Covid-19 Update

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have tried to be consensual across the House—[Interruption.] I have, and I have tried to build on those aspects of our handling of covid—[Interruption.] I was very consensual to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), and, frankly, I thought he was rather rude.

Let me put it this way. There is much, much more that unites all parts of the UK in our handling of covid than divides us. In comparison with any other European country, we are moving virtually in lockstep. There are some baroque eccentricities in various other parts—in Wales—and I will make no comment on those, but I will repeat what I have said: we will continue to provide support throughout the UK.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Many of my constituents who were doing the right thing and self-isolating are becoming frustrated on days six and seven because they cannot gain access to the lateral flow tests that they need to be released early, although just three weeks ago the Health Secretary told the House that the country had tens of millions of tests. Can the Prime Minister tell us what has gone wrong, and will he apologise to my constituents for putting them in this position?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly share the frustrations of everyone who has found it difficult to get a test during a time of unbelievable demand. We have taken responsibility by tripling supply and creating our own home-grown UK lateral flow testing manufacturing capability, of which the Labour Front Bench was in unbelievable ignorance when this debate began.

G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We talk all the time to the oil and gas industry, which has a great and proud history in this country. I believe that the future for the industry—for hydrocarbons—is moving beyond the old combustion approach and towards the extraction of clean power. That is the direction in which we should be going.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It seems that we are in the last chance saloon if we are to make an impact on limiting the effect of climate change. Does the Prime Minister share my disappointment that China and India have failed to match many other countries’ commitments to reach net zero by 2050, placing their targets 10 and 20 years later? Does he agree that if the remainder of COP26 is to be a success, we need to get some movement from them on that as well?

[The Prime Minister]

We will continue to push on the net zero dates. Although I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of those countries’ targets, I think we also need to look at what both of them are saying about what they will do pre-2030. As the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) pointed out, that is the key issue on which we need to focus. The Indians have now made a big commitment to decarbonising their power system by 2030, and the hon. Gentleman has heard what we have already said in the House about the Chinese commitment to “peak” CO₂ output in 2030 or before. The question is, how long before? Both those countries have made substantial progress, but obviously it is not yet enough.

Emergency Covid Contracts

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

I thank the hon. Lady for her concerns, and I wish to assure her that a link to the Conservative party was not one of the criteria that needed to be fulfilled when those PPE contracts were being undertaken.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab) [V]]

The National Audit Office report on PPE procurement made it clear that there was a lack of transparency in the documentation relating to key procurement decisions. We now know about the routine use of private emails to conduct Government business, which raises the question of whether the NAO could not find all the documentation because it was hidden away in private email accounts. Can the Minister now give us an assurance that all relevant private emails were handed over to the NAO as part of its investigations? If she cannot give us that assurance, can she ensure that all those private emails will now be passed over to the NAO?

[Julia Lopez]

In relation to the challenges we faced in trying to transparently publish all the contracts, I have set out some of the reasons for them. It was partly because a team of 450 people had to be surged across Government, and they were all working on different IT systems. Going back and trying to look at all the documentation relating to PPE has been a real challenge, and those challenges have been acknowledged in the various court cases that have been brought. I wish to assure the hon. Gentleman with regard to the emails that, in so far as freedom of information requests are made, they will be looked at in the relevant way.

Security of Ministers’ Offices and Communications

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

My understanding is that the general policy is that cameras are not sited within Ministers’ offices. I think this situation was an outlier in that regard, and we will have a better understanding of why it occurred once the Department’s investigation is complete.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab) [V]]

The shadow Secretary of State asked the Minister directly whether any Minister or the Prime Minister used private emails to conduct Government business, and in response the Minister basically repeated the guidelines, which seem to suggest that, yes, Ministers can use a private email and it is up to them to police themselves. Given the stench of cronyism around this Government, can she not see how that answer is completely unacceptable? All this needs to be opened up, and transparency must be the order of the day immediately.

[Julia Lopez]

My point is that it is not Ministers who make the final decisions on contracts and that important processes are gone through. There may be questions about the direction of email traffic, but the point is that every decision is scrutinised under the same process when it comes to providing covid contracts—if that is the hon. Gentleman’s concern.

Ministerial Code

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an important point—that we all have a responsibility to learn lessons, learn from the past, do our best to make sure that we collectively maintain high standards in public life, acknowledge that there are human frailties in individuals who represent all the parties in this House and do our very best to learn from the past.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Does the Minister know the identity of the person who gave the Prime Minister the money to pay for the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat? Either he does not know, in which case he should not be at the Dispatch Box saying there is no problem at all, or he does know, in which case he should just tell us what their name is. Can he do that now, please?

[Michael Gove]

The person who paid for the renovations in the Downing Street flat was Boris Johnson.

