Veterans Welfare Services

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minster for advance sight of the statement. Labour is deeply proud of our veterans, and for the enormous contribution they have made and continue to make to our country.

There was not very much in that statement, but what there is I can welcome. There seem to be two bits of rebranding, and two things that the Minister should already be doing, and that seems to be about it. I was expecting the Minister to have published the full Government response to the independent review of UK Government welfare services for veterans, instead of a statement that is just designed to look busy. When can we expect that Government response? It is due by the end of the year, but we are already in late November so there is not much time left.

As we head into the winter months, the Conservatives are still failing to deliver the support that our veterans and their families deserve. This review is long overdue, but Ministers have been responsible for worsening veterans’ services over the past 13 years. They have created a postcode lottery for veteran support, they have cut employment support for veterans, and they have continued to make little progress in the slow roll-out of veterans’ ID cards. As temperatures drop, the cost of living crisis is going to be tough on families across the country, and our veterans are no exception. People are worried about how they can afford to pay bills, and many could be making that horrific choice between heating and eating, as many did last year and the year before. This is why it is essential that they are able to access the services and support they need here and now.

The veterans’ welfare system can feel “almost impenetrable” for those seeking support. It is “overwhelming and off-putting” leading to a

“distrust of the Ministry of Defence and Veterans UK”.

Those are not my words; they are the damning conclusions of the independent review.

Our veterans do not need empty promises. They need action. As there was not much in today’s statement, we are left with more questions than answers—and here are some more. When will the Government design and articulate a single strategy for veterans’ welfare services, and will that be inclusive of family members and the bereaved? What steps are being taken to prepare personnel throughout their entire military career for civilian life, not just as they come into the transition timeframe? Will the MOD commission a review of tri-service welfare support provision, with a particular focus on transition and the wider discharge welfare provision processes?

Paragraph 4.7 of the independent review states that casework management in veterans welfare services is not fit for purpose due to

“a significant (and out-dated) reliance on paper records”,

and a lack of interoperability with other MOD IT systems. I therefore welcome the introduction of the £40 million digitisation programme that has previously been announced, but will the Minister tell us what proportion of that is being spent on veterans’ welfare services and in what timeframe? Will that end the outdated reliance on paper records that was made clear in the independent review?

Paragraph 4.18 of the review says that welfare managers are “over-stretched”, and paragraph 4.19 says that they are

“fundamentally…not professionally trained to undertake these roles”,

which are part financial adviser, part trauma caseworker, and part social worker, which is

“in stark contrast to…the charity sector”

and has contributed to

“a high turnover of staff in recent years”.

What is the Minister doing to address the training needs and capacity shortages?

It was disappointing that the content-light King’s Speech contained no new legislation to put the armed forces covenant on to the statute book. Labour has been clear that in government we would fully incorporate the armed forces covenant into law. Why does the Minister not agree with us on that? Why does he oppose that Labour policy?

We all understand that veterans’ identity cards will speed up access to services, but throughout the last year the Minister has used various language, which has changed, about when he will hit the targets for delivering them. This time last year, he promised that by summer 2023 all veterans should have received a veterans’ ID card. In April, he moved the goalposts, saying that it would be completed

“by the end of the year”.

Now, as we approach the end of the year, he is claiming that he is delivering on the promise, but not every veteran has an ID card. When will they?

Labour is deeply proud of our veterans. They deserve better than Ministers repeatedly breaking promises, moving the goalposts and failing to deliver the welfare support that our former service personnel and their families deserve. The next Labour Government will stand side by side with veterans and their families, because we are a party committed to fulfilling the important promises our society makes to those who serve. The Conservatives like to talk up their support to veterans, but it is clear—very much like today’s statement—that although there are a lot of words, there is not always a lot of substance.

[Johnny Mercer]

I will be brief, because I am afraid that whenever the hon. Member rises to talk about veterans, he simply demonstrates his vast lack of knowledge in veterans’ affairs. He asked me questions that he knows, or he should know, are questions not for me but for the Ministry of Defence. For example, how we prepare people when they are in service is nothing to do with veterans’ affairs and veterans’ services. If he wants to stand up in the House and say that veterans’ services have got worse over the last two, three, five or seven years, that is fine, but everybody listening and watching knows that he is simply trying to make a political point and play politics with veterans. I will not waste the House’s time by going into too many of his points.

