Covid-19: Road Map

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and for the telephone call between us earlier today. This is the third time that the Prime Minister has announced a plan to come out of national lockdown. In the past, we have emerged without sufficient caution, without a clear plan and without listening to the science. We cannot afford to make those mistakes again. This has to be the last lockdown. The vaccine roll-out, as the Prime Minister said, has been remarkable, and I pay tribute to everybody involved. It is the light at the end of the tunnel, but if we are going to get there, we have to tread very carefully. I am glad that the Prime Minister spoke today of caution, of this being irreversible, of assessing the data and following the evidence. Those are the right guiding principles—and, I have to say, it is a welcome change from some of the language the Prime Minister used in the past. I urge him now to stick to that.

I turn to the substance of the matter. First, on schools, we all agree that the priority must be for all children to be back in school as quickly as possible and to stay in school. We want that to happen on 8 March, as the Government have promised. The confidence of parents, teachers and school staff will be critical, so will the Prime Minister please confirm that the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser support the full reopening of all schools on 8 March? Will he commit to publishing all the relevant medical evidence on this issue?

Will the Prime Minister also indicate what the Government are doing to overcome the huge logistical challenges this presents? He touched on mass testing in his statement, but there was nothing on Nightingale classrooms and extra capacity, which is a huge problem, particularly for schools with smaller buildings. Will the Prime Minister update the House on how he will deal with that in just over two weeks’ time?

Let me turn to a linked issue. Within weeks of schools returning last autumn, thousands of teachers and school staff were self-isolating, causing huge disruption to the running of schools and children’s learning. We do not want that again. That is why Labour called for the early vaccination of all teachers and school staff. In my own constituency, the fantastic Crick Institute, which has been doing amazing work, has been vaccinating hundreds of people a day. The institute has been very clear to me—and publicly—that it could be doing more, and it is obvious to me that over one weekend it could have vaccinated all teachers and school staff in Camden if it had been allowed to do so, without bumping anyone else from the priority list. There are similar examples across the country. Will the Prime Minister see what more can be done to speed up the vaccination of teachers and school staff to ensure that children and young people not only return to school on 8 March, but stay in school having returned?

Let me turn to isolation support. As we release health measures, however gradually, there is a risk that infection rates will go up; the Prime Minister made that clear in his statement. It is therefore more important than ever that test, trace and isolate is working and working well. One of the most concerning figures in a recent SAGE report is that only three in 10 people who should be self-isolating are actually doing so. It is obvious that one of the main drivers of this is insecurity at work. As the chair of Test and Trace has said, people are “scared” to take the test because they cannot afford to self-isolate. That not only harms our health response, but it costs the economy too—and it has to be fixed. We have proposed that the £500 isolation payment, which is currently only available to one in eight workers, be made available to everyone who needs it. Will the Prime Minister consider that? If we do not shift the three in 10 figure, there will be a huge hole in our defences.

I turn to economic support. The Prime Minister announced a road map today, but it will not have escaped businesses that many of them will not be able to open until mid-April at the earliest, and many not until mid-June. I am not questioning the health basis for that decision, which I support, but I am reiterating what we have always said—that health restrictions must be accompanied by proper economic support. It makes no sense to announce today that businesses will be closed for many more weeks or months without announcing new economic support at the same time. The Prime Minister says, “Well, the Budget will be next week”, but there is nothing stopping him saying today that business rates relief will be extended, that furlough will be extended, or that the VAT cut for hospitality and leisure will be extended. Businesses are crying out for that certainty and the Prime Minister should give it to them today.

The Prime Minister should also announce proper support for the 3 million self-employed who have been left out of all support for the last year. I was asked about this issue again on LBC this morning, by a self-employed business women who is at her wits’ end at the lack of Government support. This road map means that she may not be able to get her business up and running again until mid-June. Surely the Prime Minister needs to act now to close the gap for those 3 million people.

We support the twin principles that the Prime Minister has set out today—that the lifting of restrictions must be both cautious and irreversible. But I know that the Prime Minister will come under pressure from those on his own Benches to go faster and throw caution to the wind. Last week, it was reported that around 60 of his own Members of Parliament called for the end of all restrictions by the end of April, and I am sure that there are going to be similar calls this afternoon. I hope that the Prime Minister takes the opportunity to face this down because if the road map is to work, he needs to listen to the chief scientific adviser and the chief medical officer, not to the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) or the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). If the Prime Minister does, he will have our support and will secure a majority in the House. If he does not, we will waste all the sacrifices of the last 12 months.

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his overall support for the road map. Indeed, I also welcome his support for the vaccine roll-out. I am sure that many people will be glad to hear what he says. I cannot help but remind you, Mr Speaker, that he did vote to stay in the European Medicines Agency, which would have made a vaccine roll-out of this speed impossible.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to say that it is a priority to get schools back safely. I am delighted that he agrees with that. I can certainly say that that plan for all schools to go back on 8 March is supported by the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser. It would be a good thing if he could perhaps persuade some of his friends in the unions to say so as well and to say that schools are safe



The right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned the importance of self-isolation. We will continue to support those who are asked to self-isolate and, indeed, increase our package of support for them. As for the support for business and for the self-employed, which he rightly raised, we will continue to put our arms around businesses and livelihoods around the country, as we have done throughout the pandemic, and the Chancellor, who has been extremely creative in this respect, will be setting out the details in the Budget next week, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman would expect. Overall, I think we can safely say that we have had cautious support from the Leader of the Opposition today, but bitter experience has taught me that his support is very far from irreversible. Who knows what he will be saying next week, but I am glad of it today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed. I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue and, indeed, join him in thanking the NHS staff who are scaling up the surge testing in the way that he describes. I encourage everybody in the area and, indeed, throughout the country to get a vaccine when they are asked to do so.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

May I begin by thanking everybody involved in the vaccine roll-out? We have now vaccinated 12.6 million people and are on course to vaccinate the first four priority groups by the end of this week. That is a truly amazing achievement.

Can the Prime Minister confirm today that the Government will extend business rates relief beyond 31 March?

[The Prime Minister]

I am glad to hear the right hon. and learned Gentleman join in the praise of the vaccine roll-out, which is indeed a tribute to NHS staff, the Army, the volunteers and many, many others.

On the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s point about the extension of business rates relief, he knows that this Government are committed to supporting businesses, people and livelihoods throughout the pandemic. That is what we will continue to do, but he should wait until the Budget for the Chancellor to explain exactly what we are going to do.

[Keir Starmer]

I think that answer was that the Prime Minister cannot give an answer yet, but hundreds of thousands of businesses are affected by this. The trouble is that businesses do not work as slowly as the Prime Minister—they need an answer now. As the British Chambers of Commerce says, businesses

“simply can’t wait until the March Budget.”

Let me try another vitally important question for businesses and for millions of working people. Can the Prime Minister confirm today that the furlough scheme will be extended beyond April?

[The Prime Minister]

I think most people in this country are aware that we are going through a very serious pandemic in which rates of infection have been steadily brought down thanks to the efforts of the British people. I also think that Members of this House are familiar with the notion that in just a few days we will be setting out a road map for the way out of this pandemic—a road map that I hope the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues will support, although their support, as we know, tends to be a transitory thing: one week we have it, the next week we do not. He will not have to contain himself for very long.

[Keir Starmer]

Let me let the Prime Minister into a secret: he can take decisions for himself and he does not need to leave everything to the 11th minute. If I were Prime Minister, I would say to businesses, “We will support you now. We will protect jobs now.” The CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors and the British Chambers of Commerce have all said the same thing: they all say that they cannot wait until the Budget. The Prime Minister may disagree with me, but he is actually disagreeing with businesses. Why does the Prime Minister think he knows better than British business?

[The Prime Minister]

Most businesspeople that I have talked to—I have talked to a great many in the past 12 months—would agree that no Government around the world have done more to support business, wrapping our arms around it. I am delighted to hear this enthusiasm for business from the Labour party, which stood on a manifesto to destroy capitalism at the last election and, indeed, to dismantle the very pharmaceutical industry that has provided the vaccines on which we now rely. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman now repudiate that policy?

[Keir Starmer]

We all know what the Prime Minister once said that he wanted to do to business. We on these Benches would rather listen to businesses.

We have no decision on business rates, no decision on furlough. Let us try another crucial issue. This time there is no excuse for delaying, because this has to be decided before the March Budget and the Prime Minister does not need to check with the Chancellor—will he now commit to extending the evictions ban on residential properties beyond 21 February?

[The Prime Minister]

I have said repeatedly that what we will do in this Government and throughout this pandemic is put our arms around the British people, support them throughout the pandemic and make sure that they are not unfairly evicted during the pandemic. That is what we will do. What I very much hope that we hear from the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that he has had not only a Damascene conversion to the importance of business, but a Damascene conversion to supporting all the Government’s policies that support business, rather than sniping from the sidelines. Why does he not get behind us and back the Government, back us in our efforts to back business and back the British people?

[Keir Starmer]

I am not going to take lectures from a man who not only wrote two versions of every column he ever wrote as a journalist, but proposed Donald Trump for a Nobel peace prize and gave Dominic Cummings a pay rise.

Let us go back to the question. Another area where the Prime Minister has repeatedly delayed and now changes his policy pretty well every day is securing our borders against variants of covid. Every week, the Prime Minister comes here and says, “We have one of the toughest regimes in the world”. We know that his Home Secretary disagrees with him. We know that the Health Secretary disagrees with him. Luckily, Oxford University keeps track of how tough border restrictions are in every country. It says that there are at least 33 countries around the world that currently have tougher restrictions than the United Kingdom—33, Prime Minister—including Canada, Denmark, Japan, Israel and many others. In fact, Oxford University says that we are not even in the top bracket of countries for border restrictions. It is 50 days after we first discovered the South African variant —50 days. How does the Prime Minister explain that?

[The Prime Minister]

There are some countries in Europe that do not even have a hotel quarantine scheme such as the one that we are putting in on Monday. We have among the toughest border regimes anywhere in the world. People should understand that, on a normal day at this time of year, we could expect about 250,000 people to be arriving in this country. We have got it down to about 20,000, 5,000 of whom are involved in bringing vital things into this country, such as medicines and food, as we discussed last week and which the right hon. and learned Gentleman agreed was a good idea. Unless he actually wants to cut this country off from the rest of the world, which, last week, I think he said that he did not want to do—unless of course he has changed his mind again—I think that this policy is measured, it is proportionate, and it is getting tougher from Monday. I hope that he supports it.

