Summer Adjournment

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) and I eagerly want to visit his constituency to meet all these house builders with whom he is in dispute. I do not think they stand much of a chance, being up against the hon. Gentleman.

I welcome the presence on the Labour Front Bench of the new shadow Deputy Leader of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), who will be making her maiden contribution in this debate, and, of course, the ever-present Deputy Leader of the House, who will be winding up. I have to apologise for the fact that, unfortunately, I have an unbreakable commitment in Leicester and might not be able to be here for the winding-up speeches. However, I will read Hansard with great care. I also had no idea I was going to be called so early.

I make no apology for starting this debate by talking about the situation in Yemen. Despite the catastrophic situation within the state, we are currently experiencing an even worse crisis. In the course of Yemen’s civil war there have been well over 10,000 civilian deaths, 19.4 million Yemenis are without access to healthcare, 3 million are now suffering from acute malnutrition, and over 3 million are internally displaced. One child dies every 10 minutes.

Last week the United Nations announced that there were 300,000 cholera cases in Yemen countrywide, in 22 of Yemen’s 23 provinces. If current rates of cholera stay the same, from the time we enter recess to when this House returns on 5 September, up to 225,000 extra cases will be added to that number. The United Nations calls this the worst cholera crisis in the world.

Along with the spread of the disease, there has been the chronic destruction of medical infrastructure caused by the civil war, which has exacerbated the crisis. Despite the assistance given by organisations such as Médecins sans Frontières, Islamic Relief, the Yemen Safe Passage Group, the UNHCR, and the Red Cross, the situation in Yemen is getting much worse. We heard only today that a number of journalists had been prevented from landing in Sana’a.

While we go to our constituencies to do the work that all Members have to do during the recess, we must not forget what is happening in Yemen. I hope that a message from the Front Bench will go back to the Foreign Office that we expect to see Ministers fully engaged in the crisis that continues to unfold.

This week I was elected chair of the new all-party group on immigration and visas, and I am delighted to see the vice-chair of the group here, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I am also very pleased that the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) was elected as the secretary. The group’s purpose is to raise, on an all-party basis, issues of concern about the way in which our immigration and visa system operates. We all have critical constituency cases involving people who wish to travel, or whose relatives are not allowed to come into the country. For instance, the wedding of a constituent of mine is taking place at the end of August, but the best man is not being allowed to come here. Trying to convince officials who are thousands of miles away is extremely difficult.

I hope this group will, in a measured way, explore these circumstances, especially the role of the account managers and the issue of same-day service. I have a case of somebody who applied for a same-day visa, paid the fee of £500 on top of the fee of £1,000 for their visa, and six months later the situation has not been resolved. It is important that we look at these issues in a constructive way.

I hope that, over the summer, Ministers in the Department for Exiting the European Union and the Home Office will be trying to fashion a plan for the 3.2 million EU citizens living in the United Kingdom. We have heard the Prime Minister’s welcome assurance that they will be allowed to stay, but the process of issuing the necessary documentation could take a long time. There is now a backlog of 100,000 cases at the Home Office. Some of those citizens arrived here without passports because they could enter the UK with identity cards from EU countries. Getting them processed will be extremely difficult.

I hope that those Ministers will also look into the suggestion of a pilot scheme for allowing EU citizens to register at local level. They could take their passports along to the local authority and get themselves checked and registered. That information could then be handed on to the Home Office. The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), is a former member of the Home Affairs Committee, and he will be well aware of these issues. I hope that he will pass that suggestion on.

I want to make two quick constituency points before I end. The first concerns the continuing campaign being led by Amy Morgan, a young mother in Leicester whose son, Tyler, was stabbed to death a year and a half ago. Another of my constituents, Isaac Williams, was stabbed to death in April this year. We need to do more to tackle knife crime. I introduced a Bill to increase the length of time people spend in prison for carrying a knife. Statistics show a 24% rise in the incidence of knife crime. That is a huge increase, with 12,074 offences and 2,381 detentions last year. Secondly, I am hoping to organise a meeting in my constituency involving those who have control of our theme parks, following the death earlier this year of my 11-year-old constituent, Evha Jannath. It is extremely important that families who visit theme parks should be as safe as possible.

Speaking as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on diabetes, and as someone who has type 2 diabetes, let me end by issuing a challenge to Members. I want to commend the Pioppi diet, and I will write to the 100 Members who have the most diabetics in their constituencies about this. Of course, we all have diabetics in our constituencies, but the Library has provided me with statistics for the top 100. I think that Doncaster might be on that list, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall ask those Members to take up the challenge of the Pioppi diet, which is named after a village in Italy where people live on average to the age of 97 as a result of their Mediterranean diet. It involves getting rid of sugar, which is a killer, keeping away from potatoes—and, for me, rice—and concentrating instead on the good food that is available around the Mediterranean. We have wonderful farms and food makers in this country, but we do not spend enough time looking at what we eat.

We have a diabetes epidemic in the United Kingdom. There are 4 million people with type 2 diabetes in this country, and 500,000 more—some of whom are in this House today—who do not know that they have the condition. My hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is an officer of the APPG, and I am sure that he will be taking up the Pioppi diet challenge—

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

If it helps me to live to 97, I definitely will.

[Keith Vaz]

I know that all Democratic Unionist party Members would like to live to be 97, especially in the current climate.

I will be writing to those 100 Members, urging them to take up that challenge. I want to thank Dr Aseem Malhotra, the world-famous cardiologist, and Donal O’Neill, a renowned film-maker from Ireland, for writing the incredible book, “The Pioppi Diet”. I want everyone to take it up for 28 days in August and to see, when they come back, whether it has made a difference. With that, Madam Deputy Speaker, I should like to wish you, the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House, all Members and all Officers of the House a happy and peaceful recess. We hope that nothing will bring us back during the recess, as has happened in the past. We want a bit of political stability so that we can enjoy our summer.

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[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick)—[Interruption.] Not right honourable? It is only a matter of time. He gave a typically robust and informative speech, demonstrating the value of these types of debates at the end of a parliamentary term. I want to raise several issues relating to aspects of parliamentary work that I have been and will continue to be involved in.

At the end of the previous Parliament, just before the general election, almost the last Act passed was the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which I had the honour of piloting through this House; my hon. Friend Lord Best piloted it through the other place. There are many measures that still require secondary legislation before the Act comes fully into force, which of course will be a revolution in the way homeless people are treated in this country. There is still a lot of work to do, including on statutory instruments that must be put before the House, but I trust that, even with the great repeal Bill and the forthcoming SIs, we will find sufficient time to ensure that the Act is brought to fruition, because many thousands of people up and down this country are desperately awaiting help.

There has been a flurry of annual general meetings of all-party groups in the last few weeks. I will just run through a few of the groups that I am involved with. The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) referred to one group of which I succeeded in becoming vice-chair, following a hard-fought election. On the other groups, I am delighted, on behalf of the Action on Smoking and Health group, that the Government have at last announced the tobacco control plan. I congratulate the new Minister for public health, my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), on doing something that his three predecessors could not do, namely publishing the plan so that we get control of the tobacco industry, with some very strong targets towards a smoke-free Britain, which will be warmly welcomed by all concerned.

However, there is a deep threat to smoking cessation services across local authorities. Therefore, we should reiterate our call that it is vital that those services continue, and continue to be funded by local authorities. In my own borough, there is a threat to remove funding from the smoking cessation service, despite the fact that in the last four years 1,751 local people have been able to give up smoking. Yet we still have a high prevalence of smoking in my borough and it would not be good enough if the service ceased.

Equally, the all-party group for justice for Equitable Life policyholders met recently. We have 185 members in this House. May I send a strong signal via my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons that we will not cease in our work until justice has been done for every single one of those individuals who suffered from this scam? We are not going away, and we are not happy that there is still a huge sum of money—£2.7 billion—owed to the victims.

The all-party group on Azerbaijan heard of the dreadful attack that took place in the hotly disputed and illegally occupied territory of Nagorno-Karabakh earlier this month. A two-year-old girl and her grandmother were deliberately killed by Armenian forces. The reality is that that is a war crime, which needs to be thoroughly investigated by the authorities, and the perpetrators should be brought to justice in front of the International Criminal Court.

There are several other issues that the Government need to bear in mind. The UN’s Human Rights Council will meet from 11 to 29 September, shortly after we return to this House. There are a number of issues for it to consider. I have mentioned Azerbaijan, but there is also the issue of justice for Tamils in Sri Lanka, and the absolutely outrageous and disgraceful genocide of political prisoners in Iran in 1998, which needs a thorough international investigation. I hope that there will be a debate in Government time before the UN’s HRC meets on the UK’s priorities for that particular body and its work, because we need to spread our message that human rights are vital. Under the last Government, it took six months for the Joint Committee on Human Rights to be set up in this House. It is a Government-appointed Committee and it is vital that it starts its work very soon and very quickly on an all-party basis.

