Point of Order

Debate between Layla Moran and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Thursday 12th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance on today’s hot-off-the-press written ministerial statement on the review of the tier 1 investor route, the so-called golden visas. For years the Government have promised that they will publish that review so that we can understand how Putin’s cronies have been exploiting this route to get into our country, and, after a five-year wait, we thought that today would be the day, but a reading of the statement makes it clear that the Government have no intention of publishing the review. All that they have released is a statement about the summary of the findings, and it tells us almost nothing that we did not already know. This comes after repeated assurances from Ministers at the Dispatch Box that they would release the review in full, and it is farcical. The review itself contains fewer than 1,300 words, and it has been 1,300 days since the Government promised to release it.

What we need to know is this. The Government say they have identified a “small minority” of the 6,000 applicants as a risk, but we have no idea how many they are, what nationality they are and what links to Putin they have. How can we hold Ministers to account for what they have said they are going to do? I have submitted an amendment to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill to get them to do it, but they should have done it today.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order and for giving me notice of it. I understand that she was not able to raise the matter during business questions, because the statement was published only after questions had started. However, she said that she had tabled an amendment about it, and the Leader of the House will certainly have heard what she said. The Table Office will be able to advise her on further ways of raising the matter, but she has done so in some detail already, and, as I have said, the Leader of the House will have heard her point of order.

Bills Presented

Northern Ireland Budget Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris, supported by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary James Cleverly, Secretary Michael Gove, Secretary Alister Jack, Secretary David T. C. Davies, John Glen and Steve Baker, presented a Bill to authorise the use for the public service of certain resources for the years ending 31 March 2023 and 2024 (including, for the year ending 31 March 2023, income); to authorise the issue out of the Consolidated Fund of Northern Ireland of certain sums for the service of those years; to authorise the use of those sums for specified purposes; to authorise the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland to borrow on the credit of those sums; and to repeal provisions superseded by this Act.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 16 January, and to be printed (Bill 225) with explanatory notes (Bill 225-EN).

Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner (Appointment by Parliament) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alistair Carmichael, supported by Daisy Cooper, Wendy Chamberlain, Tim Farron, Sarah Green and Christine Jardine, presented a Bill to make provision for the appointment by Parliament of the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner if the post is vacant for 3 months or more; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 February, and to be printed (Bill 226).

Long Covid: Impact on the Workforce

Debate between Layla Moran and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. The caring responsibilities are greatly increased, as is the prevalence in children. I was alerted by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) to a case of a parent who is asking for dispensation for her child from taking examinations because she has missed so many days of school. I am talking to the Education Secretary separately about that point, but long covid affects the entire family, not just the workforce.

Some 1.5 million people have long covid, but 989,000 people say that those long covid symptoms adversely affect their day-to-day activities and 281,000 people report that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot”. That often means they must take part-time instead of full-time work, and sadly it often means they are unable to recover well because they are pushed to try to get back to work.

The effect on business is now being better documented. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that a quarter of UK employers cited long covid as one of the main causes of long-term sickness absence among their staff. For small businesses, the effects can be devastating. The Federation of Small Businesses has shared guidance on how to help with statutory sick pay and arranging for temporary staff cover.

However, I am concerned that the ACAS guidance right now is pretty sparse; I hope the Minister might take that up. The guidance signposts to other websites but does not make it clear that one of the most important things to do with long covid is often to let someone rest. People say “listen to your body” when it comes to medical things; I am afraid that with long covid that is actually the treatment plan.

If someone is forced or encouraged into work by their employer—often inadvertently, if they do not have proper guidance—it can set them back and cause even more problems down the line. One of our main calls is for employer guidance, but I also urge the Government to look at the ACAS website, for example, and ensure that it is clear to employers how they can help and support their employees to stay at home and rest as long as they need to, so that they come back and we do not unnecessarily lose people from the workforce.

A legal expert speaking to the APPG described the lack of access to financial support and said,

“lots of people with Long Covid find themselves starting for the very first time to be involved in the obstacle course which is our benefit system”.

It is clear that long covid is having a serious impact on the ability of our workforce to do their jobs, and we can only expect that to get worse as the virus spreads through the population again and we get more cases of long covid.

What can we do? The all-party group has released a report on long covid this week; if the Minister has not seen it, I would be happy to give him a copy. In it, we make 10 recommendations, but I will highlight just a few. First, the Government need urgently to prioritise research treatments for long covid patients. We welcome the money already committed, but we would contrast it with the United States, for example, where $1 billion has been earmarked for this, because the US recognises the effect long covid could have on its economy and sees this as an investment. I urge the UK Government to find similar ambition.

Secondly, we call for employer guidelines, set out by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in conjunction with the Department of Health and Social Care, to help all businesses to help their employees back into work. Thirdly, we call for the UK Government to launch a compensation scheme for all those frontline workers currently living with long covid, similar to the armed forces compensation scheme.