[Keir Starmer]

The truth is this: the Prime Minister is failing to give security to British businesses and he is failing to secure our borders. The Prime Minister often complains that we never put forward constructive proposals, so here are two for him: support businesses and protect jobs now by extending furlough, business rates relief and VAT cuts for hospitality; and, secondly, secure our borders with a comprehensive hotel quarantine on arrival. No more delays: will he do it?

[The Prime Minister]

We have just announced the quarantine policy, which, as I have said to the House, is among the toughest in the world and certainly tougher than most other European countries. I am delighted that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is now supporting business—not a policy for which he was famous before—in his latest stunt of bandwagoneering. He has moved from one side of the debate to the other throughout this crisis. Some people have said that this is a “good crisis”. Some people have said that this crisis is

“a gift that keeps on giving”.

Those people sit on the Labour Front Bench. It is disgraceful that they should say those things. This is one of the biggest challenges that this country has faced since the second world war and, thanks to one of the fastest vaccine roll-outs anywhere in the world, it is a challenge that this country can meet and is meeting. I believe that this vaccine roll-out programme is something that this House and this country should be very proud of.

Covid-19 Update

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement. To lose 100,000 people to this virus is nothing short of a national tragedy. It is a stark number: an empty chair at the kitchen table; a person obviously taken before their time. Today, we should remember that, and we should mark the moment by learning the lessons of the last year to make sure that the same mistakes are not made again.

Of course, any Government would have struggled with this pandemic—I get that and the British people get that—but the reality is that Britain is the first country in Europe to suffer 100,000 deaths, and we have one of the highest death rates in the world. The Prime Minister often says that he has been balancing the health restrictions against economic risks, but that simply does not wash, because alongside that high death toll we also have the deepest recession of any major economy and the lowest growth of any major economy, and we are on course to have one of the slowest recoveries of any major economy.

So for all the contrition and sympathy that the Prime Minister expresses, and I recognise how heartfelt that is, the truth is that this was not inevitable—it was not just bad luck. It is the result of a huge number of mistakes by the Prime Minister during the course of this pandemic. We were too slow into lockdown last March, too slow to get protective equipment to the front line and, of course, too slow to protect our care homes—20% of deaths in this pandemic have come from care home residents. I really do not think that the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary understand just how offensive it was to pretend that there was a protective ring around our care homes.

The Government had the chance over the summer to learn from those mistakes in the first wave and prepare for a second wave and a challenging winter. I put that challenge to the Prime Minister in June, but that chance was wasted. The Government then went on to fail to deliver an effective test, trace and isolate system, despite all the warnings. They failed to deliver clear and reliable public messaging, crucial in a pandemic—one minute telling people to go to work, then to do the complete opposite.

The Prime Minister has failed on a number of occasions to follow the scientific advice that the virus was getting out of control. First, in September, when that advice was given, they failed to implement a circuit break or lockdown over half-term as we suggested. Then in December, we had the fiasco over Christmas mixing. Once again, we had the 13-day delay from 22 December, when that further medical advice was given, to when the third national lockdown was finally introduced. As a result, we have seen a third wave more deadly than the first and second waves. Fifty thousand people have died since 11 November. That is 50,000 deaths in 77 days. That is a scarcely believable toll on the British people.

In isolation, any of these mistakes are perhaps understandable. Taken together, it is a damning indictment of how the Government have handled this pandemic. The Prime Minister says, “Well, now is not the time to answer the question why.” That is the answer he gave back in the summer after the first wave. He said the same after the second wave, and he says it again now, each time repeating the mistakes over and over again. That is why now is the time to ask and answer the question why.

The way out of this nightmare has now been provided by our amazing scientists, our NHS, our armed forces and hundreds of thousands of volunteers. The vaccine programme is making incredible progress. The British people have come together to deliver what is the largest peacetime effort in our history. Despite the Prime Minister’s constant complaining, all of us—all of us—are doing whatever we can to help the vaccine roll out as swiftly and as safely as possible.

On schools, first I have to say that even for this Prime Minister it is quite something to open schools one day and close them the next, to call them vectors of transmission and then to challenge me to say that the schools he has closed are safe, only now to give a statement where he says that schools cannot open until 8 March at the earliest because it is not safe to do so. That is his analysis. It is the sort of nonsense that has led us to the highest death toll in Europe and the worst recession.

We of course welcome any steps forward in reopening schools, and we will look at the detail of how the Education Secretary plans to deliver that and the plans to deliver online learning. I also hope that the Prime Minister will take seriously our proposal—echoed, incidentally, by the Children’s Commissioner and the Conservative Chair of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon)—that once the first four categories of the most vulnerable have been vaccinated by mid-February, he should bring forward the vaccination of key workers and use that window of the February half-term to vaccinate all school staff, including every teacher and teaching assistant. There is a clear week there when that could be done, and it should be done.

On borders, we will look at the detail—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s comments are coming to an end; he is well past the five minutes allocated.

[Keir Starmer]

On borders, we will look at the Prime Minister’s statement in detail, and obviously hear what the Home Secretary has to say, but in due course there will be a public inquiry. The Prime Minister will have to answer the question. I hope that he can finally answer this very simple and direct question, because yesterday he was maintaining that the Government had done

“everything we could to save lives.”

Is he really saying to those grieving families that their loss was just inevitable and that none of the 100,000 deaths could have been avoided?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asks about mistakes, and I have said that there will be a time to reflect, to analyse, to learn lessons and to prepare. However, I say to him that I think the biggest mistake he has made is in seeking continually to attack what the Government have been trying to do at every opportunity, supporting one week and then attacking the very same policy the next week. He complains about confusion of messages. How much has he actually done, as Leader of the Opposition, to reassure the public, for example, about NHS Test and Trace, which has done a very good job, I notice, of confining him for the third time? What has he done to reassure people about messaging, rather than attacking, causing confusion and trying to sow doubt about what the Government are doing? There was a very different path open to him at the beginning of this pandemic and it is a great pity he has not taken it.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows perfectly well that the problem is not that schools are unsafe. They are not unsafe. Schools are safe—he should say it, and his union paymasters should hear him say it loud and clear. The problem is that schools bring communities together, obviously, and large numbers of kids are a considerable vector of transmission. It is not that there is any particular extra risk to those involved in education.

I heard with interest what the right hon. and learned Gentleman had to say about his proposal for changing the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation priority list, and I really think he should reflect on what he is saying. The JCVI priority list, one to nine, is designed by experts and clinicians to prioritise those groups who are most likely to die or suffer from coronavirus. By trying to change that, and saying that he now wants to bring in other groups of public sector workers, to be decided by politicians, rather than the JCVI, he has to explain which vaccines he would take from which vulnerable groups, to make sense of his policy. That is what he is doing and that is what the Labour proposal would involve.

Indeed, by making it more difficult for us to vaccinate all those vulnerable groups in the fastest possible way, that Labour policy would delay our route out of lockdown and delay our ability to get kids back into school in the way they want. I urge the right hon. and learned Gentleman to think again, or at least to explain which members of those vulnerable groups would be deprived of vaccines in order to follow the Labour policy.

All I can say, having listened carefully to what the right hon. and learned Gentleman had to say, is that everybody will have to answer questions at the end of this and—let me put it this way—all politicians will be asked what they did, and what we did collaboratively, working together for the people of our country, to beat this virus. I am not sure that, on reflection, his choice was the right one for either his party or the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed. I can confirm that eligible pupils in Leeds will continue to receive free school meal support over the February half-term. This Conservative Government have given over £2 million to Leeds City Council through the covid winter grant scheme to support vulnerable families in the coldest months, and it is the intention of this Government, on this side of the House, that no child should go hungry this winter as a result of the covid pandemic.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

May I also welcome the inauguration of President Biden and Vice-President Harris? This is a victory for hope over hate, and a real moment for optimism in the US and around the world. I also thank all those on the frontline helping to deliver the vaccine, including the NHS, who are doing so much to keep us safe under the most extraordinary pressure.

It is 10 days since the Home Office mistakenly deleted hundreds of thousands of vital criminal records, including fingerprints, crime scene data and DNA records, so can the Prime Minister tell the House how many criminal investigations could have been damaged by this mistake?

[The Prime Minister]

The Home Office is actively working to assess the damage. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman will know from the urgent question that was held in the House only a few days ago, it believes that it will be able to rectify the results of this complex incident, and it hopes very much that it will be able to restore the data in question.

[Keir Starmer]

That is not an answer to my question, and it was the most basic of questions. It was the first question that any Prime Minister would have asked of those briefing him: how many criminal investigations have been damaged? So let me ask the second basic question that any Prime Minister would have asked of those briefing him. How many convicted criminals have had their records wrongly deleted?

[The Prime Minister]

I answered the first question entirely accurately. We do not know how many cases might be frustrated as a result of what has happened, but I can tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman that 213,000 offence records, 175,000 arrest records and 15,000 person records are currently being investigated because they are the subject of this problem.

[Keir Starmer]

I have a letter here from the National Police Chiefs Council. It makes it clear that 403,000 records on the police national computer may have been deleted. In addition to that—[Interruption.] Prime Minister, this is from the National Police Chiefs Council. I am sure he has been briefed on this. In addition to that, we are talking about 26,000 DNA records from the DNA database and 30,000 fingerprint records from the fingerprint database, so this is not just a technical issue. It is about criminals not being caught, and victims not getting justice. This letter makes it clear that data from criminals convicted of serious offences is included. This has impacted live police investigations already, and it includes records, including DNA, marked for indefinite retention following conviction for serious offences—the most serious offences; that is why it is marked for indefinite retention. It has been deleted.

Is the Prime Minister seriously telling us that 10 days after the incident came to light, he still has not got to the bottom of the basic questions, and cannot tell us how many cases have been lost, how many serious offenders this concerns, and how many police investigations have been investigated?

[The Prime Minister]

It is becoming a feature of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s questions that he fails to listen to the answer I have just given. Let me repeat this, because I think he gave a figure of 413,000. I have just done some maths briefly in my head, and if you add 213,000 to 175,000, plus 15,000, you get to 403,000. If only he had bothered to do that swift computation in his head he would have had the answer before he stood up and claimed not to have received it. It was there in the previous answer.

Of course it is outrageous that any data should have been lost, but as I said in my first answer, which I hope the right hon. and learned Gentleman heard, we are trying to retrieve that data.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister complains about not listening to answers, but the figure I quoted was 403,000—that will be in Hansard. [Interruption.] I said 403,000, plus 26,000, plus 30,000.