I have been consistent on veterans’ ID cards. I ask him to look at this and write to me with a time when I ever said that every veteran would have their ID card by the summer of this year. That never happened, and it is important that in this House we do not say things—inadvertently—that may not be correct. We are delivering ID cards by the end of the year, which was always the promise. By January, we will be printing 10,000 a month, and the veterans I speak to are happy with the process.

The hon. Member asked plenty of questions that do not relate to the statement or this area. Again, I implore the Opposition to move away from glib statements about veterans. They need to intellectually apply themselves to how policy can change to improve the lives of veterans. There is a desert on the Opposition Benches, and that is deeply disappointing.

Pakistan: Evacuation of Afghans

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

I obviously cannot comment on an individual case, but if the hon. Lady writes to me today, I will personally look at her case and write back to her.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am glad that the Government are now acting on Afghans who have been in limbo for a number of years in Pakistan—an issue I raised with the Minister on 19 September. May I ask about the service family accommodation that he is intending to use for those Afghans? We know that there is a real crisis in the quality of service family accommodation, so can he guarantee that none of the service family accommodation that the Ministry of Defence is providing will have broken boilers, leaky roofs or black mould, which plague so much SFA that we have put our troops and their families in?

[Johnny Mercer]

This Government have put £400 million of extra spending into SFA; I recognise the problems with the quality of that SFA, which have been a challenge over many years. I do not want anybody coming back into the UK and living in service family accommodation that is not suitable for them. The Ministry of Defence is bending over backwards, as is my right hon. Friend the Minister for Armed Forces, to ensure that this stuff is online and suitable. Investment is going in, but I am determined that individuals will live in housing that is suitable for them, and I will personally be visiting them to make sure that they are.

Resettlement of Afghans

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement.

Today’s statement is, though, a continuation of a shameful saga of Government failure when it comes to the Afghans who served alongside our forces in Afghanistan. The Minister has come here today looking for a pat on the back for booting people out of hotels, but he fundamentally misunderstands that across this House we gave a commitment to those who served alongside our forces that we would do right by them when they arrived on our shores and that, despite many now being in permanent homes, that commitment is still not being delivered. Thousands are still waiting in limbo in Pakistan, and thousands are still waiting for family reunion. Despite having been asked repeatedly whether his eviction scheme would make any family homeless, the Minister has today confirmed that Afghans in bridging hotels are accessing local authority homelessness support.

The Opposition are proud of our armed forces and of the Afghans who served alongside them in the years in Afghanistan. I pay tribute to all those involved in Operation Pitting, but our commitments were given not just to those who came out on those planes; they were given to people who served alongside our forces and who worked for them. It is that wider commitment that the Minister has not addressed in his statement and that I would like to ask more about. I agree with him that Afghans should not have been left in bridging hotels, but his Government decided to do that for 18 months. Where is the apology from him for that policy of neglect?

I would be grateful if the Minister could now provide more detail on a number of questions. First, how many Afghans and their families are still in a form of time-limited accommodation approved by the Minister’s Government? When does he expect that figure to be zero? For any new arrivals on the approved schemes, as tiny as those numbers are, will they be placed in bridging accommodation or will they automatically be given a home straight away? How will that work? Will the financial package for the evictions also apply for those new and future arrivals, and how much has been set aside for that?

The Minister has given no detail in any of his statements to the House about how much this eviction process has cost taxpayers in total, and he has not said where that money is coming from. Is it from the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office or the tiny budget of the Office for Veterans’ Affairs? How much in total does he estimate will be spent in clearing up the Government’s mess after leaving Afghans in hotels for 18 months?

Why are there nearly 750 Afghans waiting more than two years for their ARAP application to be processed? What is the Ministry of Defence doing to get nearly 600 ARAP-eligible people and their families who are still in Afghanistan out of harm’s way from the Taliban? How many Afghans are still in hotel accommodation in Pakistan, paid for by the UK taxpayer? How many of them have been told that the UK Government will not be paying their bills in the future? What are the Government doing to get the people to whom we made a promise out of Pakistan and to safety in the United Kingdom?

