Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Thursday 29th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have not just had the infamous Baroness Mone scandal; at the time, there were reports of a hedge fund in Mauritius that got a £250 million contract for face masks that could not be used and a jeweller in Florida that got a multimillion-pound contract for gowns that could not be used. The Government had to incinerate billions of pounds-worth of faulty personal protective equipment. That is taxpayers’ money literally going up in smoke. In the pandemic the then Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), told me at the Dispatch Box

“where a contract is not delivered against, we do not intend to pay taxpayers’ money”.—[Official Report, 23 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 758.]

But taxpayers’ money was spent, wasn’t it? Why was that promise not met?

[Alex Burghart]

I gently refer the right hon. Gentleman to the answer I just gave. The fact is that, although problems arose with PPE procurement in this uniquely difficult environment in which officials were working unbelievably hard for the public good, PPE procurement is still subject to ongoing contract management controls, active dispute resolution and recovery action. The fact of the matter is that this Government took it seriously during the pandemic. The Department of Health and Social Care realised the risk of fraud early on, and the Government established a counter-fraud team to counter that threat. We are using all the legal tools at our disposal to get taxpayers’ money back. The House should be in no doubt that the Government’s speed of action during the crisis enabled many lives to be saved and for the country to overcome the covid-19 crisis.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I, too, wish to put on the record my condolences to Tony Lloyd’s family. He will be missed across the House, and across the Labour movement as a whole.

The Government lost £9 billion through duff, unusable PPE. The Prime Minister, when Chancellor, signed off £7 billion-worth of dodgy covid loans. Even today, the Government are losing £10 billion to tax fraud, £6 billion to universal credit fraud, and billions more across the public sector as a whole. Is the truth not that families are paying £1,200 more on average in tax because the Government simply cannot be trusted with taxpayers’ money?

[Alex Burghart]

I really struggle with that line of questioning. Opposition Members have very short memories. This was the worst pandemic that we have had in over a century. The pressures on Government were immense. The accusation that we bought too much PPE is akin to people standing up in 1945 and saying that the Government bought too many Spitfires.

Draft Digital Government (Disclosure of Information) (Identity Verification Services) Regulations 2023

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 General Committees

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir Gary. I will indicate at the start that I do not intend to divide the Committee nor to detain it for very long, because the Opposition support the principle of using data to improve public services, to improve Government services for citizens and our constituents, and to drive public sector productivity. We therefore support these measures.

I just have a few questions that I hope the Minister can briefly answer for us this morning. He rightly mentioned the controversies and those who will be concerned that this is a move to some form of ID card. I do not agree with that objection but none the less, as I am sure he and many members of the Committee will be aware, the issue can arouse strong feelings in some parts of the country. Will he reassure us about what processes will be in place for complaints from individuals about how their personal data is used? How will Departments obtain consent from users when they are sharing data between public bodies? How will Ministers monitor that?

I believe that the changes are key to unlocking productivity gains across the public sector and Government services. Have the Government scored any productivity improvements? Over what timeline does the Minister think that we could be reaping benefits from the changes?

I totally endorse the Government’s objective to move to the One Login system. I think they have promised that 150 public services will be using the GOV.UK One Login system by 2025. I would be grateful for an update on to what extent we are on track to hit that target. How many have already moved? As I say, if the Minister does not have the detailed answers, I would be very happy for him to write to me, but we support his endeavours today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Paymaster General to his place. In his new role, he will have responsibility for the efficient delivery of Government services and entitlements on which our constituents rely. One such entitlement, of course, is the winter fuel payment. Earlier this week, he was reported as saying that some pensioners do not need the winter fuel payment, so can he tell us which group of pensioners he had in mind when talking about who should lose the winter fuel payment?

