Palestinians: Visa Scheme
Debate between John McDonnell and Tom PursgloveWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Tom Pursglove
I did not have the opportunity to finish the point I was making, but the hon. and learned Lady will appreciate why I am not in a position to be able to give authoritative immigration advice on individual cases. What I can refer colleagues to are the points that I have made and the various routings that people may wish to explore in order to take their cases forward. I think she knows from previous dealings that we have had, and her colleagues likewise, that I am always very happy to engage with colleagues in the House about issues and concerns relevant to their constituents. That is absolutely no different in this particular circumstance. I will very gladly meet both hon. Members to talk about this matter.
John McDonnell
Can I take the Minister back to the issue of children? In January, I tabled an early-day motion asking the Government to meet and support the organisation, Save Gaza’s Children. I was assured by the Deputy Foreign Secretary at the time, on the Floor of the House, that that organisation would be linked to the FCDO’s group that was working to facilitate the evacuation of children on medical grounds. This Minister has said today that there have been no applications whatever, so clearly the system established by the Foreign Office is not working. The information that we have at the moment is that the European Hospital, which was functioning, has now run out of fuel and is in blackout. The Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah received orders from the Israeli military to evacuate this morning. The Al-Helal Al-Emirati Hospital has stopped admitting patients over the last few days. The health service is in crisis. Children are being maimed; children are being injured. Yet the Minister has said today that the system that we were promised some months ago is not operational.
Tom Pursglove
I will want to go and pick up that point with colleagues in the Foreign Office and understand the specifics around it, but I will refer the right hon. Gentleman to the point that I made at the outset of my remarks, in relation to those very vulnerable children. I am more than happy to engage with him on this particular point; I would equally be very willing to engage with the charity that he references in relation to this specific point, so that we can fully understand the circumstances and fully understand the needs. The position as I understand it, as I am advised currently by officials, is as per that which I set out earlier, but we will most definitely pick up that engagement with the right hon. Gentleman and with the charity.
Immigration Update
Debate between John McDonnell and Tom Pursglove
Tom Pursglove
I am very mindful that my right hon. Friend’s community in Chelmsford has been incredibly generous. The UK Government have been delivering work in conjunction with communities to provide sanctuary for those fleeing the most dreadful conflicts around the world, including in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria, as well as those fleeing the situation in Hong Kong. She is also right to touch on the abuse of routes, which is precisely why we are introducing greater Care Quality Commission oversight and accreditation of the health and social care visa system.
I hear my right hon. Friend’s representations on accommodation, on which we have had conversations. Reducing inflow is critical to allowing us to get on with closing hotels across the country, and to getting the accommodation picture into a more manageable state. It is clear that only this Government have a credible plan to reduce the inflow of people coming here illegally via small boats across the channel. We will see that through to make sure that we can get on with closing more hotels.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
As the policy is rolled out, it is seen to be the brutal and inhumane financial fiasco that it is. Asylum seekers were detained as they turned up for their normal monthly reporting yesterday, causing immense distress. A number of them will inevitably be sent to the detention centres in my constituency. We have experience of what happens when people are distressed in this way. We have seen suicides, self-harm and mental breakdowns. Can I have an assurance from the Minister that the charities that support asylum seekers in detention, including Care4Calais, will have direct access to these detained individuals, and that these individuals will have access to legal advice?
Tom Pursglove
There are, of course, established processes whereby people can access the support that is appropriate in the circumstances. I have a principled disagreement with the right hon. Gentleman on this point about detention, and I recognise that those in the Scottish National party do not support detention either for the purposes of removal. However, where people are here who have no right to be here, I think it is appropriate that they are detained for the purposes of removal. That is done entirely properly, in accordance with the law, with the proper safeguards around it. As ever, that will continue to be the case during the ongoing work as part of the Rwanda relocations.
Draft Data Protection Act 2018 (Amendment of Schedule 2 Exemptions) Regulations 2024
Debate between John McDonnell and Tom Pursglove(8 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Tom Pursglove
It is fair to say that we as the Government have reflected on the conversations that we have had, and the regulations we are debating reflect those conversations. As I say, the ICO is clear about its stance in being in adherence with the outcome of the court case. That is important to acknowledge in relation to this.
On the specific question of costs, I cannot commit to giving a specific figure today. However, once all the costings around the case have been settled and the process has been settled and finalised in the usual way, I can most certainly provide a figure to the House.
There was a perfectly legitimate question about how data subjects know that the exemption has been used. The exemption includes a presumption that data subjects are to be informed where the exemption provisions have been applied in their case, unless informing the data subject of the application would in itself prejudice the purpose of the exemption. Linked to that was an inquiry about the use of the exemption. For the year ending October 2023, the immigration exemption was applied to about 70% of subject access requests received in relation to immigration, citizenship and Border Force. Of those, the vast majority had only a small amount of data redacted under the use of the exemption.