The Minister used some unclear language in his statement when he talked about how many people are in temporary accommodation under local authority homeless provision. He said it is less than 5% of 24,600. In July, I challenged him to say that no Afghan family who helped our forces in Afghanistan would be homeless because of his policy of evictions. The Minister said at the time that, given what was on offer,

“there is no reason why Afghans should present as homeless at the end of this process.”—[Official Report, 18 July 2023; Vol. 736, c. 809.]

We can see that now. Would it not be clearer if the Minister, rather than saying less than 5% of 24,600, said that 1,000 people are accessing homelessness provision because of his policy? Can he give a precise number of how many Afghans whom he has evicted are accessing the homelessness provision of local authorities up and down the country?

We gave a solemn pledge that we would support those people who served our armed forces. The Minister is smiling at that commitment, but 1,000 people accessing homelessness support is not something to smile about. This is not the opportunity for a giggle on the Front Bench; this is an opportunity for us to be taken seriously as a nation, because we promised people who arrived in the United Kingdom, people fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan and those still in Pakistan that we would provide safety. He has done some of that with his eviction policy, but more needs to be done. [Interruption.] I know he is finding this funny, and he is giggling on the Front Bench, but this is not funny.

I know all too well from the casework I have been doing for Afghan families—[Interruption.] There is a lot of attack coming from those on the Government Benches, but this is a serious point, so let me finish. I know all too well from the casework I am doing for Afghan families and interpreters based in Plymouth in my constituency that they have family members on the run from the Taliban in Afghanistan who still fear for their lives. We gave a solemn promise to some of those people that we would get them out. Can the Minister set out how we will get those people out and how we will bring them to safety, because that serious promise deserves to be honoured?

The Minister wants praise on this matter, but he should have apologised for the myriad Government failures. There is a chance now to address all of them—not just his evictions policy, but the issue of those in Pakistan and Afghanistan and those who still do not have the safety and promise of safety that we offered.

[Johnny Mercer]

That was pretty embarrassing from the hon. Gentleman. It was disappointing to receive a typically unpleasant response to the hundreds of people who have worked across the country to deliver this policy. I stood in this House and promised that we would close bridging hotels, which were totally unsuitable for Afghans, by 31 August. I have done that; we have delivered on that promise. I said that nobody would sleep rough, and nobody has slept rough throughout this process. The new arrivals that he talks about, as he well knows, are not within the scope of this statement. He well knows that those questions will not be answered today.

The hon. Gentleman talks about the funding that has been thrown at this issue. If he had been listening to anything that goes on, rather than reading out some student statement in the House of Commons, he would know that none of the £285 million came from the OVA budget. He said that budget is tiny, but it did not exist at all under his party, and his party has no plans to replace it. It is not tiny in the first place. I will not spend a lot of time on this answer, because it was an incredibly disappointing response to a serious issue. Nobody on the Government Benches was laughing. He comes up with these clips for his social media platform, and it is embarrassing for the rest of us. This Government are committed to delivering on our responsibilities when it comes to migration. We promised that we would close bridging hotels by 31 August.

[Luke Pollard]

indicated dissent.

[Johnny Mercer]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, because he lives in a different world. All the bridging hotels are closed, and nobody has slept rough. I am proud of the team that has delivered that. We have not done it for him or for a pat on the back from the Labour party; we have done it because it is the right thing to do for the Afghan people, because on this side of the House we believe in something and in doing right by these people, and we will deliver on our promises to them as we continue into the future.

Afghan Resettlement Update

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. None the less, I have to say to him that this statement is not up to the quality that this House expects from a Minister on such an important issue.

The Minister has been sent here to update the House, but in his statement he has given us no precise numbers of Afghans who are currently in bridging accommodation, no numbers of those he expects to stay in the time-limited contingency offer, and no estimates or details. Madam Deputy Speaker, this is really poor. This House deserves better than a statement that is light on delivery on such an important programme. We need to understand the detail of what the Minister is trying to explain. He is a Cabinet Office Minister coming to update the House when Defence Ministers should be here explaining why the Afghan relocations and assistance policy is failing to deliver, when Home Office Ministers should be here explaining why the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme is failing to deliver, and when Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Ministers should be here explaining why we do not have sufficient homes for those who are being moved out of bridging accommodation in the middle of a housing crisis. The Cabinet Office Minister in the Chamber is the bailiff serving the eviction notices. This is not good enough. I fear that he is a human shield for the failures across Government.