When we come back after the recess, there will be an ongoing consultation—the Government have wisely enabled it to be extended—on removing caste as a protected characteristic from our equality legislation. I believe that consultation will now conclude on 14 September, having originally been due to conclude by the end of July. It is vital that the message goes out from this House that British Hindus have an opportunity to input to the Government consultation, so that the Government have the evidence they require to ensure we remove this ill thought-out, divisive and unnecessary legislation.

[Keith Vaz]

May I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his re-election as chair of the all-party group on British Hindus? I share his concern about that part of the legislation, which is causing concern among the Hindu community, as Harrow and Leicester are very similar in terms of their Hindu population, and I pledge my support for the campaign he has launched.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my right hon. Friend—I will call him that here—for that intervention and I trust that he can persuade the members of his own party, not only in this House but in the other place, to support the Government on doing what we want to see happening for British Hindus up and down the country.

The final area I will touch on is the situation in Jammu and Kashmir. I have tabled an early-day motion, which I believe seven other hon. Members have signed, in relation to the attack on innocent Hindu pilgrims in Anantnag by Lashkar-e-Taiba, an internationally recognised terrorist group, led by Abu Ismail. The UK must stand with India to combat this international terrorism and to prevent the situation from escalating still further. There have been attempts in this country to celebrate Burhan Wani, who died last year. He was a murderous Islamic terrorist and the commander of Hizbul Mujahideen. There was an attempt in Birmingham to hold a demonstration about his death, which would have been a direct challenge to the UK’s values of harmony and tolerance. I am delighted that that demonstration was shut down before it happened, but the Government must do more to target all those who celebrate terrorists.

Madam Deputy Speaker, may I wish you, your colleagues—the other Deputy Speakers and Mr Speaker—and all right hon. and hon. Members in the House a very happy recess? We will all be working in our constituencies, as has been mentioned, on behalf of our constituents, with—no doubt—a brief holiday in the next few weeks.

Easter Adjournment

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He is absolutely right.

I welcome the fact that the Government introduced a minimum excise duty in the Budget, and it will add, on average, some 35p to a packet of cigarettes. The money should go to the national health service to ensure that treatment is provided. We have introduced standardised packaging and a whole series of other measures to encourage people not to smoke, but that has meant that a number of local authorities are either phasing out, or removing completely, their smoking cessation services. The job is not yet done. In my own local borough of Harrow, the stop smoking services are being removed. Closing those services is a false economy when they have helped 1,751 people to give up smoking in the past two years alone. Such a move will return to haunt us unless we invest properly.

This week, the Government published the long-awaited consultation document on the use of the term “caste” and on caste discrimination, which was introduced in the Equality Act 2010. The term was added in the other place via an amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. There was no proper oversight or proper debate on the repercussions of introducing such a term into the British legal framework, and indeed it was not properly debated in this Chamber either. A considerable amount of hurt has been suffered by the Hindu community in particular. I encourage the whole Hindu community across the UK to participate in the consultation, so that we can get this unnecessary, divisive and ill-thought out legislation off the statute book once and for all.

I have also raised in the House this week Pakistan’s decision to annex Gilgit-Baltistan, which had been illegally occupied by Pakistan in the first place. The annexation has caused widespread concern across the community and across the whole of Jammu and Kashmir. The reality is that we in Britain have a strategic role in helping to bring this divisive issue to an end, and we should use our good offices to prevent Pakistan increasing the impact on this area, especially as it had no right to occupy the area in the first place. The United Nations has registered that in a series of resolutions, yet Pakistan chooses to ignore them. We should ensure that we put that right.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I support everything that the hon. Gentleman says in respect of both the caste legislation and Pakistan, but may I bring him a little closer to home? He is a great campaigner for his local constituents. I am a frequent user of Stanmore station. Whenever he has spoken in such debates, he has mentioned the new lifts to be installed at the station. Has he brought any good news to this debate about those lifts?

[Bob Blackman]

I would dearly love to give the right hon. Gentleman good news about Stanmore station, especially as he uses it regularly. The sad fact is that a planning application was made by a private developer for a site alongside Stanmore station. The developer offered £1 million towards providing a lift. Harrow Council’s planning committee, in its infinite wisdom, decided to turn it down. It did not want the £1 million, so the developer, not unreasonably, took it away as part of their offer, but they still got their planning application for the flats alongside the station, which has received lots of objections from residents.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I realise that I am transgressing your informal time limit, but, having given way a couple of times, I will conclude on three quick issues that are of particular concern to local residents.

First, Harrow Council introduced the unwanted garden tax at the highest level in London—the highest garden tax in the country for garden waste collection—and has now increased it even further in this year’s budget. It is rightly objected to by residents all over the Borough of Harrow. Secondly, I am delighted that progress is happening, albeit slow, on the redevelopment of the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital, which I have been campaigning on for an extended period.

The final issues are of education and the police service in Harrow. I have registered with the Secretary of State my concern that the proposed new fairer funding formula will discriminate against schools in Harrow, as 17 schools in my constituency will actually lose money, not just in real terms. That is completely unacceptable. Equally, the concern about police funding is that the new proposals for amalgamating boroughs will mean that Harrow, which is the safest borough in London, will lose police and therefore be at greater risk of crime. That is also completely unacceptable, and I trust that we will put it right.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish you, the staff and everyone else involved in running the House a very happy and peaceful Easter. I look forward to coming back after the recess suitably refreshed. I apologise in advance that I am unlikely to be here for the wind-ups and the reply from the Deputy Leader of the House; I have to use the national health service for a long-awaited medical appointment that has to take precedence in these circumstances.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) on her passionate speech. She speaks with great eloquence.

Let me join other Members in paying tribute to PC Keith Palmer, whom my hon. Friend mentioned, and who tragically lost his life in the attack on Westminster last week. His death was a reminder of the vitally important and dangerous work that our police forces do every day to keep us safe. I join others, too, in sending my deepest condolences to his wife, children, family and friends, and to the wider family of the Metropolitan police.

I also pay tribute to the Serjeant at Arms for what he did during that crisis. He was so cool, and he was able to calm the nerves of so many people in the Palace. I am grateful to him for the work that he did—and, indeed, I am grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House, who, recognising that I had diabetes, approached me several times to offer me biscuits. It was the first time that he had offered me biscuits; he usually borrows chocolate biscuits from me at Norman Shaw North. I was very grateful for the concern that he showed for Members.

Sadly, attacks on our police officers are all too common. In February, the Police Federation of England and Wales revealed that more than 6,000 officers are assaulted every day on our streets, which means that a police officer is attacked every 13 seconds. That is a staggering statistic. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for the work that she has done in raising the issue of attacks on the police force. It is important for us to recognise that they are happening on a daily basis, and I commend her campaign.

When he responds to the debate, will the Deputy Leader of the House tell us what measures are being taken to reduce the number of such attacks, and to provide better protection for our police officers? He will remember all the excellent work that he did on the Home Affairs Committee when we considered these issues, but it would be good to know what the Government are doing.

[Bob Stewart]

I intervene very briefly just to remind people that nowadays some police widows lose pensions when they remarry. I think that the House should take action to deal with that, because it is totally unfair. It does not apply throughout the country—it does not apply in Northern Ireland—but we must get this right: police widows deserve justice.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman must have read my speech or hacked my emails, because he clearly knows that I am going to come on to the subject of police widows shortly, and I agree with him on that point. Let me first turn to the other issue of policing that I want to raise: the police funding formula.

Given the dangerous roles our officers play in keeping us safe, I am sad to see the damage done by reductions in police force budgets over the last few years. Of course I understand why this is happening, but it is right that we should point it out. This problem has been compounded by the continued failure of the Home Office to implement a new funding formula, something that affects every single Member of the House here today.

As a result, police forces cannot predict their future funding. At a recent meeting with the police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire, Lord Bach, and Chief Constable Simon Cole, Leicestershire MPs were told that constabularies like Leicestershire have complex funding challenges, that the funding they have is inadequate for a mix of urban and rural policing, and that forces cannot adapt and keep up with modern crime issues like cybercrime unless they know what is happening in respect of their allocations.

In November 2015 the former policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), said the review on this was being paused until the National Police Chiefs Council carried out a capabilities review. Sara Thornton, chair of the NPCC, has said that this review does not stop the Government continuing with announcing the results of the funding formula. I ask the Deputy Leader of the House when the new funding formula arrangements will be published.

Another area that needs urgent review is police pensions—I am most grateful to the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) for raising this point, because he is right to do so—particularly in relation to how officers’ widows receive their pensions. Legislation passed in 2006 meant that the partners of any new police officers were entitled to receive a pension for life. Those falling under the 1987 regulations—the year I was elected to this House—were allowed to opt into the new scheme. However, the new rules introduced in 2015 effectively deny police widows in England and Wales who remarried before 1 April 2015 the right to move on with their lives and find happiness, as they cannot get this pension. The flip-flopping of legislation that has affected these families is totally unacceptable. How can it be fair that a widow who has remarried after 1 April 2015 can be awarded a pension for life, but one who has remarried before that date is denied that entitlement on a mere technicality?

[Bob Stewart]

And her children.