Prime Minister, let me try the next most simple question that you would have asked of anyone briefing you. How long will it take for all the wrongly deleted records to be reinstated to the police database?

[The Prime Minister]

That will depend on how long it takes to recover them. I can tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman that people are working around the clock, having been briefed on this both by my staff and by the Minister for Crime and Policing. We are working around the clock on this issue. Any loss of data is, of course, unacceptable, but thanks to the robust, strong economy that we have had for the past few years, this Government have been able to invest massively in policing to drive crime down, and that is the most important thing of all. I have no doubt that we will be able to continue to do that by relying on excellent data.

[Keir Starmer]

This morning, the Home Secretary said that the Home Office is still washing through the data. She said it does not know where the records are and, if you can believe it, they may have to be “manually re-entered”, which will obviously take a long, long time. The letter from the National Police Chiefs’ Council also makes it clear that the obvious places to reinstate from—the DNA and fingerprint databases—have themselves been compromised, so the Prime Minister’s answers need to be seen in that light.

Let me turn to another of the Home Secretary’s responsibilities. Last night she told a Conservative party event, and these are her words:

“On ‘should we have closed our borders earlier?’, the answer is yes, I was an advocate of closing them last March.”

Why did the Prime Minister overrule the Home Secretary?

[The Prime Minister]

I think, last March, the right hon. and learned Gentleman, along with many others, was actually saying that we did not need to close the borders, but as usual, Captain Hindsight has changed his tune to suit events.

It is interesting that his first few questions were about a computer glitch in the Home Office, which we are trying to rectify as we are in the middle of a national pandemic. This country is facing a very grave death toll, and we are doing everything we can to protect the British public, as I think he would expect. That is why we have instituted one of the toughest border regimes in the world. That is why we insist that people get a test 72 hours before they fly. They have to provide a passenger locator form, and they have to quarantine for 10 days, or five days if they take a second test.

I am delighted that the right hon. and learned Gentleman now praises the Home Secretary, which is a change of tune, and I am delighted that he is now in favour of tough border controls, because last year he was not. Indeed, he campaigned for the leadership of the Labour party on a manifesto promise to get back to free movement.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister talks of hindsight. What the Home Secretary said last night is not disputed. It is not disputed—this is not hindsight—that she said last March that you need to shut the borders. She was saying it, so I repeat the question that the Prime Minister avoided. Why did he overrule the Home Secretary, who claims that she said last March that we should shut our borders?

Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 13th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is clearly a problem of differential learning that has grown over the last few months and risks being exacerbated now by the current lockdown. We will do everything we can to ensure that exams are fair and that the ways of testing are set out in a timely way, and the Department for Education is launching a consultation with Ofqual to ensure that we get the right arrangements for this year.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Can I join in the condolences expressed by the Prime Minister, I am sure on behalf of the whole of the House?

Could I begin by paying tribute to all those involved in the vaccine programme? I went to the Newham vaccine hub last week, and it was really uplifting to see the NHS, the Red Cross and lots of volunteers all working together and giving real hope. They had a simple message to me, which was if they had more vaccine, they could and they would do more, and I am sure that is shared across the country.

I welcome news that has come out this morning about a pilot of 24/7 vaccine centres. I anticipate there is going to be huge clamour for this, so can the Prime Minister tell us: when will the 24/7 vaccine centres be open to the public, because I understand they are not at the moment, and when will they be rolled out across the country?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for what he says about the roll-out of vaccines. I can tell him that we will be going to 24/7 as soon as we can, and my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary will be setting out more about that in due course. As he rightly says, at the moment the limit is on supply. We have a huge network—233 hospitals, 1,000 GP surgeries, 200 pharmacies and 50 mass vaccination centres—and they are going, as he has seen himself, exceptionally fast, and I pay tribute to their work. It is thanks to the work of the NHS and to the vaccine taskforce that we have secured more doses, I think, per capita than virtually any other country in the world—certainly more than any other country in Europe.

[Keir Starmer]

I obviously welcome that, and urge the Prime Minister and the Government to get on with this. We are all happy to help, and there are many volunteers who are. The sooner we have 24/7 vaccine centres, the better for our NHS and the better for our economy.

The last PMQs was on 16 December. The Prime Minister told us then that we were seeing, in his words,

“significant reductions in the virus.”—[Official Report, 16 December 2020; Vol. 686, c. 265.]

He told us then that there was no need for “endless lockdowns” and no need to change the rules about Christmas mixing. Since that last PMQs, 17,000 people have died of covid, 60,000 people have been admitted to hospital, and there have been more than 1 million new cases. How did the Prime Minister get it so wrong, and why was he so slow to act?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course, what the right hon. and learned Gentleman fails to point out is that on 18 December, two days later, the Government were informed about the spread of the new variant, and the fact that it spreads roughly 50% to 70% faster than the old variant. That is why it is correct to say that the situation today is very troubling indeed: we have 32,000 covid patients in hospital, and the NHS is under huge strain.

I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all the staff, doctors, nurses, and everybody working in our NHS. They are doing an extraordinary job under the most challenging possible circumstances to help those who so desperately need it. I thank them for what they are doing. At the same time, I also wish to thank all those involved in what is the biggest vaccination programme in the history of this country. Once again, the NHS is in the lead, working with the Army and the legion of volunteers and everybody else. That programme of vaccines shows the way forward, and shows how we will come through this pandemic. I repeat my gratitude to all those involved, because they have now vaccinated 2.4 million people and delivered 2.8 million doses, which is more than any other country in Europe. This is the toughest of times, but we can see the way forward.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister says that effectively two days after that PMQs the advice changed, but the truth is that the indicators were all in the wrong direction at that last PMQs. Be that as it may, the Prime Minister says that he got that advice on 18 December, two days after PMQs, and we have all seen the SAGE minutes of 22 December, confirming the advice that was given to the Government. The Government’s advisers warned the Prime Minister that the new variant was spreading fast, and that it was highly unlikely that November-style lockdowns would be sufficient to control it. That was pretty clear advice on 18 December to the Prime Minister from SAGE: a tougher lockdown than in November is going to be needed. I have the minutes here; everybody has seen them. Yet instead of acting on 18 December, the Prime Minister sat on his hands for over two weeks, and we are now seeing in the daily figures the tragic consequences of that delay. How does the Prime Minister justify delaying for 17 days after he got that advice on 18 December?

[The Prime Minister]

I must disagree very profoundly with what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has just said. He knows very well that within 24 hours of getting the advice on 18 December about the spread of the new variant, we acted to put the vast part of the country into much, much tougher measures. Indeed, we are now seeing—it is important to stress that these are early days—the beginnings of some signs that that is starting to have an effect in many parts of the country, but by no means everywhere. It is early days, and people must keep their discipline, keep enforcing the rules, and work together, as I have said, to roll out that vaccine programme. I recall that on the day that we went into a national lockdown and, sadly, were obliged to shut the schools—even on that day—the Labour party was advocating keeping schools open. That was for understandable reasons—we all want to keep schools open—but I think it a bit much to be attacked for taking tougher measures to put this country into the protective measures it needed, when the Labour party was then calling to keep schools open.

[Keir Starmer]

Just for the record, I wrote to the Prime Minister on 22 December—I had not seen the SAGE advice at that stage—saying to him that if the advice indicated that there should be a national lockdown, he should do it immediately and he would have our full support. I will put that in the public domain so that people can check the record.

More fundamentally, the Prime Minister says, “We took measures straightaway; we put people into different tiers.” The advice was that a November-style lockdown was not enough. How on earth was putting people into a different tier system an answer to the advice that was given? Is not the situation that every time there is a big decision to take, the Prime Minister gets there late?

The next big decision is obvious. The current restrictions are not strong enough to control the virus; stronger restrictions are needed. There is no point Government Members shaking their heads; in a week or two, the Prime Minister is likely to be asking Members to vote for this. Can the Prime Minister tell us, when infection rates are much higher than last March, when hospital admissions are much higher than last March, when death rates are much higher than last March, why on earth are restrictions weaker than last March?

[The Prime Minister]

We keep things under constant review and we will continue to do so, and certainly, if there is any need to toughen up restrictions, which I do not rule out, we will of course come to this House. But perhaps, as is so often the case, the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not listen to my earlier answer, because I pointed out to the House that actually, the lockdown measures that we have in place, combined with the tier 4 measures that we were using, are starting to show signs of having some effect. We must take account of that too, because nobody can doubt the serious damage that is done by lockdowns to people’s mental health, jobs and livelihoods.

To listen to the right hon. and learned Gentleman over the last 12 months, you would think he had absolutely no other policy except to plunge this country into 12 months of lockdown. As for coming too late to things, it was only a few weeks ago that he was attacking the vaccine taskforce, which has secured the very doses—the millions of doses—that have put this country into the comparatively favourable position that we now find ourselves in.

[Keir Starmer]

That is just not true. Every time I have spoken about the vaccine, I have supported it. The Prime Minister says we are balancing health restrictions and the economy, yet we ended 2020 with the highest death toll in Europe and the deepest recession in any major economy, so that just is not a good enough answer.

I want to turn to the latest free school meals scandal. We have all seen images on social media of disgraceful food parcels for children, costed at about £5 each. That is not what the Government promised. It is nowhere near enough. Would the Prime Minister be happy with his kids living on that? If not, why is he happy for other people’s kids to do so?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think anybody in this House is happy with the disgraceful images that we have seen of the food parcels that have been offered. They are appalling; they are an insult to the families who have received them. I am grateful, by the way, to Marcus Rashford, who highlighted the issue and is doing quite an effective job, by comparison with the right hon. and learned Gentleman, of holding the Government to account for these issues. The company in question has rightly apologised and agreed to reimburse.

It is because we want to see our kids properly fed throughout this very difficult pandemic that we have massively increased the value of what we are providing—another £170 million in the covid winter grant scheme, £220 million more for the holiday activities and food programme, and we are now rolling out the national free school meal voucher scheme, as we did in March, to give parents the choice to give kids the food that they need. This Government will do everything we can to ensure that no child goes hungry as a result of the privations caused by this pandemic.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister says that the parcels are “disgraceful”, but it should not have taken social media to shame the Prime Minister into action. Like the Education Secretary, he blames others, and he invites me to hold him to account, so let me do that because blaming others, Prime Minister, is not as simple as that, is it?

