Overseas Electors Bill

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 23rd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to that point, does my hon. Friend not think it rather strange that we still do not give the vote to EU citizens who have might have lived here for many, many years? The Conservative party seems to have no inclination to want to help people who live here, pay taxes here and contribute to this country to be able to vote. They should be our first priority, rather than trying to reach out to people who do not necessarily contribute to this country anymore.

[Sandy Martin]

There is a very important and powerful point here. As part of the European Union, we have had a very good arrangement with other EU countries in that, where people are voting in local elections, they vote in the local election where they live. Clearly, if someone lives in and votes in a particular borough or district, they are receiving services from that borough or district and are paying the council tax level that they have voted for. I think that arrangement works extremely well.

I have always found it a little odd that French or Italian citizens who have been living in this country for years should vote in French or Italian elections—for example, if they have been living here for 20 years and are clearly not taking part in French or Italian society. A sensible move would be towards people voting, at every level, for the polity in which they live.

A central part of what I am trying to get to is that when we vote, we are voting on things that affect us. When we vote as MPs in this place, we vote on things that affect our constituents. We should not be voting for things that do not affect our constituents, and in general, people should not be voting for things that will never affect them and will not affect the shape of the society in which they live.

I had legitimate views about how wealth should be distributed where I was living, even when I was unpaid, and I have not changed those views. As I was about to say before the various interventions were made, my view that I should be paying more taxation is not my party’s policy. I am being a bit more radical than my party leadership, because our taxation proposals in the manifesto that we put to British voters last year did not increase personal taxation for anyone on an income under £80,000. Be that as it may, I live in this polity. I voted for representatives in the past; I am now able to take my place and represent others who wish me to secure a well-regulated country that pays its taxes and provides its services, and which I am intimately and personally involved in.

The issue of 15 years is clearly crucial. If, as she intimated, the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) were to travel to another country for two years on sabbatical to show them, for instance, how it would be sensible for them to set up a bicameral parliamentary system, I am sure they would be extremely grateful for her expertise in that area, and as citizens of the world who want to see other countries being properly governed and regulated, I am sure that we would all be delighted that she had gone to show them that expertise. It would be entirely unreasonable, if a general election were to happen during those two years, for her not to be allowed to vote in that general election—unless she happened to have been elevated to the other House in the meantime. As long as she is a Member of this House, she, like the rest of us, will be able to vote in the next general election, whether she is in this country or abroad.

However, there is a point at which we have to ask whether people are living in this country. If someone is going abroad for more than 15 years and has family, I venture to suppose that they would want to take their immediate family with them. Anybody who decides that they are going to live permanently and completely abroad for 15 years and does not take their family with them obviously does not want to stay with their family anyway.

The idea that someone should be able to vote for a Government they think would be better for their family, although they do not want their family with them, is a bit bizarre. Clearly, if somebody lives abroad for more than 15 years and takes their family with them, the overwhelming assumption—the clear picture that gives to people out there who are looking at what others are doing—is that they have decided to live in another country and that they have emigrated. This country has a proud history of emigration. People have emigrated to Canada, South America, South Africa and Australia, and they have helped to build thriving societies in all parts of the globe. All of them—or almost all—vote for the Governments of those countries, and rightly so.

When Canada, Australia and South Africa were dominions of this country, they voted for the Governments of those dominions, and rightly so. That was a sensible approach to representative and electoral rights, because they were voting for people who had power to make decisions about the lives that they were leading in those countries.

If this Bill had been passed in 1850, and we had given people who moved abroad the right to vote in the last constituency in which they had happened to be before emigrating for the rest of their lives, how could we have set up thriving and independent political bodies in those other parts of the world? How could we possibly have expected the people of this country, who were still living in this country, to be happy with circumstances in which every time there was a general election, all the people who had decided to move to Canada, Australia or South Africa, and their descendants, had more of an electoral say over how this country was governed than those who had stayed here and lived here?