Rightly, there were also questions around safeguards. To be clear, the Court of Appeal judgment was specific in the areas that it deemed the immigration exemption to be incompatible with UK GDPR. This statutory instrument addresses comprehensively those issues, and the safeguards are set out clearly on the face of the legislation. The immigration exemption needs to be flexible in order to account for a range of scenarios, and going into more detail in the legislation risks compromising both the purpose of the exemption and the rights of data subjects, as I am sure the Committee will understand.
However, in recognition of that, routes of redress exist for data subjects, with the standard routes of redress being where a data subject feels that the immigration exemption has applied to them wrongly. Those data subjects may complain to the Home Office as the data controller, and they can also contact the ICO, which has appropriate powers to investigate instances of non-compliance with data protection law. In addition to contacting the ICO, data subjects can legally challenge an application of the immigration exemption in the courts.
UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities
Debate between John McDonnell and Tom Pursglove(2 years ago)
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Tom Pursglove
To directly address the hon. Lady’s point, we are fully committed to the convention, but as a general principle the UK Government do not incorporate international treaties into our domestic law. However, the rights of disabled people under this convention are largely reflected in existing domestic policies and legislation, including the Equality Act 2010, in England, Scotland and Wales, and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, in Northern Ireland. As I have said in the context of other debates in previous ministerial roles, it is for this House and this Parliament to interpret our international obligations and to reflect those in our domestic body of legislation in a way that this House, and Parliament more generally, sees fit.
Let me get back to the wider points. The UK continues to support disabled people living in lower and middle-income countries through our flagship disability-inclusive programmes. We are also providing support to disabled people in Ukraine. We are providing global leadership, but we are clear that more needs to be done. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office published an ambitious disability inclusion and rights strategy to embed disability inclusion across FCDO’s diplomacy, policy and programming work at the Global Disability Summit in February 2022. The strategy reaffirms the UK’s commitment to act as a global leader on disability inclusion, setting out our approach through to 2030.
The FCDO also announced 18 public commitments in February to make its international development work more disability inclusive. The commitments include increasing meaningful participation with disabled people, and specific work on tackling violence against women and girls and on sexual and reproductive health and rights. The FCDO’s disability inclusive development programme is a six-year, £30 million programme designed to test “what works” for disabled people. By the end of March, the FCDO had provided more than 375 disabled children with a quality education, almost 6,000 disabled people with improved access to healthcare and more than 6,400 people with disabilities with training and skills development to improve their income, and encouraged more than 16.5 million people to change their attitudes and behaviours towards disabled people to tackle stigma and discrimination.
The UK also supports the growth of the global disability movement by providing capacity-building grants to disabled people’s organisations around the world. The FCDO funded the training of more than 1,200 disability activists last year to help them advocate for disabled people’s human rights and hold Governments to account for progress on disability rights. A new allocation of £15 million in funding will help local responders in Ukraine and Poland support up to 200,000 of the most vulnerable impacted by Russia’s invasion, including older people and those with disabilities. That will fund grassroots civil society groups to provide food assistance, water and sanitation, psychological support and childcare services, alongside other emergency assistance.
I would like to take a moment to bring attention to some of the progress made by this Government that has positively impacted the lives of disabled people. Our Social Security (Special Rules for End of Life) Bill received Royal Assent on 25 October 2022 and will enable people who are thought to be in the final year of their life to get fast-tracked access to disability living allowance, personal independence payment and attendance allowance.
John McDonnell
This is the Minister’s first outing, so it is not the time to rough him up on anything. However, the background to this, for those of us who participated in it, is the UN report, which demonstrated that as a result of austerity there have been systemic gross violations of human rights of disabled people in this country. One point that has been made by Labour Members is the importance of the Government engaging with disability organisations. May I suggest that one of those should be the preventable harm project, run by Mo Stewart, who might be able to take the Minister through some of the issues, particularly those associated with the work capability assessment, that developed the problems we have with regard to the violation of human rights of disabled people in this country?
Tom Pursglove
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I would be happy to meet him to discuss those issues further. I am determined that Ministers will have constructive working relationships with colleagues across Parliament, and with third sector organisations and international organisations pertinent to this work, to ensure that we deliver the best outcomes possible. I would be happy to have a conversation with him about the particular point that he has raised.
We also made similar changes to universal credit and employment and support allowance in April this year.
One particular Bill reflects positively on the cross-party constructive work that has gone on. The hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) brought the British Sign Language Bill to Parliament and worked constructively with Ministers to deliver it, including with my right hon. Friends the Members for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) and for Norwich North. The Bill passed into law earlier this year and will recognise BSL as a language of England, Wales and Scotland in its own right. It is also supported by a duty on the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to regularly report on what each relevant Government Department has done to promote or facilitate the use of British Sign Language in its communications with the public.
We laid regulations in the summer to allow more health- care professionals to certify fit notes in addition to doctors. Nurses, occupational therapists, pharmacists and physiotherapists can all legally certify fit notes, reducing the pressure on NHS doctors, particularly GPs. This followed legislative changes in the spring, which removed the need for fit notes to be signed in ink.
On World Mental Health Day in October, we announced the expansion of a joint programme by DWP, DHSC and NHS England—with expenditure of £122 million—to expand the provision of employment advisers in improving access to psychological therapy services across England.