I have checked the Government guidance on free school meals—the current guidance, published by the Department for Education. I have it here. It sets out an

“Example parcel for one child for five days”—

the Department for Education, Prime Minister; you want to be held to account—

“1 loaf of bread…2 baking potatoes…block of cheese…baked beans…3 individual”

yoghurts. Sound familiar? They are the images, Prime Minister, you just called “disgraceful”. The only difference I can see with this list and what the Prime Minister has described as “disgraceful” is a tin of sweetcorn, a packet of ham and a bottle of milk. He blames others, but this is on his watch. The truth is, families come last under this Government, whether it is exams, free school meals or childcare. Will the Prime Minister undertake—he wants to be held to account—to take down this guidance by the close of play today and ensure that all our children can get a decent meal during the pandemic?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman’s words would be less hypocritical and absurd if it were not for the fact that the—

Covid-19

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement and for his telephone call on Monday to update me. Can I also thank him for his kind words about the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens)? She is still in hospital, but I am happy to say that she is now improving. I also want to thank everybody in our NHS and on the frontline for all the work they are doing at the moment in the most stressful of circumstances.

The situation we face is clearly very serious, perhaps the darkest moment of the pandemic. The virus is out of control, over 1 million people in England now have covid, the number of hospital admissions is rising and, tragically, so are the numbers of people dying. It is only the early days of January, and the NHS is under huge strain. In those circumstances, tougher restrictions are necessary. We will support them, we will vote for them and we urge everybody to comply with the new rules: stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives.

But this is not just bad luck and it is not inevitable; it follows a pattern. In the first wave of the pandemic, the Government were repeatedly too slow to act, and we ended 2020 with one of the highest death tolls in Europe and the worst hit economy of major economies. In the early summer, a Government report called “Preparing for a challenging winter” warned of the risk of a second wave, of the virus mutating and of the NHS being overwhelmed. It set out the preparations the Government needed to take, and I put that report to the Prime Minister at PMQs in July. Throughout the autumn, track and trace did not work. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advised a circuit break in September, but the Prime Minister delayed for weeks before acting. We had a tiered system that did not work, and then we had the debacle of the delayed decision to change the rules on mixing at Christmas. The most recent advice about the situation we are now in was given on 22 December, but no action was taken for two weeks until Monday of this week.

These are the decisions that have led us to the position we are now in. The vaccine is now the only way out, and we must all support the national effort to get it rolled out as quickly as possible. We will do whatever we can to support the Government on this. We were the first country to get the vaccine. Let us be the first country to roll out that vaccine programme. But we need a plan to work to. The Prime Minister has given some indication in the last few days, but can he tell the House exactly what the plan is? Can the NHS deliver 2 million vaccines a week? I think it can and I hope it can, but does it have the resources and support to do so? We will support that, of course. Will there be sufficient doses available week on week to get us to the 14 million doses by mid-February? What can we do to help? It is vital that that happens. I am glad to hear that high street pharmacies will be helping. Can we use volunteers in support of this national effort?

Let me turn to financial support. Yesterday’s announcement will help, but the British Chambers of Commerce and others have already warned that it is not enough. There are big gaps and big questions. First, why is there still nothing to help the 3 million self-employed who have been excluded from the very start? That was unfair in March of last year and it was even more unfair in the autumn. It is totally unforgivable now. It may well be a whole year that that group will have gone without any meaningful support. That gap needs to be plugged.

Secondly, will the Prime Minister drop his plan to cut universal credit by £20 a week? That needs to be done now, and we will support it. Will he immediately extend the eviction ban? That is due to run out just in five days’ time now, just as we are going into this new phase. Thirdly, will he address the obvious issues with financial support for those required to isolate, including statutory sick pay and support for local councils? Will the Prime Minister finally recognise that now is the worst possible time to freeze pay for our key workers?

We all recognise the huge damage that closing schools will cause for many children and families, but Prime Minister knew that closures might be necessary, so there should have been a contingency plan. Up to 1.8 million children do not have access to a home computer and 900,000 children live in households that rely on mobile internet connections. Can the Prime Minister tell us when the Government are going to get the laptops to those who need them? He has spoken about the 50,000 delivered and the 100,000 more, but 1.8 million children do not have access to a home computer, so real urgency is needed as we go into the coming weeks. I welcome what the Prime Minister said about telecoms companies cutting the cost of online learning. It is vital that they do so. I am assuming that will happen straightaway, because we cannot delay.

Will the Prime Minister be straight about what will happen with exams this year? We cannot leave this until months down the line. That is a pressing question, in particular for those who are due to take BTEC exams in the next few days. Surely they must just be cancelled? Some leadership on this is desperately needed.

Next is our borders. The Prime Minister knows there is real concern about the rapid transmission of this disease. New strains are being detected in South Africa, Denmark and elsewhere. The quarantine system is not working. The Prime Minister said yesterday that we will be bringing in extra measures at the border. I have to ask why those measures have not already been introduced. They have been briefed to the media for days, but nothing has happened.

This is the third time the country has been asked to close its doors; we need to make sure it is the last. We will support the Prime Minister and the Government in these measures. We will carry the message and do whatever is asked of us, but we will demand that the Prime Minister keeps his side of the bargain and uses this latest lockdown to support families, protect businesses and get the vaccine rolled out as quickly and safely as possible.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who made some sensible points, in addition to some slightly party political ones. On the political points, it is worth remembering that the waves of coronavirus we have seen across western Europe in the last few weeks we are also seeing here, with the additional pressure of the new variant of the virus. Most people understand that.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked about support for the self-employed. We have already given, I think, £13.7 billion to help the self-employed in particular, as part of a massive package of support for jobs and livelihoods across the whole of the UK totalling £260 billion. We will continue to support families through universal credit; as he knows, there has been an uplift of £1,000 at least until April. The eviction ban is under review. There has been an above-inflation pay increase for public sector workers; in particular, nurses have had a 12.8% increase over the last few years.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked about laptops and devices, and quoted a figure of 50,000. In fact, 560,000 have gone to schools. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education will make a statement later about what we will do to support teachers and pupils. I repeat my immense thanks to them and to families who are now working so hard in unexpected circumstances to teach kids at home. I also thank the mobile companies and the BBC for what they are doing to assist. The House will hear more later about the BTEC exams. Obviously, we must be fair to those who are taking BTECs, and we appreciate the hard work they have done.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman asked a good question about borders. It is vital that we protect our borders and protect this country from the readmission of the virus from overseas. That is why we took tough action in respect of South Africa when the new variant became apparent there and we will continue to take whatever action is necessary to protect this country from the readmission of the virus.

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for supporting the vaccination programme. I must say that I do remember the derision with which he attacked the vaccine taskforce and that efforts that it went to to secure huge supplies.

[Keir Starmer]

indicated dissent.

[The Prime Minister]

I remember it well: it was at Prime Minister’s questions, Mr Speaker. It would be a good thing if the he could continue to keep up that spirit. Let me point out that not only did this country devise the first effective treatment of covid, secure the first stage 3 approval of a vaccine, and become the first to produce a vaccine that could be used at fridge temperature to great value to humanity across the world, but, Mr Speaker, as I stand before you today, it has vaccinated more people than the rest of Europe combined. It would be good to hear that from the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. On his questions about the self-employed, we have supplied, as I said to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), £13.7 billion already. We will continue to support people in any way that we can with a multitude of grants and loans already totalling, I think, about £260 billion, as I have said. The Barnett consequentials for Scotland from the new money will of course be passed on. As I said just now, we will make sure that we protect our borders from the readmission of the virus. He has seen what we did already in the case of the South African strain, and we will bring forward further measures to stop the readmission of the virus.

But I have to say that the general tenor of the right hon. Gentleman’s questions seemed to ignore the fact that, I am delighted to say, the whole of the UK has benefited massively from the natural strength of the UK economy and the ability of the UK Treasury to make these commitments, and the mere fact that Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and every part of the United Kingdom has received the vaccine is entirely thanks to our national NHS.

[Keir Starmer]

indicated assent.

[The Prime Minister]

I make common ground with the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras: it is thanks to our United Kingdom NHS, and thanks to the strength of UK companies, that we are able to distribute a life-saving vaccine across the whole of our country. I think that is a point that the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) might bear in mind.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Keir Starmer Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

It is often said that there is nothing simple about Brexit, but the choice before the House today is perfectly simple: do we implement the treaty that has been agreed with the EU or do we not? That is the choice. If we choose not to, the outcome is clear: we leave the transition period without a deal—without a deal on security, trade or fisheries, without protection for our manufacturing sector, farming or countless British businesses, and without a foothold to build a future relationship with the EU. Anyone choosing that option today knows there is no time to renegotiate, no better deal coming in the next 24 hours, no extensions, no Humble Addresses and no SO 24s—Standing Order No. 24 debates—so choosing that option leads to one place: no deal.

Or we can take the only other option that is available and implement the treaty that has been negotiated. This is a thin deal. It has many flaws—I will come to that in a moment.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Keir Starmer]

I will in just a minute.

But a thin deal is better than no deal, and not implementing this deal would mean immediate tariffs and quotas with the EU, which will push up prices and drive businesses to the wall. It will mean huge gaps in security, a free-for-all on workers’ rights and environmental protections, and less stability for the Northern Ireland protocol. Leaving without a deal would also show that the UK is not capable of agreeing the legal basis for our future relationship with our EU friends and partners. That matters, because I want Britain to be an outward-looking, optimistic and rules-based country—one that does deals, signs treaties and abides by them.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Keir Starmer]

I will in just one moment.

It matters that Britain has negotiated a treaty with the EU Commission and the 27 member states; and it matters, ultimately, that the UK has not gone down the blind alley of no deal. It means that our future relationship starts on the basis of agreement, not acrimony.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for setting out the position of the Labour party, but he used to have six tests for any Brexit deal that he would be willing to support. How many of those tests does he believe the agreement actually meets?

[Keir Starmer]

There is only one choice today, which is to vote for implementing this deal or to vote for no deal, and those who vote no are voting for no deal. I will give way again to the hon. Gentleman. If he is voting no, does he want no to succeed at 2.30 this afternoon when the House divides?

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am afraid the leader of the Labour party has accepted the spin of the Government that this is a binary choice between deal and no deal. It says a lot about the way his position has changed over recent weeks.