If we gave the right to vote in British general elections to British citizens for the rest of their lives, irrespective of whether they were living in this country, that would presumably extend to their children, if their children were British citizens, although the children were not living in this country. If we did the same for the children of those children, where would it end? If Ireland had gone down that route, there might well have been far more people in New York voting in Irish general elections than in Ireland. The clear point is that if people are going to vote in an election, they need to be affected by that vote.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Is it not bizarre when, in other countries, the right to vote in elections is extended to generation after generation, and a large proportion of the electorate are outside the country where the election is taking place? When I was in Buenos Aires the other year, the campaign that was taking place on the streets concerned not an Argentinian but an Italian election. There were posters in the streets, and politicians were flying over from Italy. It is bizarre that the Italians should have to start fighting elections in other countries to win them in Italy. Surely the Bill would undermine the concept of ruling Britain for the sake of the British, and ultimately there would be foreign influences in this Parliament. Would that not be a rather bizarre situation?

[Sandy Martin]

I entirely agree. In 2016, we had a vote—it did not go in exactly the direction that I would have supported, but it was a vote none the less—on taking back control of our own country. I do not think that when people were voting to take back control of their own country, they were voting to allow someone who had lived in the Caribbean, Australia or South Africa, and who intended to continue to live there, and who had been there for more than 15 years, to take back control of this country. I think that the majority of the population of this country would not believe that people who clearly would not be living in this country in the future should vote in elections in this country.

As I said earlier, if a British citizen moves abroad for two, three or four years and will then be coming back, it makes perfect sense to allow that person to vote in elections for a national Government who will affect their lives when they do come back. There has to be a cut-off point, and I note that the cut-off point is currently 15 years. That is not necessarily the cut-off point that I would choose, but given that all these arguments were gone through at the time when it was set, it would probably make sense to keep it that way.

There is a clear sense among those on the Conservative Benches that the Bill is designed to deal with an injustice, so let me now address the idea of injustice and, in particular, the idea of injustice in respect of pensions. This relates to part of what was said earlier by my hon. Friend sitting behind me, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). If somebody has worked for the majority of their life in this country and has contributed to our economy and society and in particular has contributed through the national insurance system, it is perfectly legitimate and right that they should collect the same pension irrespective of whether they happen to be living in this country or another country.

We have a deeply unjust situation about the level of pensions people can collect across the world. Most people, apart from the people who live in those countries, do not realise how unjust the situation is. I am sure that Conservative Members will accuse me of simplifying or being simplistic about this, but it basically boils down to the fact that if people have retired to a Commonwealth country, the value of their pension diminishes away to almost nothing, whereas if they have retired to the United States or several other non-Commonwealth countries, their pension continues to be upgraded to match what it would have been if they had stayed in this country.

I will repeat that for those who did not hear it the first time or think I might have got it the wrong way around, because it is so counterintuitive and so clearly and manifestly unjust that it deserves repetition. If somebody moves to a Commonwealth country, the value of their pension diminishes away to nothing, whereas if they move to the US or some other non-Commonwealth countries, the value of the pension continues to grow alongside the value of pensions in this country. That is manifestly unjust; it is clearly discriminatory against other members of the Commonwealth. It is a bizarre situation, and I have no idea how it arose. It should have been dealt with years ago, and it is time that it is dealt with now. Why is that not the issue being addressed by this Bill? Why is this Bill addressing a manufactured injustice about voting rights, when it should be addressing an injustice about the pensions people ought to receive when they live in other countries?

Carillion and Public Sector Outsourcing

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

The ugly side of privatisation and outsourcing has been laid bare by the collapse of Carillion. While fat cat executives have taken action to protect their pensions and pay, the workers have been shafted. With a day’s notice, workers were told to not bother to turn up to work. These are workers with mortgages and families to feed, and the platitudes from this Government will not comfort them.

Make no mistake: this is an ideological obsession of this Government. We have got to the farcical point where Oxfordshire County Council is forced to put firefighters on standby to deliver food in our schools. Private capital has seen all the benefits, and the state has taken the burden of the collapse again. It is estimated that subcontractors will receive only 1p of every pound owed to them. They also have families to feed and bills to pay. What do the Government have to offer them? Nothing. They are obsessed and determined to push ahead with the privatisation and outsourcing of the £1.2 billion HS2 contract. There has been more privatisation and outsourcing in Ministry of Defence contracts, and in school projects. When will they ever learn? We privatised the reward and we nationalised failure. It is the absolute reverse of socialism.