The statement today confirms what we already know: the Government are failing to support those people who served alongside our forces in Afghanistan. In a few weeks’ time, it will be two years since Operation Pitting began, but there is still a backlog of 60,000 ARAP applications. Operation Warm Welcome has become operation cold shoulder, with 8,000 Afghans being told that they will be forced out of temporary accommodation by the end of the summer. Can the Minister tell us on what date the notice period expires? What day will Afghans no longer be able to stay in bridging accommodation? We owe a debt of gratitude to all those Afghans who were loyal to Britain and who served British aims in Afghanistan, and failing to find them appropriate accommodation and then kicking them out on to the street is no way to repay that debt.

The reality is that the Government have failed to keep the promises made to our Afghan friends, and that is shameful. Since 1 December last year, just four ARAP eligible principals, along with 31 dependants, have been processed and arrived in the UK out of the thousands who are waiting. That leaves thousands of Afghans fleeing the Taliban stuck in hotels in Pakistan without hope or proper support. Can the Minister clarify the exact number of Afghans who have been rehoused into settled housing in the UK? How many homes are available for Afghans to move into? How many does he expect will be made homeless by the eviction notices that he has served on these Afghans?

I know that the Minister’s personal experience in Afghanistan must weigh heavily upon him as the Government evict so many Afghans from hotels, but we owe the people who are being evicted a debt of gratitude, and we owe it to them to keep the promises that we have made. Ministers must fix the broken ARAP scheme, which along with the ACRS has been plagued by failures. People in fear of their lives have been left in Afghanistan, housing promises have been broken, and processing staff have been cut. From the ballooning backlogs to the breaches of personal data, and even the Ministry of Defence telling applicants that they should get the Taliban to verify their ARAP application documents, the record is shameful.

The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs is being used as a human shield to deflect failures from the Ministry of Defence and across Government. How many ARAP eligible principals remain in Pakistan, and how many hotels are still being used as temporary bridging accommodation for Afghan families? Will he publish constituency data so that all Members can understand whether he is evicting people in their communities? He mentioned the Afghan housing portal. How many landlords have signed up to it, how many have used it to house Afghans, and what promises by the Ministry of Defence have been kept in speeding up and processing ARAP cases?

I do not doubt the Minister’s commitment to the people of Afghanistan, but this is not good enough. The promises that we made as a country were serious and solemn. Those who have fled from Afghanistan deserve our support and gratitude. Eviction notices are not good enough if there is nowhere for them to go, so can the Minister give us his solemn promise that not a single Afghan who is currently in bridging accommodation will be homeless when the date of the eviction notices that he has served upon them expires?

[Johnny Mercer]

I thank the hon. Member for his remarks. Clearly, I do not think that I am a human shield for the Government. This is a particularly difficult issue. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who grappled with this extraordinarily difficult and complex problem before me. I have to say to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) that this is one of the most generous offerings that this country has ever made to resettle nationals from a foreign country in the United Kingdom. Since 2015, under consecutive Conservative Governments, we have welcomed more than half a million people on country-specific and humanitarian safe and legal routes, so I just do not recognise his portrayal of the Government’s attitude towards those who are resettling here.

We have worked with around 350 local authorities across the United Kingdom to meet the demand for housing. As of data published on 25 May, around 10,500 people have been supported into settled accommodation —around 10,000 had moved into homes, with an additional 500 matched but not yet moved. The hon. Member is right that, from the end of April, families started to receive legal notices to move. That was accompanied by £35 million-worth of new funding to enable local authorities to provide the increased support for Afghan households to move from hotels into settled accommodation.