[Keir Starmer]

This is the nub of it. Those voting no today want yes. They want others to save them from their own vote. Voting no, wanting yes. That is the truth of the situation, and that is why my party has taken a different path.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman on doing the patriotic and right thing today, but there is quite a lot of interest in the country in what deal he would have negotiated if he had been responsible for the negotiations.

[Keir Starmer]

A better one than this, for the reasons that I am about to lay out. [Interruption.] I will go into some of the detail—not too much—but if anyone believes what the Prime Minister has just said about financial services, they have not read the deal. With no further time for negotiation, when the default is no deal, it is not a mark of how pro-European you are to reject implementing this treaty. It is not in the national interest to duck a question or to hide in the knowledge that others will save you from the consequences of your own vote. This is a simple vote, with a simple choice—do we leave the transition period with a treaty that has been negotiated with the EU, or do we leave with no deal? So Labour will vote to implement this treaty today to avoid no deal and to put in place a floor from which we can build a strong future relationship with the EU.

[David Linden]

I am grateful to the Leader of the Opposition for outlining how clear this is for him. His party has two parliamentarians in Edinburgh South—one in the Scottish Parliament and one in Westminster. At 4 o’clock this afternoon, the Member of the Scottish Parliament will vote against the deal and the Member of the Westminster Parliament here will vote for the deal. How does he square that circle?

[Keir Starmer]

The hon. Gentleman knows very well that it is a different vote. [Interruption.] It is a completely different vote, on a different issue.

[David Linden]

rose—

[Keir Starmer]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman with my question. When he votes no, against this treaty, this afternoon, does he want the Bill to fail and thus we leave tomorrow night without a deal? Is that the intention? Does he want the result to go the way he is voting?

[David Linden]

I think the right hon. Gentleman will understand that there will be members of his own party in the Lobby with me this afternoon. If he can point out to me in the Order Paper where I am voting for no deal, I will be very happy. Will he tell me what page that is on?

[Keir Starmer]

That absolutely identifies the point. He is going to vote in the hope that others will vote the other way and save him from the consequences of his own vote. That is the truth of the situation of the SNP. He is hoping that others will do the right thing and vote in favour of implementing the treaty. We fought against no deal together for months and years, and now those voting no are going to vote for no deal. Nothing is going to happen in the next 24 hours to save this country from no deal. So he wants to vote for something, but he does not want that vote to succeed; he wants others to have the burden of voting for it to save us from no deal.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

rose—

[Keir Starmer]

I will give way in a minute. I am going to make some progress.

It is, of course, completely unacceptable that this debate is happening now—one day before the end of the transition period. The Prime Minister said he had a deal that was oven-ready.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Keir Starmer]

That was about a year ago. Then it was supposed to be ready in July, then September, then November and finally it arrived on Christmas eve. That matters, because businesses have had no chance to prepare for the new regulations. Talk to businesses about their concerns. They have real difficulties now. Many of them have already taken decisions about jobs and investment because of the uncertainty, and of course that is made worse by the pandemic.

Let me now go to the deal itself and analyse some of the flaws in it. Let us start with the Prime Minister and what he said on Christmas eve in his press conference. He said:

“there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade.”

His words. He was not being straight with the British public. That is plain wrong. It is worse than that. It was not an aside, or an interview or an off-the-record remark. It was a scripted speech. He said that there would be no non-tariff barriers to trade. The Prime Minister knows that it is not true. Every Member of this House knows it is not true. I will give way to the Prime Minister to correct the record. Either stand up and say that what he said was true, or take this opportunity to correct the record. I give way.

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows perfectly well that this is a zero tariff, zero quota deal. He says that he would have negotiated a different and better deal. Perhaps he can tell us whether he would have remained within the customs union and within the single market. Perhaps he will also say a little bit about how he proposes to renegotiate the deal, build on it and take the UK back into the EU, because that remains his agenda.

[Mr Speaker]

Let us get on with the debate.

[Keir Starmer]

Typical deflection. The Prime Minister, at a press conference, told the British public that there will be

“no non-tariff barriers to trade”.

The answer he gave just now is not an answer to that point. It is not true, and the Prime Minister knows what he said was not true. He simply will not stand up and acknowledge it today. That speaks volumes about the sort of Prime Minister we have.

[Adam Holloway]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Keir Starmer]

I will in just a minute. The truth is this: there will be an avalanche of checks, bureaucracy and red tape for British businesses. Every business I have spoken to knows this; every business any Member has spoken to knows this. That is what they are talking about. It is there in black and white in the treaty.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the Opposition give way?

[Keir Starmer]

I will in one minute. There will be checks for farmers, for our manufacturers, for customs, on rules of origin, VAT, safety and security, plant and animal health, and much more. Many British exporters will have to go through two regulatory processes to sell to existing clients in the EU. To keep tariff-free trade, businesses will have to prove that enough of their parts come from the EU or the UK. So there will be significant and permanent burdens on British businesses. It is somewhat ironic that for years the Conservative party has railed against EU bureaucracy, but this treaty imposes far more red tape on British businesses than there is at the moment.

[Mr Dhesi]

The lead-up to this Brexit deal has seen a litany of broken promises. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and said that there was

“no threat to the Erasmus scheme”.—[Official Report, 15 January 2020; Vol. 669, c. 1021.]

Among other things, he made grand statements about taking back full control of our fishing waters. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, despite all the promises, it is not only British fishermen who are accusing the Prime Minister of betrayal and of having caved in to arrive at this insufficient deal?

[Keir Starmer]

These are examples of the Prime Minister making promises that he does not keep. That is the hallmark of this Prime Minister.

[Adam Holloway]

Can the Leader of the Opposition not in some way join the millions of people in this country, including many millions of patriotic Labour voters, on the remarkable achievement of the Prime Minister?

--- Later in debate ---

[Keir Starmer]

I am glad that there is a deal and I will vote for the Bill to implement it, because a deal is far better than no deal. That is the right thing to do. But to pretend that the deal is not what it is is not being honest, and nor is it a base from which we can go forward. To pretend that there are no non-tariff barriers when there are is just not true. The Prime Minister will not just get up and say, “I got it wrong. I didn’t tell the truth when I was addressing the public.” [Interruption.] The Prime Minister says I do not know what I am talking about. His words were that there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade. Will there be no non-tariff barriers to trade, Prime Minister? Yes or no? The ox is now on his tongue, I see.

Whatever the Prime Minister says, there is very little protection for our services. That is a gaping hole in this deal. Ours is primarily a services economy. Services account for 80% of our economic output, and we have a trade surplus with the EU in services, but what we have in this text does not go beyond what was agreed with Canada or Japan. The lack of ambition is striking, and the result is no mutual recognition of professional qualifications. Talk to doctors, nurses, dentists, accountants, pharmacists, vets, engineers and architects about how they will practise now in other EU states, where they will have to have their qualifications agreed with each state separately with different terms and conditions. Anybody who thinks that that is an improvement really does need to look again at the deal.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Keir Starmer]

In just one minute.

The deal will make it harder to sell services into the EU and will create a huge disincentive for businesses to invest.

The very thin agreement on short business travel will make things much harder for artists and musicians, for example. Prime Minister, they want to hear what the answers to these questions are, not just comments from the Front Bench.

On financial services, even the Prime Minister himself has accepted—I do not know whether he will stick to this, or if it is one that he will not own now—that the deal does not go as far as we would have liked, so pretending that it is a brilliant deal just is not on. We have to rely on the bare bones of equivalence arrangements, many of which are not even in place, that could be unilaterally withdrawn at short notice. That is the reality of the situation. We are left to wonder: either the Prime Minister did not try to get a strong deal to protect our service economy, or he tried and failed. Which is it?

Let me turn to security. The treaty offers important protections when compared with the utter chaos of no deal, such as on DNA and fingerprints. There are third-party arrangements to continue working with Europol and Eurojust. I worked with Europol and Eurojust, so I know how important that is, but the treaty does not provide what was promised: a security partnership of unprecedented breadth and depth. It does not, and anybody today who thinks that it does has not read the deal. We will no longer have access to EU databases that allow for the sharing of real-time data, such as the Schengen information system for missing persons and objects. Anybody who thinks that that is not important needs to bear in mind that it is used on a daily basis. In 2019, it was accessed and consulted 600 million times by the UK police—600 million times. That is how vital it is to them. That is a massive gap in the deal, and the Prime Minister needs to explain how it will be plugged.

Let me turn to tariffs and quotas. The Prime Minister has made much of the deal delivering zero tariffs and zero quotas. It does—

[The Prime Minister]

Aha!

[Keir Starmer]

Thank you, Prime Minister. It does, or rather it does for as long as British businesses meet the rules of origin requirements. It does as long as the UK does not step away from a level playing field on workers’ rights and environment—

[The Prime Minister]

Rubbish!

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister says rubbish—[Interruption.] I have read it. I have studied it. I have been looking at nothing else than this for four years. The Prime Minister pretends that he has got sovereignty, and zero tariffs and zero quotas. He has not: the moment he exercises the sovereignty to depart from the level playing field, the tariffs kick in. This is not a negotiating triumph. It sets out the fundamental dilemma that has always been at the heart—

[The Prime Minister]

Well, vote against it then!

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister says vote against it—vote for no deal. As my wife says to our children, “If you haven’t got anything sensible to say, it’s probably better to say nothing.”

The situation sets out the fundamental dilemma that has always been at the heart of the negotiations. If we stick to the level playing field, there are no tariffs and quotas, but if we do not, British businesses, British workers and British consumers will bear the cost. The Prime Minister has not escaped that dilemma; he has negotiated a treaty that bakes it in. This poses the central question for future Governments and Parliaments: do we build up from this agreement to ensure that the UK has high standards and that our businesses are able to trade as freely as possible in the EU market with minimal disruption; or do we choose to lower standards and slash protections, and in that way put up more barriers for our businesses to trade with our nearest and most important partners?

For Labour, this is clear: we believe in high standards. We see this treaty as a basis to build from, and we want to retain a close economic relationship with the EU that protects jobs and rights, because that is where our national interest lies today and tomorrow. However, I fear that the Prime Minister will take the other route, because he has used up so much time and negotiating capital in doing so. He has put the right to step away from common standards at the heart of the negotiation, so I assume that he wants to make use of that right as soon as possible. If he does, he has to be honest with the British people about the costs and consequences of that choice for businesses, jobs and our economy. If he does not want to exercise that right, he has to explain why he wasted so much time and sacrificed so many priorities for a right that he is not going to exercise.

