Tobacco and Vapes Bill

Debate between Lyn Brown and Wes Streeting

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I admire the right hon. Gentleman for sticking to his convictions as a libertarian in making that case, even though I strongly disagree with him, but how far does his commitment to libertarianism go? He is defending the right of our country’s children to become addicted to nicotine for the rest of their life, which is an extraordinary argument. There are 356,000 people in his local area on NHS waiting lists. Does he want a future where that gets worse and the disease burden and cost pressures rise? When he was in government, the low-tax Conservatives crashed our economy and sent people’s mortgages through the roof, and rents, bills and the tax burden rose. That is their record. I wish he would do more to stand up for his low-tax convictions than his libertarian desire that children growing up in our country today should become addicted to nicotine. I have to respectfully disagree with him.

Compared with three years ago, half a million more people are out of work due to long-term sickness. People’s careers are being ruined by illnesses that prevent them from contributing to Britain’s economic success. We cannot build a healthy economy without a healthy society. Not only is there a moral argument for backing this progressive ban, based on the countless lives ruined by smoking and our shared determination to make sure that children growing up in Britain today will not die as a result of smoking, but there is an economic argument, too.

It is certainly true that vaping is less harmful than smoking and is a useful smoking cessation tool, but vapes are harmful products none the less. In the past few years, entirely on the Conservatives’ watch, a new generation of children have become hooked on nicotine. An estimated quarter of a million children vape today, and there is no doubt that this is the result of vaping companies’ decision to target children. On any high street in the country today, people can buy brightly coloured vapes and e-liquids with names such as “Vimto Breeze” and “Mango Ice”. They are designed, packaged, marketed and deliberately sold to children. The effect of this new nicotine addiction on our country’s young people should trouble us all.

[Ms Lyn Brown]

A couple of years back, Newham did a survey and discovered that 4% of year 6 children—that is 10 and 11-year-olds—had already vaped. I met Community Links in Canning Town in January, and it has been working on projects to tackle misinformation. Its students explained to me that they and their friends have been encouraged to believe that vaping is somehow safe and will not cause them the same problems with nicotine. Surely we can all agree that the voices of young people need to be heard and that they need to be encouraged and assisted to tackle the misinformation about vaping that is clearly out there.

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend, and I am very familiar with Community Links, which does brilliant work. We should take the voices of children and young people seriously—the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) made that point earlier.

Teachers monitor school toilets where children congregate to vape. Kids are making up excuses to leave their classroom in order to satisfy their nicotine cravings, and children in primary school, aged 9 or younger, have ended up in hospital because of the impact of vaping. Paediatric chest physicians report that children are being put in intensive care units for conditions such as lung bleeding, lung collapse and lungs filling up with fat. One girl who started vaping at school told the BBC that she has

“no control over it…I start to get shaky and it’s almost all I can think of.”

The question that must be asked of Conservative Members should not be whether they will take action today, but what has taken them so long. In 2021, Labour supported an amendment to the Health and Care Act 2022 to ban the branding and marketing of vapes to appeal to children—Conservative MPs voted it down. In 2023, my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) led a debate on an Opposition day motion on the same proposed ban—once again, Conservative MPs failed to support it. Thanks to their delay in acting against this, and thanks to their awful, shocking complacency, thousands more children have taken up vaping and become addicted to nicotine. Can the Health Secretary tell the House whether the Government’s delay in acting against youth vaping had anything to do with the £350,000 donation her party received from the boss of a major vaping company that sells vapes with flavours such as “Blue Razz Lemonade” and “Strawberry Mousse”?

We are an ageing society facing rising chronic disease. We are approaching these challenges with an NHS already in the worst crisis in its history, with the longest waiting lists and lowest patient satisfaction on record, 121,000 staff vacancies across the health service and 14,000 fewer hospital beds than in 2010. If we do not act today to ease the pressures coming down the track, they threaten to overwhelm and even bankrupt the health service.

Prevention is better than cure. This progressive ban must be the beginning of a decade in which we shift the focus of healthcare in this country from sickness to prevention, which is mission critical to making sure the NHS can be there for us in the next 75 years, just as it has been there for us in the past 75 years.