Lobbying of Government Committee

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Every day, things get a little murkier. Every day, some new revelation appears that adds to the general whiff of sleaze that emanates from the Government. Rather than seeking to uphold higher standards, it seems that the Government want to underplay the importance of probity, sideline the principle of transparency, and behave as if the law does not apply to them. It starts with a friendly drink, then a cosy chat, and before we know it millions of pounds of public money is being siphoned off without any kind of open process being undertaken. Never has the phrase, “It’s not what you know, but who you know,” rung so true. Never has the path to riches been so open to a select few, and never has our democracy been so warped by an erosion of basic standards.

These revelations diminish us all in the eyes of the public. That should concern us all, regardless of political persuasion. I urge Conservative MPs who intend to vote against our motion to think about what message they are sending to their constituents. If their constituents are like mine, many will have faced massive financial hardship over the last year. I have written to Ministers about the issues affecting businesses and individuals in my constituency in relation to the covid response, but on far too many occasions I have received a disinterested generic reply six months later.

My constituents and I are disappointed when their concerns are treated with such disdain, but that disappointment turns to outrage when my constituents see that those who have the Chancellor’s mobile number have no such difficulty in getting an audience. The 3 million excluded, the health and social care staff scrabbling around for personal protective equipment, and the millions of people who have given their time to help in the fight against covid have all given so much. When they see that this crisis has been used as an opportunity by some with the right connections to line their own pockets, they are disgusted.

Ministers should remember that they are not only custodians of the public purse; they are responsible for the reputations of the Departments they oversee. One of the schemes that that special access led to was essentially payday loans for NHS employees. More thought should have been given to the implications of that. It is clear that Greensill wanted the credibility that comes from working with the NHS, in the hope that that would enhance its reputation, but what about the reputation of the NHS after being associated with such a scheme? If it is thought that pay is so low that salary advances are needed, perhaps the Government should think again about the real-terms pay cut that they propose for NHS staff.

If we are to have lobbying, we should lobby for the Prime Minister to buy a dictionary, because his definition of “independent” is very different from mine and that of most other people. There is now a pattern whereby anything tricky involving the Government sees them marking their own homework. We know what happens then: reports on bullying never see the light of day, and the breaking of the ministerial code is no longer seen as a reason for resignation. For this Prime Minister, no transgression is too big to ignore, so I say to him, show some leadership, allow independent scrutiny and clean up this rotten mess.

Covid-19: NAO Report on Government Procurement

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Eagle. As one of the people who originally asked the NAO to look into the handling of PPE contracts, I was of course extremely interested in what its report had to say. I asked for that because throughout the summer, suppliers contacted me as they were angry about being overlooked, especially given that they had put in many hours of work to get some of the contracts. Their anger turned to rage when they saw that some of the companies to which contracts had been awarded had no background in PPE and sometimes no background as a company at all. In fact, their chief qualification was a connection to the Tory party.

How did we get into that position in the first place? Of course, there was unprecedented demand, but it seems that the Government failed to heed their own warnings about the readiness of this country to deal with a pandemic. They ignored the recommendations of Exercise Cygnus and allowed the PPE stockpile that we did have to go out of date and dwindle—a dwindling stockpile, by the way, that we were paying a private company £11 million a year to sit on.

The way in which warnings were ignored created the conditions for the get-rich-quick specialists to thrive and for the taxpayer to foot the bill for overpriced PPE from people who had never sold as much as a pair of gloves the previous year. At the same time, companies with the contacts, experience and even the stock were given the run-around, so we had the scandal of doctors and nurses bringing homemade PPE to protect themselves, while British companies were selling their stock abroad because they could not get their own Government to take an interest in it. We then saw the absurd spectacle of a Secretary of State proclaiming on national television that help was on the way with a shipment of PPE from Turkey, most of which never arrived or turned out to be unusable. That was an international embarrassment that we must never let happen again.

When the Minister responds, will she set out exactly how many millions of items of PPE that were purchased either never showed up or were found to be unusable? Will she tell us how much of that has already been paid for and whether we have received any refunds? So far, I have not heard any contrition from the Government about the way in which procurement has been handled, and we need to hear some today, because the public will not forget the arrogance until long after the last person has been vaccinated.

Covid-19: Winter Plan

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is so right in the way he champions Stoke and the community spirit of the people of Stoke. I cannot say which tier, alas, they will go into. It will depend on all the things that I have discussed, and the figures are not easy. The incidence of the virus is still high, and we have to face that grim, grim truth, I am afraid. But the hope is there that, with mass testing—and the people of Stoke can do this if they choose: you can drive down the incidence, you can drive down the R, you can find the asymptomatic positives and you can reduce the virus in your area. If they can reduce the virus in their area, as Liverpool has done, by about two thirds, partly thanks to the participation of the people of Liverpool in mass testing, then they have the prospect of removing those restrictions as well. So “Get a test to kick covid out” is what I would also say to the people of Stoke, in addition to thanking them and my hon. Friend for all their hard work.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Those areas that are placed in tier 3 will be keen to get any help they can receive to get themselves out of that. Can the Prime Minister tell us how many of the reductions in infection can be directly attributed to the mass testing scheme in Liverpool, and what level of population buy-in is needed for that system to be effective?