After four and a half years of debate and division, we finally have a trade deal with the EU. It is imperfect, it is thin and it is the consequence of the Prime Minister’s political choices, but we have only one day before the end of the transition period, and it is the only deal that we have. It is a basis to build on in the years to come. Ultimately, voting to implement the treaty is the only way to ensure that we avoid no deal, so we will vote for the Bill today.

But I do hope that this will be a moment when our country can come together and look to a better future. The UK has left the EU. The leave/remain argument is over—whichever side we were on, the divisions are over. We now have an opportunity to forge a new future: one outside the EU, but working closely with our great partners, friends and allies. We will always be European. We will always have shared values, experiences and history, and we can now also have a shared future. Today’s vote provides the basis for that.

[Mr Speaker]

I am now introducing a four-minute limit for Back Benchers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend. He is entirely right: a good deal is still there to be done, and I look forward to discussing it with Commissioner von der Leyen tonight, but I must tell the House that our friends in the EU are currently insisting that, if they pass a new law in the future with which we in this country do not comply or do not follow suit, they should have the automatic right to punish us and to retaliate. Secondly, they are saying that the UK should be the only country in the world not to have sovereign control over its fishing waters. I do not believe that those are terms that any Prime Minister of this country should accept. I must tell the House and reassure my right hon. Friend that, whether our new trading arrangements resemble those of Australia’s with the EU or whether they are like those of Canada with the EU, I have absolutely no doubt that, from 1 January, this country is going to prosper mightily.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab) [V]]

I join the Prime Minister in his comments about the vaccine roll-out. It was fantastic to see the first person, Margaret Keenan, receive the vaccine yesterday. It is a huge national effort, and I want to thank everybody who has been involved with it. Mr Speaker, I also want to thank you and the House authorities for enabling me to participate today, notwithstanding the fact that I am self-isolating.

A year ago, the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised the country

“a permanent break from talking about Brexit”.

Can the Prime Minister tell us: how is that going?

[The Prime Minister]

I am delighted to welcome the right hon. and learned Gentleman here, from his vantage point of exile in Islington, his spiritual home, and wish him all the best in his self-isolation. His own silence on this matter has been sphinx-like. I wonder quite what it is that has kept him from asking this question for so long. We delivered Brexit on 31 January, in case he failed to notice.

[Keir Starmer]

It is Camden, not Islington. The Prime Minister starts straightaway by deflecting—it is the same old, same old, whether on covid or Brexit. Twelve months ago, he told the British people that he had an “oven-ready deal”. He did not say he had half a deal or that the next stage would be very, very difficult. In fact, he faced the British people and told them, before the election, that the chances of no deal were “absolutely zero”. The Chancellor, as he is now, obviously took him at his word, because the Chancellor said in the run-up to the election:

“We won’t need to plan for no-deal because we…have a deal.”

So a year on, why should anyone who trusted the Prime Minister when he said he had a deal, including his Chancellor, apparently, believe a word he says now?

[The Prime Minister]

I hesitate to accuse the right hon. and learned Gentleman of deliberately trying to mislead people, but let us be in no doubt that we had an oven-ready deal, which was the withdrawal agreement, which the people voted for, as he rightly points out, and by which this country left the customs union and the single market, and delivered on our promises. I can tell him, although he must know this, that whatever happens from 1 January this country will be able to get on with our points-based immigration system, which we have put into law, in fulfilment of our manifesto commitment. We will be able to get on with instituting low-tax free ports, in places where jobs and growth are most needed around the country. We will be able to honour our promise to the British people and institute higher animal welfare standards; we will be able to do free trade deals; and we will get our money back as well. I do not know what else he wants to see from 1 January, but all those things will be delivered.

[Keir Starmer]

Oh, I see. Apparently, “Get Brexit done” just meant the first part of it—the easy bit. I do not remember that being written on the bulldozer at the time. Last September, the Prime Minister actually hit the nail on the head when he said that leaving without a deal would be a “failure of statecraft”. It would be—it would be a total failure—and it will be the British people who pay the price. Does the Prime Minister agree with his own spending watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, that the cost of that failure—of leaving the EU with no deal—would be higher unemployment, higher inflation and a smaller economy?

[The Prime Minister]

The more the right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about Brexit, the more I can see why he tried to avoid the subject for the past year. We did leave with a very good deal, and in any circumstances this country will prosper mightily. He talks about the possible adverse consequences for this country of a deal on Australian terms—I think that is what he is talking about—but we have yet to hear from Labour party members what their view is of that matter. Would they vote for it, yes or no? He remained totally Delphic last week about his policy on fighting coronavirus and he is totally Delphic about what to do on Brexit as well.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister talks about indecision; he is absolutely stuck—this is the truth of it—and dithering between the deal that he knows we need and the compromise that he knows his Back Benchers will not let him make. I genuinely hope that this is the usual Prime Minister’s bluster and that, like one of his newspaper columns, a deal arrives at the last minute. But for some people, and their jobs, it is already too late.

Yesterday, INEOS, a major employer in this country, announced that it will not now build the new Grenadier car in Bridgend and will move production to France instead. This is a project that just two months ago the Prime Minister said was “a vote of confidence”. Hundreds of skilled jobs now will not go to Bridgend. Can the Prime Minister tell us how many more British jobs have to go overseas before he gets on with delivering the Brexit deal that he promised?

[The Prime Minister]

I think it is a bit much of the Leader of the Opposition to criticise the Government for failure to come up with a policy on Brexit and to attack the putative consequences of coming out on Australian terms when he cannot even say whether he would vote for that deal—yes or no. If he cannot say whether he would vote for our deal—yes or no—he simply cannot attack the Government’s policy. Until he is able to come up with a position of his own, wrap a towel round his head and decide what he actually thinks, I find it very difficult to take his criticisms seriously. What I can say is that this country will be ready for whether we have a Canadian or an Australian solution, and there will be jobs created in this country—throughout the whole of the UK—not just in spite of Brexit but because of Brexit, because this country is going to become a magnet for overseas investment. Indeed, it already is and will remain so.

[Keir Starmer]

The Prime Minister asked me how I will vote on a deal that he has not even secured. Secure the deal, Prime Minister; you promised it. I can say this: if there is a deal—and I hope there is a deal—my party will vote in the national interest, not on party political lines, as he is doing. This is about leadership. The Prime Minister has done 15 U-turns, he has had five different plans on covid, and last week 53 of his own MPs voted against him, so if I were him I would not talk about leadership.

The Prime Minister has not always wanted to listen to business—we know what his message to business is —but he should. Let me quote the CBI, which says that the message from business is this: “get a deal…quickly”. The National Farmers Union says:

“Time is really running out and…it’s very hard to get final preparations in.”

These are the people the Prime Minister should be listening to, not his Back Benchers.

On the question of preparation, the Government knew months ago that they needed 50,000 customs agents trained and ready to go from 1 January—deal or no deal—so can the Prime Minister tell the House how many of the 50,000 agents will be in place on 1 January? That is in 23 days’ time.

[The Prime Minister]

It is wonderful to get to the end of that question. I can tell the right hon. and learned Gentleman that we have already invested £1 billion in getting this country ready for whatever the trading relationship is that we have on 1 January. We have invested £84 million into supporting customs agents across the UK and £200 million into supporting our ports, and they are doing an amazing job. I want to thank business for the incredible job it is doing to get ready. We have all got to get ready, because under any view there is going to be change from 1 January—there will be change in the way we do business and there will be more opportunities for this country around the world. I am delighted by what I take is the increasing signalling from Camden, because the message from Camden seems to be that, given the choice, the right hon. and learned Gentleman would vote for a deal rather than not. Did my Back-Bench colleagues get that impression? I think I did.

[Mr Speaker]

Hopefully, the final question will be a little shorter.

[Keir Starmer]

I take it that the answer is the Prime Minister has no idea whether the 50,000 customs agents will be in place on 1 January. He either does not know or he does not care. The Prime Minister said he had a deal. He did not. He said he would protect jobs. He did not. He said he would prepare for any outcome. He has not. Whatever may happen in the next few days, there is no doubting that his incompetence has held Britain back. Will he end this charade? In that uncertainty, will he get the deal that he promised and allow the country to move on?

[The Prime Minister]

I want to thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his final baffling question. Last week, as I have said, he sphinx-like avoided any pronouncement on how this country was going to fight covid. He refused to support the measures that we have put in place. This week, he remains deafeningly silent on what he really thinks about a Brexit deal. While he puts a cold towel round his head, lost in thought, and tries to work out what his position is, we are getting on—[Interruption.]

Public Health

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

May I start by welcoming the fall in infection numbers, with the drop in the number of people being admitted to hospital, and crucially that the national R rate is now below 1, and below 1 in many parts of the country? That is very welcome news across the House. Before this lockdown, the infection rate was doubling every two weeks, the R number was above 1 in every part of England and rising, and the number of people in hospital was going up sharply across the country. In other words, the virus had been allowed to get out of control.

If anyone doubts that a lockdown was necessary, I would point out that since 2 November, when this lockdown started, 10,711 people have tragically died within 28 days of testing positive for covid-19. In the past week alone, that is an average of 460 deaths per day. Those are appalling numbers, and every one is a tragedy. So we can argue about why this lockdown did not happen earlier, when the infection rate was lower, as we argued for on this side of the House, but whatever view was taken of the timing, it is clear that the lockdown was necessary and has helped to reduce infections.

May I also welcome the progress on vaccines? I have nothing but admiration for our scientists and the amazing progress that has been made. This is a great moment for our scientists. I went to Oxford University the week before last, to see the vaccine group there and to see the remarkable work that it was doing, just before it announced its results. A vaccine may now be in sight, and we must do everything we can to encourage take-up and make sure that it is rolled out quickly, fairly and safely.

However, the questions before this House today are these: how can we save as many lives and livelihoods as possible until we reach the light at the end of that tunnel, and are the measures that the Prime Minister has announced today going to control the virus and provide the right support to the communities worst affected by these restrictions? Labour has supported the Government in two national lockdowns. I recognise the need for continuing restrictions and I do recognise that the tiers have been toughened, as it was obvious to everyone that the previous tiers were a one-way street to tier 3, but I am far from convinced by what the Prime Minister has said today. In particular, the economic package is nowhere near sufficient to support the communities most affected, and they have been suffering for many months.

[Mr Dhesi]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Keir Starmer]

I will just make some progress, and I will come back to my hon. Friend.

I also fear that without the right health measures in place—in particular, a working trace and isolate system—there are real risks that this plan is incapable of controlling the virus this winter. I want to set that out in a bit more detail, but before I do so I will give way.