This is a crisis of capitalism. Workers are treated with utter disdain in the pursuit of capital accumulation. This is an ideological issue. Outsourcing, not just by Carillion, has brought our state to its knees. Southern Rail, schools: it is time that this experiment was brought to an end. The smoke and mirrors of PFI and outsourcing are no longer there.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

In his criticism of capitalism and PFI, does the hon. Gentleman recognise that Labour, between 1997 and 2015, put in a capital value of £49.4 billion, compared with the Conservatives’ £7.9 billion. Labour is more responsible for this problem than the Conservatives have ever been.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

That is right. The public will not fail to notice that the Labour party is under new management. We will build on the positives of the past, and discard the negatives. PFI, I am afraid, was a bad mistake that the Conservatives began under Major, and which we failed to stop. We will stop it this time, because when Jeremy Corbyn gets in and we have a socialist Government what will end is this—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. It is one thing to test my patience but it is another to name Members. The hon. Gentleman cannot name the Leader of the Opposition. He can say “the next Prime Minister”, but he should not use his name.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am terribly sorry. I get very excited about the thought of the Leader of the Opposition becoming Prime Minister, which will happen very shortly.

These contracts are an absolute mess. The Government say that civil servants cannot take things in-house. If that is the case, they cannot manage the contracts that they have issued. I call it baloney and ideological rubbish. We will put an end to it. The Government must put an end to it to prevent our country from going to the dogs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is far too much noise in the Chamber, with very loud and persistent private conversations going on. Let us have a bit of order at Topical Questions.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr David Lidington)]

I intend to continue the work of the Cabinet Office to deliver its purpose: to maintain the integrity of the Union of the United Kingdom, to co-ordinate the security of the realm, to sustain a flourishing democracy, to ensure the delivery of the finest public services, and to help to implement the Government’s policies and the Prime Minister’s priorities.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The Government have withheld a dozen documents relating to the Government’s European policy in the early 1990s. What are they trying to hide? What embarrassment is the Tory party trying to cover up? Will the Minister release those documents?

[Mr Lidington]

I am happy to look at the particular case, if the hon. Gentleman would like to write to me, but I can assure him that documents are not withheld lightly. Sometimes individuals are named, or documents contain information that is still diplomatically sensitive. [Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: this is obviously a very worrying time for workers at BAE Systems, including those at Warton in his constituency. He raises two issues. I can reassure him that the Department for Work and Pensions will ensure that people have all the support they need to look for new jobs. That will include the rapid response service, which will help with CVs, training and information about benefits. We will also continue to promote our world-leading defence industry right across the globe, so that companies like BAE Systems can secure contracts for UK-made equipment. Just last month, my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary signed a statement of intent with Qatar, committing the country to the purchase of 24 Typhoons and six Hawks from BAE. We will continue to promote these first-class products from first-class manufacturers such as those in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We will also ensure that support is given to those who lose their jobs.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q4. Prime Minister, last week you announced that you would fund 25,000 extra socially rented homes over five years. The waiting list in Brighton is already that. Along with Brighton, my other local authority, Lewes District Council, is wanting to build more council houses, but your policies will not help them, because they are limited not by the open market, but by the Government’s arbitrary cap on borrowing and financing against housing stock. Will the Prime Minister agree with me, the Conservative-led Lewes District Council and the Labour-led Brighton that the cap on the housing revenue account must be lifted to get councils building for Britain again?

[Mr Speaker]

I just point out to the hon. Gentleman that I have made no announcement and have no policy on this matter.

Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford]

I entirely agree. We need to look at that, as in another situation the numbers of people in a block could become an issue—and we do not know that that was not an issue in this instance as well.

The inquiry must also look at the issue raised by the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), about building control. There are a number of issues about enforcement and making regular checks on the work done when refurbishments take place. Are the fire blocks being put in place between the floors, for instance? The advice to me from a constituent of mine who is an expert and who has been in the media speaking about this case, and about this issue for many years, is that we are very lax about the enforcement of the fire blocks between the floors and around windows, and we need to ensure that there is proper enforcement of this. The inquiry must look into that, too.