The Minister will perhaps be aware that the process for the designation of an occupational disease is ongoing; we are hopeful that that will report back soon, and we are discussing that with the Department for Work and Pensions. That designation could be game-changing, particularly in those public sector areas where prevalence was incredibly high, such as education, the health and social care workforce and public transport, which had some of the highest prevalences of covid, particularly at the beginning.

The Office for National Statistics survey points to where we need to look. However, I urge the Government not to wait for that designation. Many of those workers, as in my examples, have already left the professions. They are leaving the sector or deciding to take early retirement, and this is a time when our economy needs a boost. It needs those experienced workers. At the moment, we are not paying any attention to that.

The main reason we secured this debate was to urge the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to look ahead and take this seriously. The best thing we can do right now is to help hard-pressed people in the UK in our fight against Putin, against the cost of living crisis and all the rest. If we are to get our economy back on its feet, we must get our workers back at their desks. If those workers have long covid, there is currently very little out there to support them or those businesses that desperately want them back.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I think we can get everybody in with a reasonable amount of time, if everyone limits their comments to a maximum of eight minutes.

Points of Order

Debate between Layla Moran and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

All I can say is that we have to persist, which the hon. Gentleman is clearly doing. He is not alone in his concern about this matter, as he has rightly said. I will ensure that Mr Speaker is aware of this comments. As I said, he might, as a member of the Procedure Committee, like to take the issue back to that Committee as well.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will no doubt be aware that journalists often call the day before a recess the “taking out the trash day”. This morning, we found out that the Government have announced a new policy and consultation, not on trash but on sewage and river pollution. They have not come to the House and, as far as I am aware, they are not making a statement, which means they get to avoid parliamentary scrutiny of the matter for weeks.

A plan to deal with sewage is critical: water companies have admitted to discharging raw sewage into our rivers and estuaries more than 372,000 times in the past year. It has happened for 1,000 hours in Whitney, just upstream from my constituency, and for 100 hours in Botley and North Hinksey—and that is in my patch alone. I know the issue worries Members from all parties, so are you aware, Madam Deputy Speaker, of any statement that might come today? If there will not be one, how can we encourage the Government to come to the House and answer questions?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point of order. As she says, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has today published a consultation that is open until Thursday 12 May. Mr Speaker has not had an application from the Department to make an oral statement today.

I say again that the Leader of the House was present for business questions; it would have been very appropriate for the hon. Lady to raise the issue then so that she had direct access to the Leader of the House. I advise her that that would be a good way to draw attention to the point she made. Having said that, those on the Treasury Bench will have heard her. I urge Members who wish to raise points of order after business questions to remember that they have the chance to raise issues directly with the Leader of the House during business questions.

Points of Order

Debate between Layla Moran and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me notice of her point of order. I am sure she will understand that it is not for the Chair to police how right hon. and hon. Members communicate with one another. However, it is extremely important that all Members can make effective contact with Government Departments and that all Members get responses in good time. I feel that that is particularly true in the case of Afghanistan, where many of the issues are of the utmost urgency. I do expect, and I know the Speaker expects, Ministers to do everything they can to make sure that they and their Departments are responsible to all right hon. and hon. Members. I hope that those on the Treasury Bench will feed back the concern that has been raised.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you very much for your answer, because it helped to provide clarification, and I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) for raising the point of order. I share her concern; my office alone is supporting 400 Afghans. I just point out that the “Dear Colleague” letter said that the Government “cannot pursue” these cases and that they would consider

“how this data will be used in the future”,

which seemed to suggest that all the correspondence that MPs have been sending to the Department will not be answered. Furthermore, it says to us not to write to the Department. Is that proper? In my time as an MP—it has been four years now—sometimes letters have been late, but they have always come back.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the hon. Lady for that further point of order. I know that this was raised quite a few times in the urgent question yesterday. Again, I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will take that point back and ensure that right hon. and hon. Members get clarification about the situation.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Debate between Layla Moran and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Although a number of people have withdrawn from this debate, there are still a fair number of speakers. That means that if everybody takes about six minutes, we will be able to get everybody in. We need to think of each other in conducting the debate. Nos. 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 on the call list have withdrawn, so we now go to Layla Moran.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD) [V]]

As a physics graduate and the MP for Oxford West and Abingdon—a constituency proudly at the heart of this country’s scientific innovation—I welcome much of what ARIA hopes to achieve. Time and again, the lack of funding for genuinely high-risk, high-reward science is a common refrain in conversations I have with scientists I meet, so on the face of it ARIA is a good idea.