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the Leader of the Opposition. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the support for businesses, especially in tier 3, that are struggling—in the hospitality and in the arts sectors specifically—is just not enough, because many of them are on the brink of collapse?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

We have lots of speakers, and interventions from those who are down to speak early is not fair on those later in the list. I do understand that people who are not going to speak might need to intervene, but please let us think about each other.

[Keir Starmer]

I do agree, and I will come on to business support in a minute, but let me make the points in support of the case we make today.

The first point is this: we have been here before. On 10 June, the Prime Minister told us for the first time of his “whack-a-mole” strategy to control local infections. He told us it would be so effective that restrictions would only be for a few weeks or even a few days. That was far from reality; Leicester, for example, has just gone into the 154th day of restrictions, and by the time these regulations run out on 2 February, Leicester will have been in restrictions for 217 days. So that 10 June proposal did not work.

Roll on to 22 September: by now, infections are rising in 19 of the 20 areas then under restrictions. The Prime Minister announced new restrictions, including the rule of six. He told the House that the rule of six would

“curb the number of daily infections and reduce the reproduction rate to 1”.—[Official Report, 22 September 2020; Vol. 680, c. 798.]

That is what he said about the rule of six. So that did not work.

Two weeks later, on 12 October, with the precise opposite happening, the Prime Minister stands up again—for the third time—and introduces a three-tier system. Again, he said that this will work: he told the House that this would deliver the reduction in the R rate locally and regionally that we need. That did not work.

Nineteen days later—the fourth attempt now—in a hurried press conference on a Saturday, the Prime Minister announced that the tier system had failed, the virus was out of control and a national lockdown was now unavoidable.

The reason that this all matters is that there is a pattern here. The Prime Minister has a record of overpromising and underdelivering—short-term decisions that then bump into the harsh reality of the virus.

And then a new plan is conjured up a few weeks later—we are now on at least the fifth plan—with an even bigger promise that never materialises. After eight months, the Prime Minister should not be surprised that we and many of the British people are far less convinced this time around.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I have a biology degree and I am going to take a wild punt that I am one of the few Members of this House to have used the word “epidemiology” in anger before January this year. We have choices to control this virus: we can have a lockdown, we can have a tiered system, or we can have no lockdown, where lives, such as those of John and Ken, family friends who we have just recently lost, are lost to this awful covid. Why will the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the Labour party not tonight support these measures that are saving lives?

[Keir Starmer]

I am grateful for that intervention and I am setting out exactly why not—and I will take interventions along the way so that what I say can be challenged—but the first point, which I have just finished making, is that we have been here before; this is at least plan no. 5 and the first four have not worked. So I think everybody would forgive the British public for being sceptical about the fifth plan.

I will go on now and set out the second point I want to make, which is that the public health risk of the Prime Minister’s approach is significant. The prevalence of the virus remains high; even if the R rate is below 1, it is only just below 1, and we know that the virus is at its most deadly during the cold winter months, exactly when the NHS is under the most strain. So if we are to keep the R rate below 1 during winter and not waste the progress that has been made in the past four weeks, we need to proceed with precision and caution. But instead of levelling with the British public, the Prime Minister spent the weekend telling his Back Benchers that the plan is all about, in his words, loosening restrictions across the country, and he has been fuelling a promise that within two weeks or so local areas have a real prospect of dropping to a tier below the one they are in.

We need to level: in my view, that is highly unlikely, and we might as well face that now. It is obvious that the new tier 1 may slow but will not prevent a rise in infections, and it is far from certain that the new tier 2 can hold the rate of infection. [Interruption.] I hear the mutterings, but let us just see where we are in two weeks. I look across the House to Members who think that perhaps, in two weeks, their area is going to drop down a tier just before Christmas. Let us see.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Your famous hindsight.

[Keir Starmer]

This isn’t hindsight; I am telling you what is going to happen in two weeks. We know where we will be in two weeks. I have no doubt that there will be Government Members getting up and saying, “I thought my area was going to drop a tier just before Christmas.” That is not levelling—that is not being straight —because that is not going to happen. The new tier 1 may slow the rate of infection, but it will not prevent it from increasing, and tier 2 will struggle to hold the rate of infection. I hope that it does. I hope that I am wrong about this, and I think that all Members hope I am wrong about it, but tier 2—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Sambrook, it is continuous; we have had it for a few weeks now. Let us have a rest today.

[Keir Starmer]

Tier 2, crucially, depends on all other factors falling into place at exactly the same time. Although we all welcome the chance to see our loved ones at Christmas, I am not convinced that the Government have a sufficiently robust plan in place to prevent a spike in infections over the new year.

Of course this is difficult, and all systems would have risk, but that brings me to my third point. The risks we face in the decisions we make today are much higher because the Prime Minister has failed to fix the major problems with the now £22 billion track and trace system. Before the Prime Minister simply brushes the point aside again, let me remind him and the House that one of the major reasons that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advised a circuit break back in September was that track and trace was only having, in its words,

“a marginal impact on transmission”.

The great thing that was going to control the virus was not working then. If we are to control this virus, that really matters, and the Prime Minister having his head in the sand is not helping.

I know that the Prime Minister will say, “We’ve made advances in testing.” I recognise that, and I genuinely hope that it helps to tackle the virus, but let me quote the chief scientific officer, who said that

“testing is important, but of course it only matters if people isolate as well.”

That is blindingly obvious, but only a fraction of people who should be self-isolating are doing so, and the Prime Minister still has not addressed the reasons for this, including the huge gaps in support.

I know that there has been an announcement about the change for those notified by the app—a ridiculous omission in the first place—but it does not affect basic eligibility. Only one in eight workers qualify for the one-off £500 self-isolation support. Anyone not receiving that has to rely on statutory sick pay, which is the equivalent of £13 a day. That is a huge problem that needs to be addressed. People want to do the right thing, but for many there is a real fear that self-isolation means a huge loss of income that they simply cannot afford.

I think—I cannot prove this—that one of the main reasons that people are not passing on their contacts in the way we want is that they fear that those they pass on contacts for will not be able to afford to self-isolate. That is a real problem, and we cannot carry on ignoring it.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is doing a very good job—it is his job to criticise the Government, and of course mistakes have been made—but a credible Opposition would have a plan of their own. What is the plan of the Labour party?

[Mr Speaker]

Sir Edward, that is your second bite of the cherry; there are other people as well—please.

[Keir Starmer]

I will come to that. I have accepted the case for restrictions—we were very clear about the need for a circuit break; we are clear that we need to go into restrictions—but we need a scheme that works, and I am explaining what the problem is with this scheme as we go through it.

Let me stay with track and trace. We know the claims the Prime Minister made about this at the beginning of the year and in the middle of the year. On tracing, which is crucial, the latest figures show 137,000 close contacts were missed by the system in one week. That is the highest weekly figure yet. This is not a figure that is going down; it is a figure that is going up. Over 500,000 close contacts have been missed by the system in the past month. That is not a statistic. That is half a million people who should have been self-isolating, but instead of self-isolating, they were with their friends, their families and their communities—half a million people in one month. That is a huge gap in the defences. I raise this issue every week, and the Prime Minister pretends it is getting better, but it never does. The Prime Minister has almost given up on it and put mass testing in its place, but again, that is blind optimism, not a plan. The idea that we can go through the next few months and successfully keep the virus under control when 500,000 people a month are wandering round when they should be self-isolating is not a sensible plan going forward.

My fourth point is the level of economic support that is provided. I have to say to the Prime Minister that it is hard to overstate the level of anger about this out there in our communities, many of which have been in restrictions for months on end. Yesterday, I did a virtual visit to local businesses in the north-west. Their emotions range from deep disappointment with the Government to raw anger that the Prime Minister and Chancellor just are not listening and do not get the impact of months of endless restrictions and the impact they have had on local communities. In March, the Chancellor vowed to do whatever it takes to support households and businesses, but there have now been six economic plans in nine months, and the level of support is still insufficient.

For these reasons, and let me spell them out—[Interruption.] The Prime Minister mumbles, but let me spell them out. First, the scheme does not fairly reflect the difficulties faced by businesses across the country. [Interruption.] I would be surprised if Government Members are not picking that up from their constituents and businesses. Let me start with the additional restrictions grant, which gives a flat figure to local areas, regardless of how long they have been in restrictions. That means Greater Manchester, which will be on its 40th day of severe restrictions when it enters tier 3 tomorrow, has received the same one-off support as the Isle of Wight, which went into restrictions far later and will emerge tomorrow into tier 1. That is unfair, and everybody knows it is unfair, and everybody in this House is being told by their constituents and by their businesses that it is unfair, so to pretend it is not just is not real, Prime Minister.

The second aspect—[Interruption.] The second aspect is that the grant does not take account of the number of businesses that need support in each area. Our great cities are being asked to spread the same sum far more thinly, and that is also clearly unfair. Our constituents know it is unfair, our businesses know it is unfair, and nothing has been done about it.

The third aspect—even allowing for today’s announcement on pubs, which is the definition of small beer—is that many businesses are now receiving less support than they did during the first wave. That is a huge strain for businesses, particularly those that have been so long under restrictions, and it makes no economic sense for the Government to allow them to go to the wall.

Putting the grant system to one side, the second major point about the economic support is that millions of self-employed people remain unfairly excluded from the Government support schemes. Again, nothing is being done about that. I have raised it so many times with the Prime Minster, as have others, and every time he chooses to talk about those who are within the scheme, ignoring those who are not in the scheme. It is eight months on, and we are facing another three or four months of this. That will mean 12 months without the support that is needed in those areas.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. He talks about those people who have been excluded from support. To focus in on who those people are, they include people who set up their own businesses 18 months ago, directors of very small limited companies, taxi drivers, hairdressers and the like. These are the entrepreneurs we need to build Britain back as we recover from the economic wreckage of the coronavirus. Does he agree we should be investing in those people, not excluding them and leaving many of them in deep and dangerous debt?

[Keir Starmer]

I do agree, and their cry still has not been heard. I accept that in putting together a support package in a hurry back in March, there may have been reasons why certain groups were overlooked, but this is eight months on. It has been pointed out over and over again, and here we go into a tiered system and there is still that gap in the system, and it is being very strongly felt out there.

