire zones”. The UN report also noted that huge numbers of Tamils in particular in the north and east suffered at the end of the conflict from a lack of access to food and medicine, as the Sri Lankan military allowed food and medicine through to the then still LTTE-controlled areas in very few cases.

The UN panel concluded that there was evidence of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity and repeated the call for an international independent investigation into those war crimes allegations. Encouragingly, the UN Human Rights Council recently concluded that there needs to be a proper international investigation and that people should be held to account.

In addition, the International Crisis Group, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and other Members have highlighted the growing insecurity of women in the north and east because of lack of access to housing or jobs and the generally unsafe environment in which they live. What can the Government do to help? They should certainly continue to keep up the pressure for an independent international inquiry. Many of my constituents were disappointed by the decision to invite the President of Sri Lanka to take part in the jubilee celebrations without assurances being sought that he will be accommodating to the UN and will help an independent international inquiry to take place.

Another direct thing that the Government could do, through the Department for International Development—I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will take this point back to the Department—is fund one or two international non-governmental organisations with a proper track record in such matters to provide support and assistance to the women and many children in the north and east of Sri Lanka who are vulnerable. I know from my time as a Minister in DFID that it does not have staff based in Sri Lanka and could not therefore set up its own aid programme, but it does fund many international organisations—from the Oxfams and Save the Childrens to the Islamic Reliefs and so on—that work in countries across the world where the Department does not have a full operation of its own. They could be trusted to provide proper development assistance to incredibly vulnerable people.

My final point is very different and concerns London Welsh rugby football club’s application to join rugby’s premiership. As Members will recognise, I have some Welsh roots and a number of my constituents, like me, enjoy cheering on London Welsh. For the first time in the history of the rugby championship in the UK, London Welsh has got through to the play-off final and it submitted its bid to the Rugby Football Union to be considered for a place in the premiership should it win. Yesterday, before the first leg of that play-off final was due to take place, the RFU published the results of its investigation into London Welsh’s bid and rejected it out of hand. Proper reasons have not yet been given for the decision, but if media reports are to be believed it appears that the application was rejected because London Welsh does not have its own ground that meets premiership standards. As London Welsh spokespeople have pointed out to the media, a series of premiership teams are already in that category, notably Saracens.

[Mr MacShane]

I wish my hon. Friend all the best, but frankly the men in blazers and those bright pink and orange corduroy trousers who control the RFU will not give any consideration to the passion of London Welsh, its players and its supporters. We experienced that in Rotherham when we got into the premier league and were then booted out. We had a wonderful ground and people could get right down to the touchline to watch the rugby. It is much better than sitting up in a big stadium, but those gentlemen of a particular class are the worst administrators of any of our major games. I wish my hon. Friend well, but he ain’t going to get going until they change their corduroy trousers.

[Mr Thomas]

I am a huge supporter of my right hon. Friend on most things, as he knows, but I hope that on this occasion he will allow me to take a slightly more temperate view of the Rugby Football Union. In general, I think it does a good job and I hope that it will reconsider London Welsh’s application.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

As the Member of Parliament for Rugby and someone with great enthusiasm for the game of rugby, may I tell the hon. Gentleman that true rugby fans across the country will have enormous sympathy with the case he is making? The teams that do well deserve the right to be promoted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

I am grateful for the support of the hon. Gentleman and, I think, the support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) for this great cause.

London Welsh players responded in the best way possible to the news last night when they won the away leg at the Cornish Pirates’ ground 37 points to 21. We take a 16-point lead into the home game at the Oxford Kassam stadium next Wednesday evening. I hope that members of the RFU board will come to that stadium to see just how well that ground could house premiership rugby next year.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I note that the fourth issue he has addressed, rugby, has attracted a lot more interest in the Chamber than the previous three. I endorse the comments that we have just heard about the quality of administration in the RFU. If he or his club would like to come to the rugby league to see an example of fine administration they should do that.

Let me make a serious point about London Welsh, which I think would be replacing Newcastle in the premiership. I have nothing at all against London Welsh, but it would be a pity if the whole of the rugby union premiership became dominated by teams from the south and did not include fine teams such as Rotherham and Newcastle, which have dropped out of that league.

[Mr Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the need for rugby union to have a very diverse base across the country. I certainly hope that when Newcastle takes its place in the championship, as I hope it will, it continues to benefit from the RFU’s support and largesse so that it can have a genuine chance of winning a place back in the premiership. Nevertheless, we have to allow proper promotion and relegation to take place. I do not think London Welsh has been properly treated thus far. I raise this issue in the House today because I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House might encourage the Minister for Sport and the Olympics to use his influence to encourage the RFU to publish the full details of its assessment and how it reached the decision to reject London Welsh’s application for the premiership, so that London Welsh has all the facts in front of it as it prepares its case for appeal.