Nevertheless, the Liberal Democrats have concerns about the Bill, and I will quickly raise just two. First, we are very concerned about the Secretary of State’s unchecked powers to choose who leads this highly independent agency. On top of that, it was recently revealed that the Government’s intention is to exempt ARIA from freedom of information legislation. Transparency is at the core of good science, as it should be for good politics. If we want this organisation to succeed, the public should have faith in how taxpayers’ money is spent. That is why the Liberal Democrats have proposed a strong accountability mechanism in amendment 11, which would give the Science and Technology Committee the power to approve nominees for the position of chair and chief executive officer.

Secondly, it is beyond disappointing that the Government have failed to use ARIA’s potential to tackle the climate emergency. New clause 3 would therefore ensure that ARIA’s research did not lead to any increase in the UK’s carbon emissions. Moreover, a quarter of ARIA’s annual budget would be directed specifically to the development of green technologies.

In conclusion, transparency and the climate emergency are two of the very many important aspects that are missing from this Bill—ones that we seek to fix. This new agency has great potential. Let us not mess it up now.

Long Covid

Debate between Layla Moran and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Thursday 14th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran [V]]

I thank all Members who have contributed to this debate, but also all those who were unable to contribute. When we put in for it, we thought that it would be well subscribed, given that, I would wager, most Members in this House will have been contacted by a constituent, or more than one constituent, who now has long covid. For all those with long covid who are watching today, I hope they have the assurance that this House will continue to listen and encourage the Government to take action as our understanding of this disease improves.

We certainly heard some powerful stories today. There is obviously not time to go through all of them. I was struck, as we always are, by the contribution from the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who brings the subject to life with his own experience but also rightly asks: what about those who do not have the flexible working that is afforded to us as MPs?

Several Members mentioned that there are learnings that we must take from other conditions. In particular, ME was mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), among others. I thank her for her work and leadership on the all-party parliamentary group on ME. There is a lot that we can learn from that.

The hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) rightly raised mental health, and the trauma that people face as a result of being hospitalised with covid. I think that almost all Members mentioned financial support, and many highlighted the failure of the welfare system to cope with this changing landscape. That is an area that we continue to need to push on. My right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) put it very well when he said that the Government need to take a humble approach to the changing picture.

I thank the Front Bench spokespeople, and particularly the Minister for her response and for listening so diligently to the debate. I thank her for the update on the research and the NHS response. It is clear that we are finally getting going, but I hope that she also recognises that we need to continue to finesse and change as our understanding evolves. I hope she will take a personal interest in that. Finally, it would be wonderful if she would consider a meeting with me and others in the all-party group, to talk about the areas that she did not cover, in particular publishing the register, if that is possible, and a recognition by employers that long covid could be an occupational disease, and the support that would be needed by those who suffer from it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Lady for winding up the debate, but we now need to move on because we have another full debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered long covid.

Education and Local Government

Debate between Layla Moran and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran]

I could not agree more. Our teachers are heroes. Day in, day out, teachers in secondary and primary schools, especially primaries—I still do not understand how they do it; those people have the patience of angels—are doing an incredible job, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the chance to say so. That said, however, they are doing it under enormous strain.

The thin end of the wedge is exclusions, which currently represent a huge crisis in our education system. Vulnerable children are falling through the cracks of a system that is under extraordinary strain. As I said earlier, I went into politics because I was appalled that there was such a strong link in this country between where people go and where they come from. This House is becoming more representative when it comes to women and a bit more representative when it comes to black and minority ethnic people, but how representative is it when it comes to socioeconomic backgrounds? That, I think, is the one thing that we do not talk enough about in this place.

In our schools, it is the kids who come from poorer backgrounds who are consistently falling through the cracks. The rate of permanent exclusions increased by 52% between 2013-14 and 2017-18, returning to levels not seen since the end of the last Labour Government. In secondary schools, for every 10 pupils on the school roll, one temporary exclusion is issued. Pupils with moderate special educational needs are five times more likely to be excluded than those without them, and more than 50% of children with SEND who are excluded have social, emotional or mental health difficulties. Black Caribbean and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are the most likely to be excluded, and pupils on free school meals are four times as likely to be excluded as their classmates from more affluent backgrounds.

I do not believe for one second that those children are in any way less able than anyone else. There is something wider going on here. I think that we need to look at our own system. There are perverse incentives in it, to do with accountability and the inspection regime, that encourage teachers to “off-roll” difficult students before GCSEs. Headteachers are desperate, because of the punitive way in which Ofsted uses results, to take some of them out of the system so that their ratings do not fall. We know that that is happening: Ofsted itself has alerted us to it.

Ultimately, who sets the regime under which Ofsted inspects? Who gives Ofsted its money? It is the Department for Education, and the direction for that is driven by this place. Schools are judged on academic progress. Incidentally, it is the support staff who are the first to go in these leaner financial times. People talk about behaviour, and we heard the Minister talk earlier about the fact that the Government were putting some more money into local government support—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I should just say that I should have said the limit was six minutes. The hon. Lady has just had seven; it was adjusted in the end.