[Keith Vaz]

And, indeed, her children. There are disparities in how the pension regulations apply across the United Kingdom. The remarriage deadline applies only to England and Wales. There is no such cut-off date in Scotland. In Northern Ireland all survivors rightly keep their pensions for life, no matter how their former partner died. Can the Deputy Leader of the House explain why English and Welsh widows are treated in this way, while their Scottish, Northern Irish and other counterparts are not faced with that difficulty?

Finally, let me raise the issue of written parliamentary questions. The Deputy Leader of the House is a master at giving replies to difficult questions. I was reading a debate in which he was involved recently, and he used the following phrases when asked about the timetable for the restoration works on the House of Commons: “in due course”, “in the fullness of time”, and “shortly”. These are his favourite replies; he could star in his very own version of “Yes Minister”, playing both the Minister and Sir Humphrey.

I recently wrote to the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), Chair of the Procedure Committee, to complain about the disappointing answers I had received to two written questions: from the Minister for Immigration and the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). Parliamentary questions are about facts: we ask a question and we get a reply. I asked the Minister for Immigration how many entry clearance officers there were in Mumbai, and back came not a reply giving me the numbers but a press release on the wonderful work being done by entry clearance officers. I already knew about that. I asked the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union how many civil servants had been seconded to his Department, and again I got a press release. I did not get the facts and figures, which are what we need. Will the Deputy Leader of the House look into the issue of written parliamentary questions? Let us get rid of all this “in due course” and “shortly”, and concentrate instead on providing factual answers to factual questions.

I do not want to delay my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) from beginning her speech, because it is her birthday today and I know that she wants to go off and celebrate. I cannot end, however, without wishing Members of the House, the Serjeant at Arms, the Chair and all the Officers who do such fantastic work a very happy recess. There are three supporters of Leicester City football club in the Chamber: myself, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin). I do not know why I always think that my hon. Friend is the Member for Skegness; it is nearby. Leicester City are the only English team remaining in the Champions League. Forget about all the others that spend billions of pounds on their players; we are in the last eight, and on 12 and 18 April, we will be playing Atlético Madrid. Easter is a Christian festival, and we believe in rebirth and in the blessings of almighty God. We hope that those blessings will be upon the Leicester City team as they undertake the most important two matches in their entire football lives. I am sure that the whole House will be with me on that.

Budget Resolutions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

As always, my hon. Friend has pre-empted my remarks. Not only did the Government fail to address social care yesterday, but they failed to address in any way the crisis in our NHS. It was completely ignored.

Ahead of the autumn statement, Labour and others were warning that the NHS was in crisis. It was in crisis before the winter, but the Chancellor could not find a single penny for the NHS in the autumn statement. The Royal College of Nursing now says that the NHS is in its worst crisis ever. Ahead of the Budget, the British Medical Association called for another £10 billion for the NHS. As my hon. Friend has just said, A&E waiting times have today got worse again—more people are waiting longer. It is astonishing that there was a complete failure on the part of the Chancellor in the Budget to recognise the scale of the crisis that our hospitals and doctors face. It is a crisis that the Government created by cuts.

Instead, we have a £100 million fund to enable GPs to triage in accident and emergency. The capital spend will build rooms for GPs in hospitals with no GPs to staff them, because no revenue funding is associated with the proposal.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The issue is not just the immediate crisis in the NHS, but the preventable future crises that will come from long-term conditions such as diabetes. There seems to be no planning for the future. Does the shadow Chancellor agree that we have missed an opportunity to invest in prevention to save the taxpayer an enormous amount of money in future?

[John McDonnell]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his campaign, which he has stuck with for a number of years. I remember him saying that some years ago under a previous Secretary of State. Assurances were given about investment in preventive medicine and so on, but then what happened? We had an unnecessary £3 billion reorganisation imposed from the top and the money was lost. I regret that my right hon. Friend has had to continue his campaign. We need investment in preventive health, but we also need emergency funding now for the NHS.

This shows the difference in values. Labour says we need investment in the NHS, but the Government believe we need tax giveaways of £70 billion over the next five years to those who need it least. People are suffering in the NHS and they need social care. People are dying because of the Government’s decisions. They have failed to address them, but have also prioritised tax cuts for big corporations and the wealthiest few rather than investment in our NHS.

On education and skills, the Chancellor claimed in his speech that the Budget was for the young and for skills. He waxed lyrical about the need to provide decent chances in life for all. We share those sentiments—extra funding for training is welcome—but the £500 million of additional skills funding is nowhere near enough to undo the damage of seven years under this Government. Adult skills funding has fallen by 54% since 2010, which is a cut of £1.36 billion. That £500 million does not even come close to reversing the damage already done.

The Chancellor is providing £1 billion for the vanity project of free schools. That is more money for the ludicrous throwback of grammar schools. Thousands of Whitehall hours have been wasted on schemes for a tiny handful of privileged children, leaving the rest to fail. It is the same old Tories, isn’t it? There are real-terms funding cuts for the state schools that 95% of our children use. They are the first cuts since the last Conservative Government. Fifties throwbacks and fantasies are not how we should run a modern education system.

Finally, the Chancellor never spoke the word “Brexit” in his speech yesterday. Shocking. The Chancellor was silent on the greatest challenge facing this country. The word “Brexit” never passed his lips once during his speech. As Britain prepares to begin the process of leaving the European Union, the Chancellor had nothing to say on the matter. It should be clear why. I do not think he agrees with the position of his Government. The Prime Minister claims that no deal is better than a bad deal, which is absurd—no deal would be the worst possible deal. The Chancellor knows that very well. He knows it is a risk, because the warnings come not just from Labour but from manufacturers, business leaders, employers organisations, trade unions and a wide range of civil society organisations. They come from economists and international organisations as well. The Chancellor is being told from every part of our economy that to crash out of the European Union without a trade deal will be disastrous. We will be cut off from investment and our biggest trading partner. We will be cut off from the skills of EU nationals, who have made so much of a contribution to our economy and society. It is a disgrace that those EU nationals live with insecurity still because the Government will not give them the assurances they need, but that is where the Conservative party is setting its course.

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[John McDonnell]

I know how hard my hon. Friend has fought on these issues, and I congratulate her. She has a grassroots understanding of the consequences of that lack of funding, and of the implications for her region and city. The consequences of the lack of investment are staggering, but it also undermines confidence in the private sector to match fund and invest. That is what we are seeing, even at the first stage, and yet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) said, we heard in the Chancellor’s statement not a word of assurance to anybody, whether council leaders, business investors or workers. I found that disgraceful.

It is interesting that, prior to the Budget, the Chancellor and allies floated the idea that he was garnering a £60 billion fighting fund to deal with Brexit. It is not a fighting fund; it is a failure fund. He is having to put aside cash to deal with the consequences of what he knows will be a Tory Brexit failure. That is what the failure fund is for.

[Keith Vaz]

On Brexit, I wonder whether my right hon. Friend shares my concern that no provision has been given to the Home Office for processing the applications of 3.2 million EU citizens. The Home Office has suffered enormous cuts over the past few years and will simply be unable to deal with the applications that will be made. Currently, there is a seven-month wait to get a certificate to remain. Does he believe that provision should have been made for that?

[John McDonnell]

It is not just that provision should be made, but that the cuts have established that situation. Whatever system is introduced, that organisation will not be fit for purpose because of a lack of investment over the recent period, which my right hon. Friend has consistently pointed out.

We understand the vote in the referendum. People voted to leave, but we repeat time and again that they did not vote to trash their jobs, their livelihoods or the economy. A responsible Government would ensure that jobs and the economy were protected. A responsible Budget ahead of article 50 would have shown how the Government would protect both. The Chancellor had a responsibility and failed to deliver on it.

The Chancellor has dared to talk elsewhere about the difficult decisions he had to make. It is not he who is making the difficult decisions; it is the NHS manager in a hospital deciding whether someone will have a bed or a trolley; a police commissioner deciding which streets will be patrolled; or a council leader deciding which children’s centre will be closed. They are the ones with difficult decisions, not the Chancellor. He is passing the buck to others for his cuts.

I think that the Chancellor lives in a world in which he is completely insulated from the consequences of his decisions. He can sit in No. 11 and delete lines from his spreadsheet without a thought for the consequences. For him, it is all in a day’s work, and it is the rest of our society who must deal with the results. We have had seven long years of austerity from this Conservative Government, and the spending cuts have dragged our economy and society to the brink.

The suffering has been immense, and it is not the Chancellor or his colleagues who have been on the receiving end. It is their victims: those parents who cannot get a school place at the moment, those young people who cannot get a decent home because of a housing shortage, those families who cannot get care for their parents. We have seen public services shredded and basic standards in public life torn up, and for what? So that this Government can add three quarters of a trillion pounds to the national debt. After seven years of austerity, and two years after it was supposed to have ended, what can we look forward to? Continual cuts in public services for the rest of the decade.

This was a Budget of complacency. We need a Government who will introduce a fair taxation system, who will use public resources for long-term, patient investment in our economy, who will tackle tax evasion and avoidance at the same time, and who will grow our economy but, as we build a prosperous economy, will ensure that that prosperity is shared by all rather than being given away in tax cuts for the rich and the corporations. Yesterday’s Budget was not just complacent; it was arrogant, and it was cruel.