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (John Glen)]

I was talking to a group of students and explaining the complexities of making choices in my then role at the Treasury. As the Chancellor set out yesterday, although the Government are fully committed to the full uplift, using the triple lock, and maintaining all those benefits, all Governments have to make choices. I was making known my views on some of those choices and the challenges in delivering them. I was not deviating at all from Government policy, and I am very happy to put the record straight on the Floor of the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, as one potential risk of AI is that it displaces employment. However, across Government we are looking at the risks and opportunities. We see a future in which humans working with AI create all sorts of great new opportunities for our economy and for individuals.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. Let me also say happy birthday to the Minister. He has just told the House that the Cabinet Office is responsible for the Government Digital Service—quite rightly. The Government could be making better use of AI to improve government services. For example, we are losing £8 billion a year to benefit fraud and error. Under this Government, we have lost £60 billion to that since 2010—that is £150 a second. Are they going to use AI to deal with benefit fraud and error, or should we assume that this is another example of how nothing works after 13 years?

[Alex Burghart]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place and look forward to debating these and other issues with him in future. He will be delighted to hear that over the past three years the Government have saved billions of pounds using the latest technology—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

No, they haven’t.

[Alex Burghart]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that they have. I can see he is new to the brief and he has some reading to do. [Interruption.] He has been moved from his previous brief to this one. He may be interested to discover that we regularly convene meetings with groups such as Evidence House and 10DS, which contain some of the finest technical experience in Government, to ensure we are taking advantage of the latest technology to make savings for taxpayers. He talks about money lost, but the money that the Government and the Treasury have saved through implementing the latest techniques is far in excess of the number he gave.

Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to express my personal condolences to His Majesty the King and the royal family, to associate myself with the remarks that we have heard so far, and to pay tribute to Her late Majesty on behalf of my Leicester South constituents and the city of Leicester. Leicester is proud of its radical tradition. Notwithstanding our history as a parliamentarian stronghold, Her Majesty was held in deep affection and viewed with deep reverence and love across Leicester. We are united in our grief today.

Leicester’s story today is one of diversity. We have welcomed to our city families from across the globe and the Commonwealth. Some of those families were fleeing persecution with nothing but a hastily packed suitcase. Her Majesty’s leadership of the Commonwealth stands not only as a reminder of the bonds of solidarity between the different nations of the Commonwealth, but as a symbol of inspirational hope for families fleeing persecution—hope for a better future for themselves and their children. We in Leicester were reminded of that only last month, as we recalled the 50-year anniversary of the expulsion of the Asian community from Uganda.

Her Majesty celebrated Leicester’s diversity; she was proud of our different faith groups. Our mosques have been recognising her death and expressing their thanks at Jummah prayers today; our Hindu temples have been placing garlands over pictures of her; and there are prayers in our synagogues, in our gurdwaras and in our Jain temple. We were particularly proud to host Her Majesty 10 years ago for the start of her diamond jubilee tour, for which all our communities came together.

Indeed, for the start of that diamond jubilee tour, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) and I had the privilege of welcoming the Queen to De Montfort University in my constituency. After we had queued nervously to greet Her Majesty and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, in the corner of my eye, I caught her looking somewhat bemused—if not slightly askance—at her husband, who had asked me and my hon. Friend whether we were reds or blues. I do not know what his opinion was of our answer, frankly.

A few months after we in Leicester had celebrated Her Majesty at the start of the diamond jubilee tour, we were nervous because we had discovered the remains of the last Yorkist monarch in a Leicester City Council car park. That provoked all kinds of knotty constitutional questions for the palace, including what we were going to do with Richard III. With her usual aplomb, and the diplomatic skill about which we have heard so much, Her Majesty let it be known that she was following developments with great interest, and a couple of years later, she visited Leicester cathedral—the final resting place of Richard III—to hand out Maundy money on Maundy Thursday.