The hon. Member had many questions for me, and I will write to him on the ones that I have missed, but the truth is that this is an incredibly complex issue that the entire nation has a duty to fulfil. We can sling political remarks across the Dispatch Box on this issue, but we need all local authorities and political leaders in this country to pull together to challenge what is a very difficult situation and to try to encourage these Afghans to move, in what is an extremely generous offer from central Government, into private rented accommodation. We all have a duty not to use these individuals as political pawns, but to provide them with a life in the UK that we can be truly proud of. If we all work together, we can achieve that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

This Prime Minister made the conscious decision to take veterans out of the MOD and set up the Office for Veterans’ Affairs in the Cabinet Office, with a Cabinet Minister responsible for this. For the first time, that aligned us with our Five Eyes allies. That has allowed us to produce things such as Op Courage, the UK’s first dedicated mental healthcare pathway for veterans. It costs £22 million a year, with that rising every year. We had 19,000 referrals in its first year and a massive unmet need in this country is now being met by government. We are very proud of that and we look to do more in the future.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Each year, thousands of young people leave local authority care, yet many of them struggle to be able to afford their first home or to get their first job. As local councils are corporate parents, could the Government be a corporate grandparent and have a cross-government care leavers’ strategy, encouraging more Government Departments to employ care leavers to give them a good shot at life?

[Johnny Mercer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. The Prime Minister has asked me to look at the issue. There are about 92,000 care leavers aged between 18 and 25 in the United Kingdom. They require and deserve pathways similar to those that we have created in the veterans space. I look forward to launching that strategy and speaking further to the House, before the summer recess, about the issue of children in care.

Ministerial Appointments: Vetting and Managing Conflicts of Interest

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

Obviously Mr Sharp felt that that was not required, and that that was not the case. I understand that a process was put in place to separate him from the loan arrangement. As I have said, Mr Sharp has asked a senior non-executive director at the BBC to ensure that all matters relating to disclosure were followed correctly by him in this process.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Can the Minister tell us whether any Ministers were informed that the Conservative party chair had been blocked from receiving an honour? If so, did the Government take any action after receiving that news?

[Jeremy Quin]

I genuinely do not know the answer to that question. There is a process for honours and awards, which is kept highly confidential. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend was up for an award or whether that was blocked. It would have been a very tight process and I do not know if there is any ministerial involvement in that process.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

It is always a pleasure to hear the city of Southend referred to in this place; it brings back happy memories of our friend.

The private sector in Southend West does a brilliant job of promoting apprenticeships, with South Essex College working with the Essex chamber of commerce. I am sure that there are things we can learn. We are determined to progress our own plans for apprentices. They are going well and we can take them forward, but if my hon. Friend has any tips, I would be delighted to meet her and discuss what is happening in the city of Southend.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Cabinet Office already runs a care leavers’ apprenticeship scheme, which is very welcome, but many care leavers are unable to afford to get on the housing ladder and rent their first property, because they are not able to access a deposit. Will the Minister share the experience and expertise of the Cabinet Office in supporting care leavers across Government? It is sometimes awkward for care leavers to interact with Health, Education and Work and Pensions systems, for example, and they are not able to rely on the financial support of parents, especially in renting their first property. Will the Minister agree to meet me and care leavers from Plymouth to discuss what best practice can be shared so that every care leaver can have the best possible start in adulthood?

[Jeremy Quin]

That is an interesting idea. I am more than happy to agree to meet the hon. Gentleman and to hear what he has to say, and we will take it from there.

Papers Relating to the Home Secretary

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I think nobody in this Chamber will be surprised to hear me say that I think there are a million reasons why the Home Secretary should be nowhere near the office that she currently holds—whether it is her atrocious rhetoric about Rwanda, her desperate smears about a “Benefits Street” culture, her trashing of the Attorney General’s office or the fact that, as far as I can tell, she still thinks that the infamous mini-Budget was brilliant and worth sticking to.

This morning, I joined colleagues from different Committees to visit Manston. I hate to report to the Minister that we did not notice an improvement there; rather, we noticed a significant deterioration, not because of the hard work of the staff there, but because of the overcrowding. As the shadow Home Secretary said, it is fair to say that the Home Secretary has significant questions to answer as to why Manston was allowed to move from being a strict 24-hour short-term facility to a place where families are having to spend days and weeks living on mattresses on the floor, not because of, but despite the efforts of staff, who have been placed in an impossible position by the Home Secretary.