[The Prime Minister]

That is an incredibly good question. In Liverpool, 37% or more of the population has now been tested, and a lot of asymptomatic positives have been found. I have to stress that it is not the only thing—it can make a big difference, but to be absolutely certain that it is playing a decisive part in getting the R down, we need a bigger proportion of the population to take tests, and we need more community buy-in. That is why we are working with local leaders across the areas that may be going into tier 3 to help them with that and to get mass testing programmes going, not just like in Liverpool but even more ambitious.

External Private Contractors: Government Use and Employment

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing this debate on a really important issue. Outsourcing is a scam, an illusion, a con and an opportunity for jargon-filled management consultants to do a flashy presentation about how they can save a few quid from the bottom line, in the short term, at least. In the long run, the costs are high in lost expertise and lost capacity, and the biggest cost of all is for those long-suffering employees who end up on inferior terms and conditions, if they have a job at all.

Public and private sector companies alike have been seduced by the outsourcing mirage. The savings that are dangled in front of them are not cost-free or painless. In almost every situation, the majority of the savings come directly from the employees, either by paying them less or by having fewer of them. Of course, in theory, employees’ terms and conditions are protected under TUPE, but as an EU regulation it is now at the mercy of the Government, who could decide to water it down or get rid of it at any moment. TUPE does not need watering down; it needs strengthening. There are many ways that employers can evade TUPE protections, both in terms of dismissals and changing terms and conditions after a transfer—if they could not, a major incentive for outsourcing would be removed at a stroke.

Why would anyone want to give up sick pay, overtime rates or other benefits accrued over, say, 20 years of employment just because the name over the door has changed? Is not the loyalty of the employee who has given more than half their life worth more than a factual reference and a redundancy payment that might be able to buy them a second-hand car at the end of the situation? Employers may say that that is not what they want to happen, and that when they outsource employees, they do not want to see anyone suffering, but that is what happens all too often. Every time, that is because the original employer has washed their hands of the situation. They have outsourced their employees, and they have outsourced their legal obligations, but they have not outsourced their moral responsibilities, and they will know, from the moment the transfer takes place, that the clock is ticking.

Insecurity is baked into the workplace, and it is given rocket boosters by the outsourcing industry. It is little wonder that so many people feel a sense of helplessness. It does not have to be this way. Job security should be a basic right in a civilised society, but we see the outsourcing poison spreading everywhere at the moment. Often, the lowest-paid members of society suffer the most, being forced to give up hard-won terms and conditions, with little that can be done to challenge that.

Such are the warped priorities of this Government that that happens at the same time as the obscenity of contractors getting paid £7,000 a day to run the abysmal test and trace system. Never has the contrast been starker, and never has the need for change been greater. Let us use the power of public sector finances to be a force for good, let us keep things in the public sector, let us aim to be an exemplar in pay and conditions, and let us never give the private sector an excuse to justify driving down people’s wages.

Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

What recent progress has been made on negotiations on the UK’s future relationship with the EU in relation to financial services.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

What recent assessment he has made of the progress of the UK’s negotiations with the EU.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)]

This week the ninth round of negotiations with the European Union is taking place. Since the last round of negotiations, as set out in the terms of reference, UK negotiators have continued informal discussions with the Commission in both Brussels and London. Differences, of course, still remain, but we are committed to working hard to reach agreement within the timeframe that the Prime Minister has set out. On financial services, we are still seeking to provide a predictable, transparent and business-friendly environment for firms that undertake cross-border business.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that question, as a former Treasury Minister and a very effective advocate for one of the most successful parts of our economy. The granting of equivalence is an autonomous process within the European Union, but we are confident that the high standards of financial services regulation in this country command confidence not only in the EU but elsewhere. It is also the case that it is in the interests of EU citizens and companies that they have access to the broad and deep capital markets in London and across the United Kingdom.

[Justin Madders]

Vauxhall Motors in my constituency exports the majority of its vehicles to the EU, but at the moment it does not know where it stands on rules of origin, and it does not look like that will be a priority in the next round of negotiations. Is it not time that the Government actually supported the UK automotive sector and made that a big priority in the next round of negotiations?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that question. If I may gently correct him, we do put the interests of the automotive sector front and centre. When it comes to rules of origin, diagonal cumulation or seeking a tariff-free and quota-free deal, that is at the heart of our negotiating approach, and the interests of his constituents are at the heart of the approach that Lord Frost is taking.