In February 1952, when this House debated a motion on the loss of His Majesty King George, Winston Churchill said from the Dispatch Box said he hoped the accession of Queen Elizabeth would usher in a golden age. In response the former Prime Minister and then Leader of the Opposition Clement Attlee said that he hoped the accession of Queen Elizabeth would lead to another glorious Elizabethan era more renowned than the first one. My God, she more than surpassed the aspirations and hopes of those two great Prime Ministers. Rest in peace, and God save the King.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to look at my right hon. Friend’s interesting suggestion for a kitemark scheme. In the meantime, this Government are leading the world in tackling deforestation, with a £3 billion investment being led across Whitehall.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Is the point of order relevant to Prime Minister’s questions?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

It is indeed, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister has twice, from that Dispatch Box, said that the Labour Opposition voted against the NHS Funding Bill and the 2.1% increase for NHS staff. This is not the case. Indeed, in the debate, as Hansard will show, I was explicit that we would not divide the House. Can you, Mr Speaker, use your good offices to get the Prime Minister to return to the House to correct the record? And do you agree that if the Prime Minister wants to cut nurses’ pay, he should have the courage of his convictions and bring a vote back to the House?

[Mr Speaker]

May I just say that that is not a point of order? It is certainly a point of clarification, and that part has been achieved. But I am certainly not going to be drawn into a debate, as the shadow Secretary of State well knows.

I will now suspend the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements for the next business to be made.

Public Health

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

As we are debating this global pandemic, I want at the start to mention another global epidemic on World AIDS Day. I recommit Labour to ending HIV transmissions within this decade—I am sure the Secretary of State shares that commitment. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who spoke earlier, for the launch of their commission today.

Members from across the House have spoken with insight, eloquence and sincerity. A number—the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) made this point—said that we should avoid caricaturing each other’s position, and I entirely agree with that. I entirely accept that hon. Members who feel they cannot support restrictions in any form do not want to see this virus rip; they have alternative proposals. 

This has been a good debate—it has been a full day’s debate—but there has been frustration on both sides of the House about the nature of the debate. I think part of that frustration is born of the way the Government brought their proposals to the House in a statutory instrument. It is a straight up-or-down vote—a binary choice. The Government could have chosen to bring forward legislation, and I am sure that the House would have worked together to improve that legislation.

There have been issues in the detail of the instrument that have caused problems. We have had the ministerial muddle of the last 24 hours around scotch eggs. If we look at the details of the instrument, I am told that a wake is allowed today, but from tomorrow wakes will not be allowed in tier 3 areas, so the provisions around wakes will be more restrictive than what is allowed today. I am sure that these anomalies and issues could have been ironed out had the Government chosen to bring forward some legislation where we could have worked together across the House and tabled amendments.

At root, this has been a debate about freedoms—I commend the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) for his speech about freedoms early in the debate—but also about how we balance risk; I think that is what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison) was alluding to a moment ago. All of us want to see these freedoms returned for our constituents. The question is, at what point is it safe to start restoring freedoms to our constituents and our communities? The second question is, if we accept that freedoms have to be restricted in order to bring the prevalence of this virus down, what is the economic support in place? This House wants to save lives, but in saving lives, we are asking many of our constituents to potentially sacrifice their livelihoods. In those circumstances, our constituents—families and small businesses in our constituencies—deserve some recompense for that as well.

One theme that has come out throughout the debate is how an area will move between tiers and whether the Government are using the correct geographical footprint for tiers, but throughout this we have had different approaches. The Prime Minister’s approach has ricocheted throughout. I remember when we were told that we would have a “whack-a-mole” approach. On Saturday, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in his essay in The Times, said that we need to cast the widest net possible for these measures to be effective. Now, in response to questions from Back Benchers on both sides of the House, the Prime Minister says we are going to use granular detail to make very specific, localised decisions. Are we back to whack-a-mole or not?

I say to hon. Members that I have some experience of these matters. Leicester never effectively came out of the national lockdown. We went from national lockdown to local lockdown. We have bounced between versions of what today would be known as tiers 2 and 3. Our pubs were shut; our restaurants were closed. My constituents were banned from going on holiday for part of July. Using polymerase chain reaction tests, we did mass testing. We went door to door with PCR tests, and we brought our infection rate down to 25 per 100,000. We were kept in restrictions.