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[Sajid Javid]

I know the right hon. Gentleman cares about this issue and was deeply involved in it when he was a Minister. I am sure he knows that when the Government set out their plans for the additional £10 billion per annum by 2020, the NHS five-year plan was calling for £8 billion. This goes over and above that. The announcement made in yesterday’s Budget of the additional £325 million plus the £100 million is on top of the £10 billion per annum.

[Keith Vaz]

Does the Secretary of State share my concern that there is not enough emphasis on prevention for long-term conditions such as diabetes? His ministerial colleague sitting on his left, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), was probably the best diabetes Minister we have ever had, and a lot of what she did was on prevention. Why has more money not been made available for investing in the future and cutting the taxpayers’ contribution in years to come by setting up prevention centres for conditions such as diabetes?

[Sajid Javid]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the importance of public health, and he is absolutely right to pay tribute to the former Health Minister, who is now the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, for the work she did. I hope he will agree with me that the work that my hon. Friend and others did shows that they have taken this issue seriously. Some of the measures that the Chancellor talked about in his Budget statement—the so-called sugar tax, for example—will help in the long term with prevention, especially in the case of diabetes.

Health and social care are not the only public services that we are investing in. The Budget funds a further 110 new free schools. It funds free school transport to include all children on free school meals who attend a selective school. It also provides an additional £216 million of investment in existing schools.

When I was a teenager, my comprehensive school refused to let me study the A-levels of my choice; the people there said that it would be a waste of time and that I should leave school and just go and get a job instead. What I did was get on the bus and go to the other side of Bristol to sign up at Filton Technical College. I am proud to call myself a graduate of FTC. The education I received there was second to none. Without Filton, I certainly would not be standing here today—so you can blame them if you wish I wasn’t.

Many opportunities were opened up by my time at Filton, but for years afterwards I would still see eyebrows raised and sneers barely supressed when I said that I had been to a technical college. For too long in this country there has simply not been parity of esteem between valuable technical education and more academic study. As Business Secretary, I began the process of changing that, including by creating the Institute of Apprenticeships. I am very pleased that the introduction of T-levels announced yesterday will continue that process.

We are following the work carried out by Lord Sainsbury, Baroness Wolf and other experts in this field to radically improve technical education, and in doing so we are investing an additional £500 million a year in our 16 to 19-year-olds. We will also be offering maintenance loans for those undertaking higher level technical qualifications at the new institutes of technology and national colleges.

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[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

During the heated interchanges that took place a short time ago, I was wondering whether this was merely a private fight or if anybody could join in—I will take this opportunity to join in. Let me declare first of all that my approach to understanding economics is different from that of the Front-Bench spokesmen, so if the House will forgive me, I will take a couple of minutes to set out why I see things slightly differently so that Members can better understand my critique of particular aspects of this Budget.

I am highly critical of an approach to economics that seeks to mimic the physical sciences and imagines that it can predict the future through statistical means. Great economists of the past of different traditions, ranging from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, would have rightly scoffed at that notion. When I picked up the Office for Budget Responsibility’s “Economic and fiscal outlook” yesterday, it fell open at page 45, which Members will recall contains chart 3.8, on effective exchange rate assumptions. If we look at that chart—some hon. Members are doing so—we can see that the OBR is able to accurately plot the past, which contains wild variations in the exchange rate, and that the biggest variations are often due to not economic decisions, but political ones, such as the EU referendum. The OBR’s prediction for the future, however, is a perfect straight line parallel to the horizontal. The only thing we know is that that is the least likely thing to happen to the exchange rate but, owing to that approach, built-in assumptions make us highly vulnerable to misreading the actions that need to be taken. Straight lines rarely predict human activity.

It was therefore with genuine concern that I heard the Chancellor deem it important in the opening section of yesterday’s statement to read out spreadsheets and forecasts as though they were going out of fashion while entirely failing to mention in any depth the key issues challenging the future economics of this country. As has been said, he failed adequately to address the challenges of Brexit, for example, but I will come to that in a moment.

Allow me to reflect a little on different ways of looking at the economy and to make three key observations. First, an economy is not a machine but a network of relationships among human beings. What do these networks do? They are built upon myriad individual and collective decisions that are affected by an almost infinite array of influences. Not only do we not know the future with any degree of precision, but we cannot know the future with any degree of precision, yet that is what such detailed forecasts pretend, and they are provided without even any margins of error.

We know that decisions are critical, so I thought about how I could highlight the importance of that and some of the things that the Government could do. The best example came to me yesterday when, along with many Members, I attended the WASPI women demonstration. Those people face having to make key decisions about their future, but this Government utterly disrupted the way in which they were able to make rational decisions, because they were given no proper notice about the huge changes being made to their pensions. Rather than helping to give some coherence to the economy to enable people to make as rational a decision as possible, the Government’s actions have caused disruption. The effective operation of the marketplace is being disrupted, not helped.

Secondly, we cannot ignore the influence of politics on economic activity and vice versa. By entirely ignoring the effect of Brexit in his speech, the Chancellor ignored the influence of such a political decision, but some of the effects of Brexit should have been tackled. The failure to guarantee the rights of EU citizens in this country will lead to disruption in the labour market. I am sure that I am not alone in knowing constituents who either have already left or are preparing to leave the country, including people who run small businesses, a German couple, someone in the creative sector, and one or two university researchers.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman and the SNP should be commended for raising this issue on so many occasions. It is the practicalities that worry me. EU citizens are extremely worried and distressed about their current position, so they need their applications to be processed, but there is no provision in the Budget to allow for those applications to be processed efficiently. Millions of people will have to go through the system.

[Roger Mullin]

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Indeed, that is a great worry to me, as it is to him and to many others. It is about not only the system’s efficiency, but its effectiveness and ability to make the right kinds of decisions in complex individual cases. I have constituents who have been here for many years but are finding it difficult to get various applications through.

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[Norman Lamb]

Our spring conference is approaching and we will be coming up with proposals.

[Keith Vaz]

Invite him to your conference.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the endorsement that I can count; I am most grateful. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is widely respected in the House as someone who knows a huge amount about social care and the health service. His project is, I think, welcomed by all parties. We do need an independent assessment of health spending.

The Times today contains a marvellous cartoon of the Chancellor dressed up as Marilyn Monroe, showing his NICs. I do not know whether Ms Monroe could sue for that cartoon, although she has been dead for some years. I want to take the debate away from national insurance contributions, which have dominated the discussion, to other areas. It is important to remember that the Budget is about funding the whole of Government, not just one aspect, although it is, of course, important to raise the money before spending it.

I begin with the Government’s international aid commitment, which was reiterated by the Prime Minister and confirmed by the Chancellor. I was pleased to note that 0.7% of gross national income for aid remains a strong commitment of this Government, even though less time in the Budget statement was spent on international development than the Chancellor spent praising his Parliamentary Private Secretary, the very worthy hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen). The Chancellor went past the development commitment very quickly, and, rightly, lavished praised on the hon. Gentleman for all the work he has done. However, I shall talk about the importance of maintaining and increasing the aid budget, especially at a time when there is a great deal of media pressure and scrutiny over what we do with our aid. It is right that there should be that scrutiny, although some sections of the media have an obsession with challenging every single bit of expenditure as if it in some way undermines the important principle that our Government provide aid to countries in need.

In particular, I highlight the aid given by the Treasury to Yemen through the Department for International Development. We heard only today that there is now a famine warning in Yemen. Of the aid that we give in the overall DFID budget, £100 million has been committed to the people of Yemen. However, although contributions have been made at a local level, a lot of the money can sadly not be delivered because of the current situation. My message to Treasury Ministers is to keep up with the commitment to fund DFID and to ensure it delivers to countries in need, such as Yemen. The aid should not just sit in a bank, but actually be spent. Until there is a ceasefire in Yemen, we will not be able to spend that money and therefore will not be able to alleviate that poverty.

[Stephen Doughty]

I concur with my right hon. Friend’s comments about the importance of DFID’s work and the support that it is providing in Yemen. That work has been praised by the Select Committee on International Development, as he well knows. Does he share my concerns that while we are providing that aid, Amnesty International has today said that there is new evidence that the Saudi-led coalition is using cluster munitions?

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is an amazing campaigner on these matters and has worked hard on the Yemen issue. He is right to raise this point, which is part of the overall debate and discussion. We cannot get the aid through unless the bombing stops. We need the ceasefire so that the £100 million that has been committed is spent. I bumped into the Secretary of State for International Development in Central Lobby yesterday, and she said that she is focused on and committed to increasing the amount of aid to Yemen. I am grateful for that, but that aid cannot get through, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) says, unless the bombing stops.

[Bob Stewart]

The right hon. Gentleman and I have a great interest in Yemen, both of us having lived there. My concern is that if we do not keep the aid in the bank, it might end up on some quayside in some dodgy port, where we do not want it to be and where it can be rifled by the mafia. We have to find a balance when we talk about delivering aid, particularly to somewhere like Yemen, because although we may be able to put the aid into the country, there it will sit until someone steals it.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman has served in Yemen, so he knows how lovely that country is when it is fully functioning. He is absolutely right that the aid needs to get to the people who actually need it, if they are to avoid the famine that is coming their way very shortly.