The third point about the economic package is this: the Government must remove the uncertainty about furlough and rule out changing the scheme again in January. That is crucial, because businesses are beginning to make decisions about what they do in January. The Chancellor made this mistake before. By the time the furlough was extended, many businesses had laid people off because it came too late. We know what happens in that circumstance. The uncertainty has already caused real economic damage and we cannot afford the same mistake again. So, taken together, the business and economic support just does not stack up.

I want to make a wider point about the economic damage that this pandemic and the Government have done to our economy. Last week’s autumn statement laid bare the huge and worsening economic cost of the crisis. I know there are those who say, “That is the reason to end restrictions”, but the reality is that we cannot protect the economy if we lose control of the virus—that just leads to more uncertainty, more restrictions and more long-term damage to the economy. The failure to get control of the virus or take a long-term approach to shielding our economy has left the UK with the worst economic recession of the G7 and the highest death toll in Europe.

The fifth reason for scepticism about the Government’s approach is this: managing and priorities. The past 48 hours have been a summary of the mistakes the Government have made in this crisis. The Prime Minister is fatally split between appeasing his Back Benchers and following the science, and he is ending up pleasing nobody. I think the Prime Minister knows that tough restrictions are now needed, but he pretends that the restrictions might not be in place for very long. He pretends that it is quite possible that everybody will be in a lower tier in two weeks’ time. The reality is that tough restrictions will be needed until the vaccine is rolled out, and that may be months away. The Prime Minister will doubtless be back in a few weeks with another plan, but he does not make that case today or provide the certainty or the consistency that we need. So in the past 48 hours we have had concessions, letters and promises to his MPs, not clear and reliable messaging to the public, and that is symptomatic of the problem.

Coronavirus remains a serious threat to the public’s health, our economy and our way of life. We recognise the need for continued restrictions, but it is not in the national interest to vote these restrictions down today and we will allow them to pass. But it is another wasted—

[The Prime Minister]

Ah!

[Keir Starmer]

We accept the case for restrictions. We want a plan that is going to work, we are on plan 5 and this one is full of holes; we have been there so many times. So many times the Prime Minister has stood there and said, “This is the plan, this will solve the problem.” This is the fifth time around and we still have a plan with holes that have been there for months. Why is track and trace still not working? Why are the gaps in the support still there? Why are those we are excluding not included? Why are those who have to self-isolate not given the support to do so? Those are huge gaps in the system and to simply vote through a plan without recognising those problems is not going to help.

I accept the case for restrictions—we will not stand in the way of these regulations; we do not want the restrictions to come off—but I am not going to stand here and pretend, as the Prime Minister does: “This is the plan that will solve it all. Vote for this and it will all be fine through to Easter.” That is not going to happen and nobody should vote on that basis today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keir Starmer Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed; I can make that guarantee. Our position on fish has not changed. We will only be able to make progress if the EU accepts the reality that we must be able to control access to our waters. It is very important at this stage to emphasise that.

[Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

Today is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Girls. On average, a woman is killed by a man every three days in this country. It is a shocking statistic; and, sadly, the pandemic has seen a significant increase in domestic abuse. I will join those marking this day, and I am sure that the whole House would agree that we need to do far more to end domestic violence.

The Prime Minister may remember that in August last year, he wrote the foreword to the ministerial code. It says:

“There must be no bullying…no harassment; no leaking… No misuse of taxpayer money…no actual or perceived conflicts of interest.”

That is five promises in two sentences. How many of those promises does the Prime Minister think his Ministers have kept?

[The Prime Minister]

I believe that the Ministers of this Government are working hard and overall doing an outstanding job in delivering the people’s priorities, and that is what we will continue to do. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman waits a little bit longer today, he will hear some of the ways in which this Government are going to take this country forward, with one of the most ambitious programmes of investment in infrastructure, schools and hospitals for generations. If he wants to make any particular allegations about individual Ministers or their conduct, he is welcome to do so. The floor is his.

[Keir Starmer]

I did not really hear an answer there, so why don’t we go through these commitments in turn, starting with bullying and harassment? The now former independent adviser on ministerial standards concluded that the Home Secretary’s behaviour was, in his words,

“in breach of the Ministerial Code”,

and, he said,

“can be described as bullying”,

which means:

“intimidating or insulting behaviour that makes an individual feel uncomfortable, frightened, less respected or put down.”

What message does the Prime Minister think it sends that the independent adviser on standards has resigned but the Home Secretary is still in post?

[The Prime Minister]

Sir Alex’s decisions are entirely a matter for him, but the Home Secretary has apologised for any way in which her conduct fell short. Frankly, I make no apology for sticking up for and standing by a Home Secretary who, as I said just now, is getting on with delivering on the people’s priorities: putting, already, 6,000 of the 20,000 more police out on the streets to fight crime and instituting, in the teeth of very considerable resistance, a new Australian-style points-based immigration system. She is getting on with delivering what I think the people of this country want. She is showing a steely determination, and I think that is probably why the Opposition continue to bash her.

[Keir Starmer]

The reality is that any other Prime Minister would have fired the Home Secretary and any other Home Secretary would have resigned, so I think we will chalk that up as one broken promise.

On to the next: no leaking. Over the summer, we saw repeated leaks about which areas would go into restrictions. The Prime Minister’s plans to go into a second national lockdown were leaked all over the national papers, resulting in a truly chaotic press conference, and we have seen more leaking in the past 24 hours. This serial leaking is causing huge anxiety to millions of people about what is going to happen next. I know there is supposed to be an inquiry under way, but can the Prime Minister tell us, is he any closer to working out who in his Government is leaking this vital information?

[The Prime Minister]

I have already told you, Mr Speaker, that as soon as we have any information about anybody leaking, we will bring it to the House. But I may say that I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman is really concentrating on trivia when what the people of this country want is to see his support, and the support of politicians across the House, for the tough measures that we are putting in to defeat coronavirus. He makes various attacks on, I think, my leadership and handling of the ministerial code. I would take them a lot more seriously, frankly, if the Leader of the Opposition could explain why the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) is still a member of the Labour party. Does he support the right hon. Gentleman’s continued membership of the Labour party—yes or no? Why doesn’t he answer that question?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I think I will make that decision, Prime Minister. Thankfully we have got the sound—we do not want to lose it. [Laughter.]

[Keir Starmer]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The difference, of course, is that I am tackling the issues in my party and the Prime Minister is running away from the issues in his. I take it from his answer that he has no idea who is leaking from his Government, so I think we will put that as another one in the “no” column.

Moving on, to perhaps the most serious of the promises under the code: no misuse of taxpayers’ money. For weeks, I have raised concerns about the Government’s spraying taxpayers’ money on contracts that do not deliver. The problem is even worse than we thought. This week, a Cabinet Office response suggests that the Government purchased not 50 million unusable items of protective equipment but 180 million, and a new report this morning by the National Audit Office identifies a further set of orders totalling £240 million for face masks for the NHS that it cannot use. So will the Prime Minister come clean: how many hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been wasted on equipment that cannot be used?

[The Prime Minister]

Actually, to answer the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s question directly, 99.5% of the 32 billion items of personal protective equipment that this country secured conformed entirely to our clinical needs, once we had checked it. Of all the pathetic lines of attack that we have heard so far, this is the feeblest, because if you remember, Mr Speaker, we were faced with a national pandemic on a scale that we had not seen before and the Government were being attacked by the Labour party for not moving fast enough to secure PPE. I remember the right hon. and learned Gentleman saying that we needed to unblock the blockages in the system and that we needed to shift heaven and earth to get it done. That is what he said at the beginning of the pandemic. Then he complained that we moved too slow. Now he is saying that we moved too fast. He has got to make up his mind what his attack is.

[Keir Starmer]

It is obvious that either the Prime Minister does not know how much taxpayers’ money has been wasted, or he does not care. So far, we have bullying, harassment, leaking and the misuse of taxpayers’ money. I must say to the Prime Minister that it is not looking good so far, but let us press on. The next one is

“no actual or perceived conflict of interest”.

Where do I start on this one? Last week, we learned that suppliers with political connections were 10 times more likely to be awarded Government contracts, and this week The Sunday Times reports that the Health Secretary appointed one of his closest friends to a key advisory role. This friend also is a major shareholder, as it happens, in a firm that specialises in lobbying the Government on behalf of its clients, and some of those clients have secured tens of millions of pounds of Government contracts during the pandemic. Was the Prime Minister aware of this apparent conflict of interest?

[The Prime Minister]

In so far as there are any conflicts of interest, they will be evident from the publication of all the details of all the contracts. Again, the right hon. and learned Gentleman just seems to be attacking the Government for shifting heaven and earth, as we did, to get the medicines, the PPE, the equipment and the treatments that this country needed. What it reveals really is a deep underlying Labour hatred of the private sector, and it is actually thanks to the private sector and the Government working with the private sector that the UK was able to produce the world’s first usable treatment for the disease in dexamethasone and has worked hard to secure huge numbers of doses of the world’s first usable room-temperature vaccine. That is the private sector working to deliver for the people of this country and it is this common-sense Conservative Government working with the private sector, rather than abominating it and relying exclusively on some deranged form of state control. How else does he think we could possibly have done it?

[Keir Starmer]

No one is knocking the private sector; the Government are knocking the taxpayer, and that is not trivial. So I think it is a clean sweep: bullying, harassment, leaking, wasting public money and obvious conflicts of interest. It is the same old story: one rule for the British public and another for the Prime Minister and his friends. Just look at the contrast between his attitude to spraying public money at contracts that do not deliver and his attitude to pay rises for the key workers who kept the country going during this pandemic. If you have a hotline to Ministers, you get a blank cheque, but if you are on the frontline tackling covid, you are picking up the bill. Will the Prime Minister finally get his priorities right, stop wasting taxpayers’ money and give police officers, firefighters, care workers and other key workers the pay rise they so obviously deserve?

[The Prime Minister]

It is this party and this Government who have given key workers and public sector workers above-inflation pay rises this year, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, whether that is the police, the Army or nurses, who are now getting 12.6% more than they were three years ago. It is this Government who will continue to increase the living wage, as he will discover if he can just contain his impatience for a few minutes.

Indeed, it is this Government who have not only delivered free school meals and a vast increase in spending on development around the world but have looked after the poorest and the neediest. One of the most important facts about the £200 billion coronavirus package of support that the Chancellor has devised for lives and livelihoods across the country is that the benefits overwhelmingly prioritise the poorest and neediest in the country. The reason we can do that is because we have a Government who understand how to run a strong economy and who ensure that they take the tough decisions now that will allow our economy to bounce back—that is what this Government are doing.