Responsibility for appointing the building control must lie with the local authority. There must be clear lines of responsibility for maintaining these standards, and we must stop local authorities being side-lined over ensuring that safety standards are considered of the utmost importance when these schemes go ahead.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a scandal that no minimum qualifications are required to become a building control practitioner, and does he agree that we need urgent action on this?

[Clive Efford]

Yes, an incident such as this one shows that there must be a basic knowledge of fire safety regulations, and there are many other issues that building control has to cover, so of course there must be a minimum qualification requirement.

The current position on sprinklers makes no sense. New blocks built to new building standards over 30 metres high are required to have a sprinkler system installed. However, older buildings built to an older standard of building control are not required to retrofit. That is completely and utterly illogical. The Government—outside of the inquiry and everything else—must fund the retrofitting of sprinklers in those blocks of flats where that has been recommended by fire safety officers. There can be no equivocating on that. This fire shows that that is essential, and the Government should just accept that we cannot hold back on it any longer.

We are told that there was a plan to put fireproof cladding on to Grenfell Tower but that it was £2 per square metre more expensive than the cheaper version that was actually put on. If that is correct, the inquiry will obviously have something to say about it. There are some questions here. As I have said, this cheaper type of cladding was already on other blocks where similar fires had taken place. Why was it allowed to be used on this block? Is it true that the contractors who were erecting the cladding raised concerns about whether they should be putting that cladding on that block at that height? If it is true, action must obviously be taken against the people who made that decision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to have sat through the whole of this debate and listened to the excellent maiden speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock), for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) and for Leigh (Jo Platt)—I hope I have got them all. This has been an excellent debate, with very many important points raised and questions asked of Ministers on issues that the Government must address. I will not take up Members’ time by repeating many of them.

The Grenfell fire was an appalling and, very likely, preventable tragedy, exacerbated by what seemed to me, as somebody with a bit of experience of this, the frankly dysfunctional response from Kensington and Chelsea Council in the hours, days and weeks following that terrible fire—and even now. I share all Members’ concerns for the families of those who lost their lives, and those who lost their homes. I share the concerns of the emergency and frontline service workers who have had to deal with the trauma. I hope that there will be adequate long-term post-trauma support for them all, of the kind that the Government put in place immediately after the 7/7 bombings; somebody I know well is benefiting now from the support he received immediately after that.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

London fire brigade has reduced the number of its counsellors from over 10 to under five in the last seven years. Does my hon. Friend agree that that should immediately be addressed, so that we offer adequate support and counselling to our service personnel?

[Ruth Cadbury]

That is an excellent point. Clearly fire service officers and other workers are on the frontline when it comes to experiencing trauma; we heard about that in many reports on the Lakanal fire. For such an essential service, which employs people who will experience that trauma, to be cutting specialist counselling services by half is yet another example of the impact of cuts and austerity on public services that are there for us all. Everybody should have a right to post-trauma counselling and support, whether we are talking about an employer providing it to frontline workers, or whether we are talking about members of the public who are nearby or just passing, charity workers helping out at a rescue station, or those who live in similar blocks, because as my friend has told me, it makes a real difference to people’s long-term ability to function.

I have constituents, as I am sure many other Members do, who live in older council-owned tower blocks, such as Brentford Towers and the Ivybridge estate. Many have contacted me because they are frightened. They and their children cannot sleep at night. They do not want to carry on living there. They need reassurance. For some of them, the trauma is so bad that they are asking to be rehoused. This is a major issue.

I had the benefit of being briefed by London Borough of Hounslow officers and council members in the week immediately after the Grenfell fire. I have been reassured that none of the blocks in my constituency have cladding that fails the Government tests. I was also pleased to hear that on the day after the Grenfell fire, the council’s programme to reclad the six towers of Brentford Towers, which people can see from the elevated section of the M4, has been put on hold while it reviews the specifics of the programme. That cladding programme is urgently needed for reasons relating to the safety of the existing external cladding and for thermal insulation, but given what has happened, it is absolutely right that the specifics of that programme be reviewed.