The second point I want to make is about the midlands engine. We have heard a lot about Birmingham and the west midlands—I am sure that has nothing to do with the fact that there is an election for Mayor in the area—but the Government need to remember that there is more to the midlands than Birmingham and other parts of the west midlands. There is, of course, Leicester and the east midlands. There is also Sherwood, and I see the Government Whip, the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer), sitting on the other side of the House. I received a letter from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government just now on my iPad, and Sherwood is not even mentioned—I hope the hon. Gentleman will make representations about that. If we talk about the midlands engine only in respect of Birmingham and the west midlands, we will lose out in terms of a part of the midlands that has been a driving force for business. There are huge amounts of talent, enterprise and expertise, and many small businesses, in places such as Leicester, so it is important that we spread the money evenly throughout the whole of the midlands.

Earlier, I mentioned that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who is sitting near the Dispatch Box, was my favourite diabetes Minister, and I pay tribute to all the work she did in the years she served in the Department of Health, along with the right hon. Member for North Norfolk. Last year’s Budget gave us the sugar tax, which was resisted by some in the Government. As a result of that tax, manufacturers are now changing their formulas to ensure, yes, that the tax yields less when it comes into effect, but also that our young people in particular will be able to eat products with less sugar in them.

The latest such product—commended by me in an early-day motion—is, of course, the breakfast cereal Honey Monster Puffs, whose sugar content has been reduced by 25%. Nestlé announced yesterday, just before the Budget, that it would reduce the sugar content of KitKats and other products by 10%. Those of us who frequently have to go to the Tea Room, and who are met by all the KitKats there—I am sure you are not seduced by those who run the Tea Room, Madam Deputy Speaker—will be pleased to know that we probably will not even taste the difference once 10% of the sugar is removed.

However, it remains the case that I would have liked to see more focus on prevention—prevention, prevention, prevention. If we spend money now, we will save money in the future. As we know, £10 billion was spent last year on dealing with diabetes and diabetes-related issues. Some 80% of complications are avoidable. The only people who appear to be benefiting from that expenditure are the drugs companies.

Only two weeks ago, on my way back from Yemen, I stopped in Doha. I was taken—the Financial Secretary will be fascinated by this, because she has always wanted to create something like it—to a wellness centre. It had not just a GP, a pharmacy, a podiatrist and an ophthalmologist, but a swimming pool and a gym. When people go to see their doctor and are diagnosed with diabetes, instead of having to have their Metformin, they are prescribed a session in the gym or, if they can swim—sadly, I cannot, but if I could, I would be prescribed one—a session in the swimming pool. That is how to deal with diabetes—through prevention expenditure. I would very much like to hear a commitment from the Minister that prevention will be at the top of the health agenda.

I was surprised that the Chancellor did not suggest an increase in Home Office funding, which faces two very difficult challenges. Last week, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary released a report on British policing, stating that it is in a “potentially perilous state” due to “dangerous” and “disturbing” practices. The report is pretty damning, but unfair in that it places the burden of blame on police forces themselves. They have sustained enormous cuts to their budgets over the past few years, with the result that we have 19,000 fewer police officers on our streets today. This, together with other cuts, means that the police cannot deliver on the kind of agenda that the Government, and certainly the Opposition, want them to deliver on. We are constantly told that crime is coming down. Well, it is, but the nature of crime has changed: it has gone from the high street into cyberspace. Hundreds of thousands of crimes are now being committed on the internet. Unless we give the police more money to fund training, we will not be able to deal with the crimes that will be inherent in our system over the next few years.

The second aspect of Home Office funding is that the Government will, in the end, have to give a guarantee about the right of EU citizens to remain in this country. Some 3.2 million people will have to be processed. Someone who has been here for five years has a right to remain and become a permanent citizen, but they still have to apply and to get their letter confirming it. The current waiting time is between four and seven months. People have to fill in a huge number of documents to confirm that they have been living in this country over the past five years and record every single absence. A unit needs to be set up in the Home Office, properly funded, to deal with the registration of EU citizens. Ministers may grimace at that prospect, but I am afraid that we are going to have to spend money to make sure that this happens.

We need to get the police funding formula in place. In Essex, Madam Deputy Speaker, which is run by your chief constable, Stephen Kavanagh, and in Leicestershire, which is run superbly by my chief constable, Simon Cole, we need a definitive statement on what the police funding formula is going to be. Without it, we simply do not know how much money is available at a local level to spend on local matters. It is therefore essential to make sure that this happens.

The great feature of the previous Chancellor’s Budgets was that he always had a surprise concerning culture. On the last occasion, he funded a commitment to Hull because it had become the city of culture. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at what can be done for Leicester. Given the incredible achievement of Leicester City football club in winning the English premier league and becoming the current holders of the premier league trophy, it would be nice to see some kind of commitment from the Government to cultural and sporting achievement. The previous Chancellor has done it before, and I hope that the Minister will consider doing something for Leicester in future.

Christmas Adjournment

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. Quite clearly, in the not too distant future large numbers of those affected will want to use their pension for the comfortable life they thought they were saving for and have literally been robbed of.

This year, we have resuscitated the all-party parliamentary group on Romania. I particularly want to raise the plight of Alexander Adamescu, a journalist from Romania —originally from Germany—who is resident in the UK and is under threat from a European arrest warrant for raising issues that are slightly controversial in Romania but in this country would not be an issue. That raises specific concerns about the relationship between Britain and Romania, and about how the European arrest warrant is used.

I also want to raise the plight of 1.5 million people displaced in Azerbaijan from the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The conflict there has been going on for far too long. It is a forgotten conflict, and unfortunately the position with Armenia, Russia and allies has not helped the overall situation. This summer, the all-party parliamentary group on Azerbaijan went to see one of the camps that has been set up for those people. They are suffering very greatly through no fault of their own. It is time that human rights and shared values were restored to that part of the world.

There is unfinished business in Parliament on two other issues that I will raise briefly. First, we have now gone a year since the expiry of the tobacco control plan that the Government implemented. We have been waiting a year for the new plan. We have been promised on frequent occasions that it would be published soon. On today’s Order Paper I see no progress on it, and I do not think the issue was aired at Health questions. It is obviously important that the Government publish the new tobacco control plan early in the new year, with far-reaching targets, so that we can set out our stall to make sure that the United Kingdom becomes a smoke-free country. It is important that the plan is set out, because without it we run the risk of going backwards on all the wonderful things that have been achieved over the past five years.

Equally, on behalf of the all-party parliamentary group for British Hindus I want to raise the fact that the Government have promised on several occasions to publish the consultation document on ridding ourselves of the unnecessary, ill-thought-out and divisive caste legislation. That consultation was promised by the end of the year. Today is the last day this year that we will meet in Parliament, and there has been no notification to Parliament about the publication of that consultation document. I trust that we will see the document before the end of the year, but Parliament should see it and it should be announced in Parliament before it is released to the public.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

May I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for all his work on behalf of the Hindu community, not just in Harrow but throughout the country? He and I compete as to the number of British Hindus in our constituencies, although I probably just beat him in Leicester. Does he agree that it is important that we have a debate on that document once it is published? It is not sufficient just to publish and rush it through the House. A proper debate involving the diaspora would be very helpful.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point. I have asked at the last two Women and Equalities questions for the publication of the consultation and asked at business questions for a statement to the House. We could have that debate and Members from all parties and with all interests could register their point of view. Sadly, that has yet to be the case. It is important that we have the debate before the consultation starts, so that it can frame the consultation rather than ending up responding to the document.

I will raise a couple more issues of significance before I conclude my opening speech. The first is the problems that I am sure Members in all parts of the House are experiencing with regard to the issuing of visas for weddings, religious ceremonies and educational or other particular purposes. Visas are being rejected on grounds that I consider spurious. That causes immense difficulties for people coming for religious functions, weddings and in particular funerals, where things are done at the last minute. Applications from India, Pakistan, Iran and Sri Lanka seem to be singled out in an unfair manner and are not treated properly.

I will continue to work in the new year for a two-year visitor visa to be issued for Indian citizens in the same way as the Government agreed for Chinese citizens. I have nothing against Chinese people wanting to visit—that is wonderful—but huge numbers of Indians want to come here and visit too, and I see no reason why they should suffer unfair discrimination when so many relatives are here and people want to visit and to use this country appropriately.

Local transport services are suffering. This may be a theme of other speeches in this debate. We are looking forward to Harrow-on-the-Hill station in the constituency of my honourable neighbour the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) being made step-free. I am looking forward to Stanmore station becoming step-free in the same timeframe. I trust that the solution that has been identified will go forward and will be appropriate.

The one local health issue that I want to raise is that we are seeing the rebuilding of the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital in my constituency. That is not before time. I and my predecessors have struggled to achieve that and I am delighted that it is finally happening and that we will see the development of a first-rate national hospital that suits the brilliant work that the doctors and nurses do.