This afternoon, the Labour Opposition have raised security concerns, and of course they are perfectly entitled to do so. Indeed, it is something of an open goal given not only the Home Secretary’s own words, but those of many of her former and current colleagues—none of whom is here today, it has to be said—who have expressed doubts about whether they could accept what the Home Secretary says, publicly questioned a serious breach of security, and suggested that multiple breaches of the ministerial code occurred. In her words:

“Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics.”

But that seems to be a very good description of precisely what she is trying to do now, hoping that people do not fully understand what happened or that they forget.

In fact, the only objectionable thing about those words is her characterising what happened as a mistake—and the Minister veered towards that description today as well—but she did not resign because of a mistake. Her own resignation letter confirms that she resigned because she quite intentionally used her personal email to share a sensitive Government document with someone outside Government. She knowingly and deliberately broke the rules, and she was therefore right to resign.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

On 20 October, I raised with the Minister whether the Home Secretary had shared documents not just by email, but on WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram. Does the hon. Member agree with me that the Home Secretary’s letter to the Home Affairs Committee only talks about email, but there has been no certainty over whether any document—confidential, secret or otherwise —might have been shared on other social media messaging apps?

Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

Talking of free and fair elections is to undermine the tremendous democracy we live in and to show a lack of appreciation of what we have. The Prime Minister has continually referred to the result of the 2019 general election and mentioned his commitment to the 2019 manifesto we were elected on. We respect the devolved Governments; as I have said the Prime Minister spoke to those devolved leaders on his very first day in office and he will continue to do so. However, if we are talking about mandates, there is still the mandate in Scotland from the independence referendum. We are very firm on that, and we will continue to support it and prioritise the Scottish people rather than playing politics and navel gazing at this point in time.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

3. How many civil service jobs he plans to relocate from London to the south-west of England in the remainder of this Parliament.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Brendan Clarke-Smith)]

The Government are committed to relocating roles out of London and to increasing and spreading opportunity, providing an economic boost to cities and towns across the UK. We have already relocated more than 8,000 roles and will relocate 15,000 by 2025. Around 1,200 of those roles will be relocated to the south- west by 2025.

[Luke Pollard]

The south-west is a great place to invest, and the Land Registry and the Valuation Office Agency are already prospering in our city. Will the Minister look ahead not only at allocating existing civil service roles, but at those we will develop in the future? Plymouth is building out a world-leading capability in autonomy, which has the potential to create huge numbers of jobs if we can create a cluster of Government and private sector expertise in one place.

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

We currently have around 43,570 civil servants working in the south-west and, when I checked this morning, around 755 jobs are being advertised there. I can certainly reassure the hon. Gentleman that Plymouth is well represented in the Cabinet Office now.

Departure of Previous Home Secretary

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

I think I covered this earlier, but I am happy to repeat what I said for the hon. Gentleman’s benefit. Having this information in a personal email account and then sharing it outside Government does constitute a clear breach of the code. Members may wish to look at sections 2.14 and 2.3 if that would be helpful, but the Prime Minister has been clear that the security of Government business is paramount. That is why we hold Ministers to the highest standards, and that is why the Home Secretary tendered her resignation.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is a mess. I appreciate that the Minister is having a really bad time having to defend it, but may I ask whether he has asked other Cabinet Members whether they have shared sensitive documents in their personal emails? Have they been asked that question? Has this been extended to other platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal? Will there be a full check of the former Home Secretary’s phone to ensure that not just personal email but other social networks and communication apps may have been used?

At the moment, the Minister is not reassuring the House or the public that the safety of our sensitive national security is being properly looked at by the Government. Can he give us that reassurance, and if he does not know the facts, will he come back to the House with a full disclosure of what apps were used, what documents were shared, and whether every single member of the Government has been checked?

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is important for documents to be kept secure. That is why such material is kept separate from personal emails and so on. This is something that Ministers—including me, as a new Minister—are always reminded of: we are given a big thick rulebook that we have to read.

We have made it clear that when there are breaches, there is a method for reporting them. We will of course take advice from the Cabinet Secretary regarding that, and I am sure that if there are further breaches, Members will be made aware of them in future.