The leader and councillors of the London Borough of Hounslow are meeting all residents of tower blocks to hear their concerns—to listen and to respond. That is the right thing to do. The London Borough of Hounslow is also responding to requests and offering help to Kensington and Chelsea on a range of services. The council is preparing estate fire safety and improvement plans, to ensure that issues such as prevention and tackling fire safety inside and outside all tower blocks are addressed. It is also reviewing all the fire risk assessments in all blocks.

I have considerable experience as a councillor: I was lead member for housing and had lead responsibility for contingency planning. I have seen at first hand how proper fire safety mechanisms and management by residents and landlord alike can work. There was a fire at Fraser House, and sadly a resident died, but the fire did not spread through the block because the appropriate fire doors were shut and the appropriate venting was open. The fire was therefore drawn away from the other flats and out of the vents on that floor.

I understand how buildings are designed for fire safety, and how we must be careful when revising the structure, cladding and other aspects of buildings. I also understand why working with the management and the residents is so important. The reason why the fire doors at Fraser House were shut was that residents and the council worked together after the Lakanal House report was published to learn the lessons from that fire. I am regularly in and out of the Brentford Towers blocks—talking to residents, canvassing at elections and so on—and I know that on hot summer days it is tempting to prop open the fire doors. That stopped happening after the Lakanal report, however. The fire doors were regularly closed. Good management and good communication will work.

I have been the lead member for contingency planning, but thankfully I never had to deal with an emergency. I was, however, briefed to know what an emergency looked and felt like, what my role and that of senior officers would be, and how the communications links with other authorities would work, up and down the line. The way of managing in a crisis is completely different from day-to-day managing.

When I woke up that morning and started following the Twitter feed and listening to and watching the news, I was shocked at the poverty of the response from Kensington and Chelsea. To me, it smacked of inadequate preparation for an emergency. I accept that the Grenfell fire was of a different order; as others have said, it was the biggest fire in this country since wartime. Nevertheless, one of the things I would look for as an outsider is a person who is regularly in front of the cameras, listening and speaking. I would expect to see that person meeting the affected residents, the frontline workers and the charity workers. I would expect the charities and others to be responding to requests for help from the local authority, rather than having to be the sole providers of support in the hours and days after the event. But what did we see? Community centres, mosques and churches dealing with things on their own, and receiving massive amounts of good will and items that they perhaps did not need at that time; for example, there was an over-supply of blankets. They were working on their own, and they did not know what to say to all those offers of help.

I was also concerned to hear that when other local authorities, particularly those close to Kensington and Chelsea, offered that week’s allocation of social rented housing to Kensington and Chelsea to use as temporary or permanent homes for those affected, there was no adequate response. Other local authorities also offered specialised, experienced trauma counsellors to Kensington and Chelsea, but there was no response. At a time when people were willing and able to go the extra mile to share with colleagues in an extreme crisis, there was nowhere for people to turn. I hope that the inquiry will look at the response of the local authority and at what it should have been. We have already heard how this can work, following reports of what happened after the terrorist attack at the Manchester concert hall. Members from Manchester have said that there was a good response from the local authority there.

The residents of Grenfell Tower and Grenfell Walk and their families deserve justice. All residents of tower blocks deserve reassurance, so that they can live and sleep in peace. Poor communities and those in housing need require a Government who no longer ignore them, cut vital services, and ignore the conclusions of public inquiries, and a Government who invest in adequate, good-quality, truly affordable housing.

European Council

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point in drawing that comparison. It did take a while, and hard work, to get the tech companies to the position where they would take the action they have done on child sexual abuse images on the internet. I believe we can do the same with extremism, and that is what we are encouraging them to do.

[Mr Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Hello, Prime Minister.

At the Council, did the Prime Minister manage to raise the issue of the Erasmus+ programme and our continuing work in it? In particular, the deadline for the Erasmus+ grants is October. It takes six months for those grants to be awarded, and another year sometimes for them to be enacted. Will she ensure that any academic, student or young person who is awarded an Erasmus programme is able to come here without additional visa burdens?