I could raise a range of other issues, but I know that a huge number of colleagues are keen to update the House on what they think matters before we rise for the Adjournment. I look forward to the response of my good friend the Deputy Leader of the House to the debate in time-honoured fashion. I have no doubt that it will be appropriately challenging for him, but I know that he will respond and that colleagues will have suitable matters to raise.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish you, the Speaker, your fellow Deputy Speakers, the whole House, our colleagues, the staff and the people who keep us safe a very merry Christmas and a happy new year that I trust will be peaceful, prosperous and healthy. On behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, I open the debate and look forward to the speeches of hon. Members on both sides of the House.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry), who gave an excellent speech. He is right to have raised the problems of extremism and hate crime on the world wide web. I had to step out during the debate because I was leading my own debate on the tragic death of Brandon Singh Rayat, a 15-year-old boy who committed suicide because of the cyber-bullying he had experienced, and I am glad his parents are in the Public Gallery, as they were earlier in Westminster Hall.

The hon. Gentleman is right that leadership needs to be shown on this issue. There has been a succession of reports by the Home Affairs Committee, one them co-authored by the Deputy Leader of the House before he was promoted to his august position. The tragedy is that these things are not followed up—an excuse is always given. The hon. Gentleman’s example of the organisation, funded by the companies, that can professionally monitor what is going on, rather than people having to try to find out who in California they should speak to if they want something removed from the net, is a very good one. Rather than serving on the Home Affairs Committee, he should be giving evidence to it on this important point. I hope he will put his example to the Committee when it next meets.

In the few moments I have to speak in this traditional debate, I want to raise a few of my passions. First, as I said, I am glad to see the parents of Brandon Singh Rayat here. I hope the debate will lead to Mina Rayat being able to pursue her important campaign on cyber-bullying, which she launched two weeks ago, and that she will continue with it. When someone loses a child of 15—some of us in the House today are parents—it must be an unspeakable tragedy for them, and this campaign will give hope to families in a similar position.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned support for his local police service. When the Deputy Leader of the House comes to reply, I hope he will give us some good news about an issue that still concerns me: the Government’s failure to announce the police funding formula for not just the Leicestershire constabulary but the police service throughout the country. The former policing Minister, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), said the review of the police funding formula had been paused until the National Police Chiefs Council had completed its investigation into policing capabilities. We now know that Sara Thornton, the chair of the council, has said there is nothing to stop the review from proceeding at the same time as her capabilities review. It would therefore be good to find out when constabularies such as Leicestershire and Buckinghamshire, London boroughs such as Kingston and, indeed, Northern Ireland—although I think there is probably a different formula there—will know precisely how much money the police will have to spend.

As is my custom, I want to mention diabetes; I would be missing an opportunity if I did not. There is a time of year when people eat a lot of sugar, mince pies, cakes and things of that kind, as I have just done—I will have my metformin shortly to compensate. It is important to look at the variations in care for diabetes. Diabetes UK published a very interesting report with the all-party group on diabetes, which I am privileged to chair. The report was launched by the Health Secretary recently and pointed out that people are able to get structured education and care in certain parts of the country but not in others.

If, when I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, I had been sent off to the gym instead of being sent to the pharmacy to get my metformin and my other tablets, perhaps I would have prevented its onset. It would have come eventually, I know, because my mother had diabetes as well, but that might have prevented for a little longer its taking hold of my system. We should look at ways of saving money in the long term by spending more money now, and that means through structured education.

A number of my constituents will be heading off to India because the Indian Government have decided to recall the 1,000 rupee note, which is worth about £10, and the 500 rupee note, which is worth only £5, as part of their campaign to root out corruption in India. A number of British Indians came back with rupees when they last visited the country. When we go abroad we change our money and sometimes do not change it back over there but bring it back with us. A lot of my constituents, and indeed other members of the British Indian community, are having to change their money by 31 December, so many of them have very quickly decided to go back in order to bank it before it ceases to be legal tender. It is as though we had gone abroad with our £20 notes and suddenly the British Government had announced, “The £20 notes are no longer legal tender—please come back and bank them before 31 December.”

I wrote to the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, about the issue. He wrote back to tell me that if the Indian Government agreed, he would be quite happy for the rupees to be banked in an Indian bank in the United Kingdom to save my British Indian constituents, and others, from having to go all the way back to India. A lot of cricket supporters who have just gone over to India for the cricket matches have changed their pounds into rupees and now cannot change them back, so this is a good way of proceeding.

I wonder whether the Deputy Leader of the House could speak to the Foreign Secretary; I wrote to him some time ago to ask the British Government to contact the Indian Government to enable the notes to be banked in the United Kingdom. There are eight Indian banks in Leicester East; I am sure that the Deputy Leader of the House has one or two in Northampton North. This is an opportunity to save a lot of money for people who would otherwise have to go all the way to India just to put their money in the bank.

I have two final points, one of which is about Yemen. There is tragedy in Syria. The tragedies in Berlin and Turkey are terrible events that have shocked the whole world, but the situation in Yemen has now been ongoing for 15 months. Mr Speaker, you kindly granted an urgent question last week when we looked at the situation in Yemen, and the situation is not improving. The basic foods are not available. As I said to the Prime Minister when she gave her statement on the European Council on Monday, citizens in Hudaydah are eating grass and drinking sea water. The ports are closed and the airport is closed, so wheat cannot be brought into Yemen. Without wheat, people will not be able to survive.

This is not about a lack of aid. I thank you again, Mr Speaker, for coming to the Yemen day that we held last week, where we met members of the Yemen diaspora. Eight aid agencies were there, together with a Minister of State at the Department for International Development and a Foreign Office Minister, and we heard from the UN Deputy Secretary-General. Unless the ports and the airport are opened, humanitarian aid cannot be got in. The appeal launched last week by the Disasters Emergency Committee on the BBC has raised a lot of money, but there is no point in just having the money; it has to be spent on the people in Hudaydah and in other parts of Yemen. I very much hope that we will pursue the cause of a ceasefire.

Finally, let me say why I will remember 2016 as a good year. There are lots of reasons why I might not remember it as being particularly riveting, but for one reason I will: the victory of Leicester City football club as the English champions. It was one of those great events. I am not going to say that it will never happen again, because we know what happened to Mr Gary Lineker. Full marks to him for wearing only his underwear, as he promised he would do, when he lost his bet with the nation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is a Leicester City supporter—he supports the foxes. Every time I go to a match at the King Power stadium, I bring him back a programme. People wonder why I take two programmes and I always say that one of them is for him, so he has a collection that is as good, if not better, than mine. A number of other Members also support Leicester City football club. This was our year—it was a fantastic year—and that is why I was so pleased that, only on Sunday, Signor Ranieri was named coach of the year and Leicester City team of the year. The year 2016 has been a historic year for us; we will never, ever forget it and it will probably never be repeated.

[Jim Shannon]

Did Arsenal win anything?

[Keith Vaz]

I was going to say something about Arsenal—I thank my hon. Friend—because, of course, Mr Speaker is a great supporter of theirs. What unites us, of course, is that we do not really want to see Chelsea win the league. I think that it is Arsenal’s turn, but every time they get to the top of the premier league, something goes wrong. This year, we will keep our fingers crossed—not just for Mr Speaker, but for young Oliver, who can recite the players’ names backwards and forwards in the blink of an eye. Of course, we will carry on winning the premier league, but we would like to share it; it is only fair that we should give it to another team. This week I will place a bet on Leicester winning the champions league, because I am hopeful that we will proceed. That is what 2017 will be all about for me.

May I end by wishing you, Mr Speaker, the staff of the House, the Deputy Leader of the House, Ministers and colleagues on both sides of the House a very happy Christmas? I understand that it was an old tradition—I wonder whether this is in “Erskine May”—that whoever wound up this debate for the Government always ensured that every Member who was still in the House when it rose for the Christmas recess would get a mince pie. I do not know whether you have heard that particular story, Mr Speaker, but one of the Doorkeepers mentioned it to me, so I am looking forward to visiting the rooms of the Deputy Leader of the House at the end of the day and getting one. Let us hope that 2017 is a great year in which all our ambitions and dreams can be fulfilled.

Summer Adjournment

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Michael Ellis)]

It is a pleasure to make my first appearance at the Dispatch Box before you, Mr Speaker, and opposite the shadow Leader of the House. I believe the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) is also the shadow Deputy Leader and holds other positions. I am very reliably informed that he holds no fewer than four shadow positions. I am reminded of the classic film “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, in which Sir Alec Guinness played all the different roles. I invite the hon. Gentleman to consider taking on more responsibilities, because the main character in that film ended up as a duke. He alluded to Her Majesty’s 90th birthday—I did not know he was a royalist—and if he does want to hear any more about heraldry and the story of the unicorn, when he next has a couple of free days I will give him more details.

We have heard a lot from Members in this debate, which has clearly been a very good opportunity to expound on constituents’ and constituency activities, and the issues and difficulties they face.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

May I add my congratulations and those of other members of the Home Affairs Committee on the hon. Gentleman’s ministerial appointment? Two former members of the Select Committee are at the Dispatch Box opposite each other today and, as he says, occupying six jobs between them. Through him, may I also congratulate the Leader of the House—whom I first met when he was chairman of Cambridge University Conservative Association over 40 years ago? He was destined for high office, and he has got to the Cabinet at last.