If the Government are serious about taking on this challenge, Labour has many more plans that they can adopt before they finally call the general election. They could adopt our children’s health plan to give every child a healthy start to life. They could ban junk food ads aimed at kids so that children are not targeted by unhealthy food. They could tackle the mental health crisis facing young people, with support in every school, hubs in every community, and 8,500 more mental health professionals to cut the disgracefully long waiting times for treatment.

They could treat the 152,000 children who have been on NHS waiting lists for more than 18 weeks, ending long waits for children for good. We will do it by providing 2 million more operations, and by providing evening and weekend appointments to beat the Tory backlog. We will have supervised toothbrushing in schools to tackle the moral emergency of children needing to have their rotting teeth pulled out, which is the No. 1 reason why children aged six to 10 end up in hospital. We will have breakfast clubs in every primary school so that kids start the day with hungry minds, not hungry bellies. We will digitise the red book, making sure that all kids are up to date on their checks and vaccines. And we will once again put an end to measles in this country, after it has been allowed to return on the Government’s watch.

We want the next generation to be chasing their dreams, not a dentist appointment. They should aspire to reach their potential, not to reach a doctor. Labour’s plan is to make sure that today’s children are part of the healthiest generation that has ever lived, and this ban is just the start.

The Prime Minister may be too weak to whip his MPs to vote for this important Bill, but Labour will put country first and party second. We will resist the temptation to play games on votes. Instead, we will go through the Lobby to make sure this legislation is passed so that today’s young people are even less likely to smoke than they are to vote Conservative.

I commend this Bill to the House.

TOEIC Visa Cancellations

Debate between Lyn Brown and Wes Streeting

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful for that intervention. There is some complexity—as I acknowledged, there is no doubt whatsoever that some cheating took place, which is clearly serious—but we must distinguish, and allow students to distinguish, between those who committed genuine wrongdoing and who deserve to be punished, and those who have been caught up in a scandal not of their making. That is the distinction I wish to draw in the debate, which the Home Office has failed to do. In the vast majority of cases, students were told that they had no right to appeal in the UK and that they should leave the country.

The experiences of students whose test results were deemed invalid by ETS varied considerably depending on when the Home Office took action and where those students were at the time. The hideous complexity I have alluded to is thrown into sharp relief by an excellent briefing by the National Union of Students, with the support of Bindmans. In some cases, it appears that the Home Office directed further and higher education institutions to withdraw students from their course of study and told students that they had 60 days to find a new sponsoring institution or to leave the country. Of course, having effectively been blacklisted by ETS and the Government, they invariably failed to do so. By handling cases in this way, the Home Office placed students outside the usual immigration processes without the right to appeal either in country or out of country.

That approach was found to be unlawful by the upper tribunal in the case of Mohibullah. The Minister should tell the House how many students fell into that category and what steps the Home Office has taken in light of the judgment in that case to contact other students who were similarly mistreated and, most importantly, to reassure the House that such an attempt to circumvent properly agreed immigration processes will never happen again.

Students who were outside the UK at the time of Home Office action, who received notices informing them of the allegations against them upon their return to the UK prior to 6 April 2015, were served with notices at airports and prevented from resuming their studies pending their appeal from within the UK. In some cases, students were subjected to interview and detention. For many students, that led to the end of their studies. However, the NUS,

“understands that in each and every case won by a student the Home Office appealed the outcome”.

The NUS also asserts that, where the appeals process led to a successful outcome for students,

“the Home Office has been slow to provide a remedy”

to the student concerned, effectively leaving them in “limbo”.

Is that right? Did the Home Office really drag every single case in this category through the upper tribunal and onward to the court of appeal? Perhaps the Minister can tell us how many cases we are talking about, how many appeals were successful and how much this lengthy process has cost the taxpayer. It is only reasonable to ask how long it takes, following the successful conclusion of an appeal, for the Home Office to ensure that successful appellants are given the right to remain in the UK.