I have heard hon. Members stand up and argue, with sincerity, that their area should not be in tier 3 or tier 2 because its infection rate is 40 per 100,000 and that is lower than it is down the road, where it is 50 per 100,000. These are entirely legitimate points to make. Leicester remained in restrictions with its infection rate at 25 per 100,000. My question to the Secretary of State, when he comes to respond to the debate, is this. I know that he has published five criteria by which judgments will be made about the future of tiers, but will he publish specific scorecards for each area, and can he tell us at what level we should now be alarmed? Is it 40 per 100,000? Is it 35 per 100,000? That was the nationwide level when the Prime Minister introduced the rule of six on 15 September; it is 160-odd per 100,000 today.



The Secretary of State will also tell us that the answer is mass testing, and I of course pay tribute to Joe Anderson and Liverpool City Council for what they have done with the mass testing pilot. Indeed, for months we have called for targeted mass testing, but, as my hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) have pointed out, if a community testing programme is to succeed, it needs a community isolation programme alongside it. People in low-paid jobs who are not ill and who do not think they have the virus are unlikely to take a test if they are not going to get adequate sick pay and support for their isolation. We say again to the Government: bring forward a sick pay package and ensure wider access to the £500 payment. I have also heard concerns, relating to mass testing, that the testers are not allowed to go door to door. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether that is correct?

Fundamentally, we support public health restrictions, but we cannot impose public health restrictions without giving our businesses the support to survive, and that is our difference here tonight. Give our pubs, our restaurants and our hospitality sector the grants that they need. Yes, we need to save lives, but we also need to save livelihoods.

Public Health

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Members have spoken with sincerity and eloquence this afternoon, and it is clear that the House would have benefited from, the regulations would have been improved by, and indeed our constituents would have expected, a full day of debate. We are invited to endorse a long, hard lockdown that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster himself conceded at the weekend could well need to stretch beyond the beginning of December.

We will endorse the regulations before the House because, for all the disputes about graphs and modelling, the trends are clear: general and acute beds are filling up, critical care beds are filling up and more people will die over the next two to three weeks because we did not act sooner.

Our constituents will want to know there is a plan. It is still not clear what criteria will be used to judge whether the lockdown should be lifted. Is it bringing the nationwide R under 1? Is it falling hospital admissions? Is it lower prevalence rates among the over 60s? Is it a prevalence with which contact tracing is effective? I hope the Secretary of State can answer that.

I want to underline three quick points raised by Members on both sides of the House. John Steinbeck wrote:

“A sad soul can kill you far quicker than a germ.”

That is not entirely biologically correct, but we understand the point. Loneliness and isolation extract a heavy mental and physical toll, so will the Secretary of State guarantee a mental health plan for the winter? Will services continue to be accessible, either online or face to face?

At times of crisis, many of our constituents find solace in faith, communion and congregational prayer. Churches, mosques, temples, gurdwaras and synagogues have gone to great lengths, often at great cost to volunteers, to make themselves covid secure. We have Diwali coming up soon. Many mosques have been in touch with me to ask, if individual prayer is allowed in a church or masjid with social distancing in place, why not congregational prayer?

With respect to social care, I understand that the Secretary of State has published some guidance and that visits will be allowed outside or behind screens, which is welcome, but could he use the mass testing that is now coming online to allow people to be tested so that they can see their relatives inside a care home, and perhaps even hug them? Many will fear that this is the last Christmas for their loved ones in care homes.

Finally, what happens next? The Paymaster General warned yesterday of further lockdowns, but a hokey-cokey of lockdowns has to be avoided. This virus is controllable with the correct measures in place, so we urge the Secretary of State to use these four weeks to quickly expand saliva testing to all NHS staff and key workers. We also need tracing teams, led locally, doing the detective work to identify super-spreading events with retrospective tracing. East Asian countries are avoiding lockdowns with this cluster-busting approach. We should institute it here.

We need decent sick pay and support for those isolating, and we need to improve ventilation systems in public buildings. Finally, we need a plan for Christmas. When the lockdown ends, thousands of students will be travelling the country to go home. What is the Government’s plan to keep us safe through Christmas and the new year?

Tonight we will support these measures, but we are demanding that our constituents, who have paid a huge price, make greater sacrifices because of a failure to act sooner.