[Michael Ellis]

If it were not for the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee we would no doubt still be in our original positions. Where we will be in due course is another matter altogether. I thank him for his support.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) spoke about flooding in his constituency, which is clearly of considerable concern. He raised the difficulties involved with flash flooding and sewage coming through, and I know his constituents will be very grateful to him for doing so in this place. He is very impressive in his representation of all communities in his constituency, and he is well known and recognised for that in the House.

On a lighter note, my hon. Friend also spoke about the advantages of yoga. I know you, Mr Speaker, have often recommended Members to take up yoga in certain circumstances. I do not know whether you and my hon. Friend would like to get together on that subject, but we await further developments with interest.

The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) spoke about the problems on Southeastern trains. He was not the only Member who spoke about train issues. There clearly are some issues, and the fact that he has raised them will have been to the satisfaction of his constituents and of others’.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) spoke about the railway station and the fact that there are insufficient rail services. He also mentioned his cycling expertise. I had noticed that he has a rather painful black eye, which I was sorry to hear about, but I am reassured that the Whips had nothing to do with it. I hope he is well. I know that the summer of music, arts and culture is coming up in Gloucester. People will no doubt want to visit for that.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) spoke of her success in dealing with B&Q, and I congratulate her on that. Reducing wider remuneration packages and blaming the national living wage would be short-sighted and would yield only a one-off gain. Doing so is not in the spirit of the national living wage, and I am sure that B&Q and others are acting accordingly.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) that ultimately open access decisions are for the Office of Rail and Road to determine, and we respect its independence in doing so. However, I recognise the potential benefits that open access competition can deliver for railway passengers and others.

I understand that the Queen’s handbags are made in the constituency of the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz)—so another quality product from Walsall. The hon. Lady indicated that the local authority was not listening to her or her residents about road humps. No doubt that authority will want to be rejuvenated, shall we say, in its attention to her representations. She also spoke about litter, a topic that resonated around the House, with Members on both sides speaking about it. It is a major problem. She wants to restart the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, and I will ask the relevant Department to write to her about that.

One could hear the medical expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) coming through in her remarks. She spoke about the importance of having water provided on platforms when it is too hot on crowded trains. She also spoke about aircraft noise and other pollution issues. Her expertise brings a great deal of richness to the House.

I think I am right in saying that the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) helped to create the Backbench Business Committee, so it is apposite to credit him with that this afternoon and say how much we appreciate it, as so many Members have taken part in the debate. He spoke of disadvantaged areas in his constituency and the casework that he deals with. I was struck by the way in which he thanked his staff and by the wonderful success that he and they have achieved for Max and, no doubt, many, many others. I congratulate him on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) spoke about Brexit. I know that she is particularly alive to the issue of young voters, and is on the all-party parliamentary group on voter registration. The value of her work in respect of young voters is recognised in this House, and that issue will not be forgotten about. It is very important indeed.

The hon. Member for Stirling (Steven Paterson) spoke about quarrying on Gillies hill. I wish him well with his lobbying on that. It is a devolved matter, but he will no doubt get the requisite attention from the local authority. The wooded area he described sounds very pleasant indeed.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) for welcoming the military regiments he spoke of which have come to his area. He spoke also of the county hospital doing well. The House knows him to be a powerful advocate for his area.

We also heard from the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), whom I had the pleasure of debating with in Westminster Hall yesterday. I can tell her that the Type 26 warships are certainly not indefinitely delayed. My information is that that is not correct. It struck me that she took particular care to thank the Clerks and staff on the Scottish Affairs Committee and to wish them well over the summer recess.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) spoke of the engineering skills gap. The Wiltshire festival of engineering that she is arranging in her constituency sounds very impressive, and I know that there are wonderful opportunities in Wiltshire. She said that she had visited 100 local businesses in the past year—what a superb ambassador for job creators in her constituency.

I welcome the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) to her place and congratulate her on her by-election success. She was a vocal advocate for junior doctors in her remarks, but I can assure her that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health cares deeply about the national health service, its patients and its staff. No doubt the hon. Lady will agree that legal action is expensive, unnecessary and unwarranted, and we hope that the matter can be resolved.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) spoke about Rugeley B power station, and some allusion was made to its beauty or otherwise. That is no doubt a matter for extensive debate, but she did indicate that she had held a jobs fair in her constituency. No doubt that was welcomed by those who worked at the Rugeley B power station and by many others. I was also interested to hear about Mill Green, Cannock’s own Bicester village in the making, and look forward to my invitation. She also mentioned Watchman V who is, I believe, the dog of the year. We wish Watchman V well as the mascot in her constituency.

The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden) spoke about tuition fees. I am pleased to be able to reassure him that the statistics show that more disadvantaged young people are now going into university education than ever did under the Labour Government. I would have thought it right to welcome the written statements that have been released today, because Members will have a considerable opportunity over the next six weeks to study them and to return to the matters fully refreshed in the autumn.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) gave his usual extremely impressive performance. He mentioned dozens of separate items, and, if I may, I will write to him about his remarks. I was not able to write them down fast enough by hand. I will, if I may, send my best wishes to his mother, who is 104 years of age. He mentioned Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, and I am sure we are all fully supportive of its work raising awareness of cervical cancer and the importance of cervical screening—just one of the matters that he mentioned, among many other important subjects.

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) was concerned about housing, employment security and the NHS. He will be reassured, one hopes, to hear that this Government have built more housing than Labour did in its 13 years in government. This Government also introduced the national living wage and are supporting the NHS to the tune of £10 billion.

My hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) spoke passionately about her constituency. It is an expanding town, and she is rightly proud that youth unemployment is now at a record low. So much is being done to continue and ensure business investment in the town. She did say there were too many traffic lights, certainly at one junction. No doubt many Members will have some sympathy with that.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) can be reassured that not only can Hansard understand him but so can everybody in the Chamber, too. He spoke passionately about the history of Northern Ireland and the Orange Order. It was a fascinating, if brief, history lesson. No doubt we will hear more in due course.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) spoke of the air quality in London, which Members from across the country no doubt take an interest in, as we in the House of Commons are subject to it. It is not quite as bad as the great stink in the Victorian period, when the curtains of the Palace of Westminster had to be draped in lime to try to disguise the aroma, but there are still pollution issues. No doubt he will continue to be alive to those issues and to represent his constituents accordingly. I will ask the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to write to him about the rescheduled meeting. He will appreciate that, with the changes that have occurred in recent days, his meeting had to be postponed. That is regrettable, but it can be rearranged. He mentioned the Company of Shipwrights, of which he is a proud member, and made a very important point about those who are detained in India. I will ask the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to write to him about that.

I take this opportunity to wish everyone well over the summer recess, in particular the staff of the House, you and your Deputies, Mr Speaker, and the Chairs of all the Committees—not only the Home Affairs Committee, although perhaps with particular good wishes to that one. Like many other Members, I would like to send my best wishes to the retiring member of staff, Noeleen Delaney. I understand she is approaching the thirtieth anniversary of her employment here. She has, no doubt, served generations of Members of Parliament with the same excellence, warmth and kindness of spirit throughout the past three decades. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

It is an honour and privilege to serve in this House. It is a duty that is borne with great humility and service by everyone on all sides. To be a servant of this House and to appear at the Dispatch Box for the first time is a great honour for me. I thank everyone for their good wishes. I wish everyone well over the recess.

Article 50: Parliamentary Approval

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Penrose]

My right hon. and learned Friend gets the parliamentary award for optimism for saying that there is only the “slightest chance” that we might generate more heat than light on the matter over the next few weeks. He is absolutely right to say that this is something that Ministers need to take forward but, as I said earlier, I am absolutely certain that the Government, the Opposition, the Backbench Business Committee and others will take many different opportunities to make sure that Parliament’s views are forcefully expressed and the issues are debated as we go.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that the triggering of article 50 will have profound consequences for the 3 million EU citizens who are living in the United Kingdom. Has the Minister for Europe, who is sitting next to him on the Treasury Bench, had any representations from other EU countries about the position of their nationals here? If not, will we be able to have clarity on whether they have the right to remain? At the moment, Ministers are saying different things about these rights, and we need that certainty before any triggering of article 50.

[John Penrose]

The point, of course, is that there will be ongoing discussions about this and many other issues. The question of when those discussions might bear fruit, particularly given the fact that there have been some concerns about informal negotiations being inappropriate, is something that will have to be resolved.