For students who were in the UK at the time of Home Office action, their right to appeal varied according to when the action took place. From 6 April 2015, students were subjected to rules under the Immigration Act 2014, which removed the right to appeal, with only limited exceptions for human rights arguments deemed worthy by the Home Office. Prior to 6 April 2015, students were served with section 10 notices under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Effectively branded cheats by Her Majesty’s Government, they were told to leave the UK immediately, and that they could only appeal from their country of origin. The students took their fight for an in-country appeal to the courts. In the case of Ahsan v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of students’ right to appeal in the UK, finding that an out-of-country appeal was an inadequate legal remedy.

How much did that cost the taxpayer? How much of the UK taxpayer’s money has the Home Office wasted in trying to stop students gaining proper access to the appeal to which they are entitled? Schools in my constituency are sending begging letters to parents to meet the cost of basic materials. I have countless examples of people having to fight tooth and nail to get social care for their elderly parents. I have community policing that only exists on paper and in the speeches of politicians because the Home Office has cut police budgets; but apparently the Home Office has a bottomless pit when it comes to dragging international students through lengthy, costly and pointless legal action.

In response to a written parliamentary question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), claimed that he was unable to tell the House how much public money has been spent on court fees involving TOEIC cases,

“because Home Office data systems are unable to disaggregate costs”.

That tells us quite a lot about cost control and value for money deliberations in the Home Office. Ministers should know how much this has cost, and they should be accountable to taxpayers for it.

What we have seen through those cases has made it clear before the courts and tribunals that innocent students have been wrongly caught up in a scandal that was not of their making. I am enormously grateful to Garden Court Chambers for the thorough briefing it provided to hon. Members in advance of this debate, to give us some examples. When the scandal was exposed by “Panorama”, the Home Office’s response was to delegate the identification of those who used a proxy to ETS. The very organisation that had failed to properly oversee the test centres—the organisation the Government had deemed unworthy of Government accreditation—was none the less entirely trusted, it seems, to oversee this process.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

You can see the logic.

[Wes Streeting]

Absolutely; it beggars belief. But do not worry, folks, because the Home Office ensured that two senior officials had oversight of the process. That was hugely reassuring—until, of course, those same Home Office officials responsible for supervising the process gave evidence before the president of the immigration tribunal, a senior High Court judge. His criticism was remarkable, and I am sure the House will indulge me while I read what he said in the course of judging that case. I will not name the officials, because they do not have the right to reply. The shambolic mess of the Home Office tells us that it is probably not their individual responsibility, and the judge said in the case of both those senior officials that they gave truthful evidence.

However, the judge also said that,

“this neither counterbalances nor diminishes the shortcomings in their testimony.”

He said:

“Neither witness has any qualifications or expertise, vocational or otherwise, in the scientific subject matter of these appeals, namely voice recognition technology and techniques…In making its decisions in individual cases, the Home Office was entirely dependent on the information provided by ETS. At a later stage viz from around June 2014 this dependency extended to what was reported by its delegation which went to the United States…ETS was the sole arbiter of the information disclosed and assertions made to the delegation. For its part, the delegation—unsurprisingly, given its lack of expertise—”

this is what the judge said—

“and indeed, the entirety of the Secretary of State’s officials and decision makers accepted uncritically everything reported by ETS.”

This is absolute amateur hour at the Home Office. How on earth, in a case of this nature, involving fraud and electronic tests, would someone at the Home Office—probably paid a significant amount of money at our expense—ensure that there was adequate expertise to properly judge, in life-changing decisions about individuals, whether the evidence presented was enough to deny them their right to study in the UK? It is outrageous; coupled with the fact that these people have in many cases been deported on the basis of this flimsy evidence, it is disgraceful. The whole process was also subjected to stinging criticisms by three independent experts, who gave evidence to the tribunal—again, before a senior High Court judge.

In evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, one of those experts, summarising the report of the three, said:

“We agreed that in any one testing session there could be a mix of genuine applicants and those who were paying for fraudulent results.”

He also said:

“It seems reasonable to conclude that the ‘ETS lists’ are not a reliable indicator of whether or not a student…cheated.”

Patrick Lewis, an immigration barrister with Garden Court Chambers, told the Financial Times:

“The highly questionable quality of the evidence upon which these accusations have been based and the lack of any effective judicial oversight have given rise to some of the greatest injustices”,

that he had,

“encountered in over 20 years of practice”.