At this stage, I give the right hon. Gentleman the same reply that I have given to others: we must ensure that we have a programme, which will be laid out by the new Prime Minister as soon as she is in place. I hope she will be able to give him more detail and clarity on that point as well as many others that will be involved in the negotiations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

This will need to be considered in detail once those cases have been concluded. There are still areas that were not fully explored in the original inquiry. There have obviously been events since the original inquiry, not least the proceedings in the courts. All these matters will need to be taken into account when we consider how best to proceed after the conclusion of those cases.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State was one of three Chairs of Select Committees, along with myself and the now Lord Alan Beith, who went to see the Prime Minister and we were given a cast-iron guarantee that there would be a part 2. I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says about criminal proceedings, which is exactly what the Home Secretary said on 16 December, but there is no reason why we should not have a timetable to prepare for the eventuality. These cases cannot go on for ever—even in our criminal justice system. There has to be an end. May we not have a timetable and perhaps the selection of a head of the inquiry so that we can begin that very important process?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am delighted to hear that the Home Secretary and I are singing from the same hymn sheet on this matter. I have talked to her about it, but that was at a time when it looked as if the cases were going to come to a conclusion in the reasonably near future. Fortunately, or unfortunately, new cases have been brought, and one or two of them have not even started yet, which makes it very difficult to put a timetable on developments. I obviously agree with right hon. Gentleman that these cases cannot go on indefinitely, but they are already going on rather longer than was initially anticipated.

UK Economy: Post-Referendum Assessment

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

What we are doing is making clear what the risks to the British people would be were we to leave the European Union. All I would say to SNP Members is that if they have a positive contribution to help the remain case, let them make it, rather than lecturing others on how to put across important factors that will, I hope, sway the British people. The British public are seeking information on the consequences of leaving the European Union, and the Government have a duty to provide that information.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is right that we should deal with scare stories as quickly as possible, and I think that the Minister has done a very good job in that regard. Will he comment on the remarks made by the Minister for Employment in Leicester last Thursday, when she parked a very big red bus in front of the biggest temple in my constituency and announced that if we stayed in the European Union all the curry houses in Leicester would have to close down because the EU was responsible for a crisis in chefs? Will he confirm that the issuing of visas is actually a matter for the UK Government and has nothing to do with the EU? Will he also confirm that if the British people vote to stay in the EU, we will still be able to eat curry in Leicester, but if they vote to go out, Leicester City will still play in the European Champions League?

[Mr Gauke]

I shall try not to be drawn too much on the subjects of curry or Leicester City, although I of course congratulate Leicester City and look forward to their season, and possibly more, in the Champions League. Immigration policy for those outside the European Union is clearly a matter for this Government and for this House, and that will continue to be the case, whatever the result on 23 June.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

We have been extremely active on that front, but scientific knowledge is moving on. I remember when diesel was positively subsidised by Governments because it was thought to be more environmentally friendly. In a more appropriate debate, those issues are well worth pursuing. I understand the problem. I turn to what the Chancellor has to devote himself to: the Budget judgment and its implications for the economy. The Chancellor accepted, as he has to, that that is his principal responsibility. The Chancellor has the most difficult job in government, because he has to spend all his time challenging all the lobbies that demand extra expenditure and challenging his colleagues to find savings or improvements in the budgets of their Departments in order to close the gap.

What this Chancellor has not done is take a short-term view at any stage. That is why he has achieved such remarkable economic success. What I liked about his Budget speech was when he stressed how it was for future generations. What he said a few moments ago—a soundbite, if I may say so, which I had not heard before: there is no social justice without sound finance—is one of the best summations of one nation Conservatism I have heard for a very long time.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I shall be in trouble with the Speaker and everyone else who wants to speak if I give way. Otherwise I would love to give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [Lords]

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Would my hon. Friend also welcome something for which some of us have been campaigning for the last 24 years? Twenty-four years ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International —the sixth-largest private bank in the world—closed and the Bingham report was commissioned to look at the supervision of the Bank of England and at its powers. However, one part of the report has not been published over the last 24 years—the confidential second part. Does my hon. Friend think it should now be published?

[Rob Marris]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. Many of his constituents in Leicester, and mine in Wolverhampton, were adversely affected by BCCI’s collapse, and unless we publish that material, we will not learn from it.

There have been considerable problems. As the right hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), the Chair of the Treasury Committee, put it at the Report stage of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill in 2013 in this very Chamber:

“The crisis of standards and trust in banking—and it is a crisis—is multi-faceted, and so are the necessary remedies…In a nutshell, boards were negligent and the system of regulation was found seriously wanting the first time it was tested.”—[Official Report, 8 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 76.]

That was absolutely right. Sadly, that is still the situation now. There have been too few prosecutions. It bemuses me, as a lawyer, why the authorities cannot use section 16 of the Theft Act 1968, on obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception, rather than going off on jaunts unsuccessfully looking at conspiracy charges, which are much more difficult to prove.

There has been a series of post-2008 crash infractions by banking institutions. Since 2013, the new Financial Conduct Authority, which replaced the old Financial Services Authority, has dished out fines to firms large and small totalling almost £3 billion. That includes big fines to Barclays, Lloyds, RBS and HSBC. Banks such as Standard Chartered have been paying big fines in the States. That is for wrongdoing that took place after the crash in 2008, so some of these people simply do not learn. Today, according to the BBC, Barclays and Credit Suisse have been fined a total of $154 million by US regulators for their American dark pool trading operations. Those may have begun before 2008, but the wrongdoing continued until well after, so these people sometimes do not learn.

There are problems with the Bill. The test should be whether regulation will lead to better or worse compliance. Quite a lot of today’s debate has been about the reverse burden of proof, and that is important, but we want a strict regime to encourage compliance. However, that is not going to happen if we get rid of the reverse burden of proof. The question is, will this change make prosecutions easier or harder? It will make them harder. Will it make compliance more or less likely? My hunch is that abolishing the reverse burden of proof will make it less likely, but we do not know, because the Government are rushing to get this change made before the SM&CR comes in on 7 March—it is a good acronym, but I would pronounce it “smacker”, because that is what we should have.

We have had some indecision by the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the years. Back in July 2013, in the Government response to the report by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards—this is still on the Government website—he said:

“Cultural reform in the banking sector marks the next step in the government’s plan to move the whole sector from rescue to recovery and ensure that UK banks demonstrate the highest standards, and are able to support business and drive economic growth.”

However, if the Bill is passed unchanged, it will take us backwards.

If we look at what the FCA is doing, it appears to have had pressure put on it. In its business plan for 2015-16—for this very year—its chair, John Griffith-Jones, said:

“In our last Risk Outlook we identified the seven most important forward-looking areas of focus in our view…Poor culture and controls continue to concern us, notwithstanding the efforts being made by firms to improve both.”

He wanted to look at the culture in the banking sector and the financial services sector, but that now appears to have gone out the window.

On the reverse burden of proof, I say with all due respect that, as far as I know—I stand to be corrected—the chief executive-designate of the Financial Conduct Authority, Dr Bailey, is not a lawyer. However, he is pronouncing on legal matters. In a letter from Lord Bridges of Headley, a Parliamentary Secretary in the Cabinet Office, he is quoted as saying:

“The introduction of the ‘duty of responsibility’ in place of the ‘presumption’ makes little difference to the substance of the new regime. Once introduced, it will be for the regulators (rather than the senior manager) to prove that reasonable steps to prevent regulatory breaches were not taken. This change is one of process, not substance”.

I have to say to Dr Bailey that, as a lawyer, I profoundly disagree. I know what the burden of proof is in civil cases, and I know what the burden of proof is in criminal cases. I know what the concept of strict liability is, and I know what the reverse burden of proof is. The reverse burden of proof is not as bad as strict liability, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) mentioned that. We have strict liability for things such as the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974—one of the Acts under which I made my living before I entered this place.

We want the Government to tighten the regime, not loosen it, as this Bill will if passed unaltered. Some of the proponents of the Bill seem to think, or certainly did think, that regulation of banking was too tight before the crash in 2008. In March 2005, the Centre for Policy Studies published a report called “The Leviathan is still at large” in which it called for, among other things,

“an industry with responsible senior management, ensuring that consumer protection is provided through market forces and competitive brands jealous of their reputations, and where risk-taking is not viewed as dangerous but as commendable”.

It also recommended

“an industry where competition abroad and competitiveness at home are not hampered by the costs and burden of being regulated, or by the costs (and conflicts) of educating consumers, or of policing and prosecuting money-laundering and financial crime.”

Before I came to the House this evening, I looked up the definition of a phrase with which hon. Members will be well familiar, “the reverse ferret”, which is

“a sudden reversal in an organisation’s editorial line on a certain issue. Generally, this will involve no acknowledgement of the previous position.”

It came from Kelvin MacKenzie when he was at The Sun. Well, tonight we have a double reverse ferret; I do not know what that is called. The report by the Centre for Policy Studies, published in March 2005, before the world crash, had 10 authors; it was a co-operative effort. Two of those authors are now Treasury Ministers; they were not MPs at the time. One of them is the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who has been addressing the House tonight, and the other is the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Before 2005, they were saying, “Labour’s got regulation too tight”, while many of us on the Labour Benches were saying, “Labour’s got regulation too loose”. To my great sadness, I was right and my own Government were wrong, but this Government are making it worse. They tightened things up with the reverse burden of proof, and so on, in 2013, and two years later, before it came into force, untested, they said it was to be done away with under this Bill. That is a double reverse ferret, and it is not acceptable.