In the case of one of my own constituents I have seen this gross injustice for myself. He is one of the students whose test results were deemed invalid by ETS. He had to fight tooth and nail to get basic details of the allegations against him. When he requested the audio clip that had been used to brand him a cheat, it was discovered that there were two tests associated with him—two tests, involving my constituent, that are meant to have taken place at precisely the same time. This student came to the UK having already completed the highly respected International English Language Testing System test with the British Council, yet we are supposed to believe that he felt it necessary to cheat his way through the TOEIC test.

The decision has thrown his life into chaos, which is how I arrived on this issue. He is unable to complete his studies and get on with his life. His mental health has suffered. He is worried about his reputation back home, fearful that he will be considered a cheat because that is what the British Government has determined on the basis of this shambolic process. The irony is that the reputations of innocent international students are in tatters because around the world the United Kingdom is respected as a beacon of democracy and the rule of law, but what we see here is an affront to the principles of natural justice, with innocent students removed from our country without first giving them an opportunity to respond to the allegations against them. It is a disgrace. It should never have happened. There should be not only a fulsome apology, but immediate action to put this right. The family, friends and community back home of my constituent should be in no doubt about his innocence. I have no doubt about his innocence, and if our Government think otherwise they should meet the burden of proof and demonstrate his guilt.

My constituent is not alone. A Migrant Voice report reveals just how devastating this scandal has been to the lives of the international students caught up in all this, and we have heard them speak here in this very Parliament. They came to the UK, at considerable cost to themselves and their families, with the hope of experiencing a good education in a country renowned for its world-class universities. They have been robbed of that opportunity. They have been denied access to work, spent all their savings, relied on handouts from their family and friends and racked up debts in the battle to clear their name in a David v. Goliath contest, with poor old David cobbling together what he can to fund his legal action and Goliath funded by the taxpayer to unnecessarily drag these students through the courts. They have lost their right to rent. Their relationships have been placed under considerable strain. They have suffered mental ill health, heart troubles, hyperthyroidism and other stress-related conditions. All they want is the chance to clear their name, complete their studies and get on with their life and career.

Universities UK today published an excellent report about the importance of the contribution that international students make to the UK, not just to the economy but to our culture, enriching the educational experience of everyone at our world-class universities. I wholly endorse what Universities UK says about making it easier for students who come to this country to gain work experience after they graduate. However, how can we possibly expect the Government to take up such sensible recommendations when they treat students who are already here in such a disgraceful way? Universities across the world—in North America and Australia—are going hell for leather to grab the UK’s coveted place in the international student market and the Home Office is allowing them to run riot, diminishing our standing in the world and our ability to attract the very best students.

The Home Office and ETS—the grubby contractor at the centre of this scandal—have serious questions to answer about their conduct in all this. It is clear that the Home Office is persisting with creating a hostile environment for international students, hoping that, by dragging it out for as long as possible, it will cause students to simply give up and go home. The judicial criticism of senior civil servants’ and the Home Office’s approach should be a source of professional embarrassment for everyone involved; it is a global embarrassment to our country.

Prior to the summer, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham asked the Minister, and then the Home Secretary, to ensure that students whose visas were cancelled for allegedly cheating in the TOEIC test be allowed to sit a new test to resume their studies. On both occasions he was informed that that was being carefully considered, and that advice was being sought.

In closing, I offer some advice. We are now four years on from the “Panorama” investigation, and the Government have had long enough. Let these students sit their tests. Let them clear their names. Let them get on with their lives.

Combating Terrorism

Debate between Lyn Brown and Wes Streeting

Monday 7th March 2016 General Committees

[Lyn Brown]

One thing I did not bring out in my speech earlier was that, regardless of whether or not we opt into the directive, it will bring significant benefits to British citizens. I do not understand why we think that it is reasonable to receive and not reciprocate. Does the Minister seem like the kind of bloke who does not stand his round at the bar?

[Wes Streeting]

I am surprised at the Government’s response, given the role that they have played in shaping the directive. Indeed, the Security Minister acknowledges in his memorandum that a case can be made for action at EU level to ensure a consistent approach to combating terrorism. The Government have exercised their influence and expertise to ensure that that approach has been adopted by our European partners. As is becoming familiar on a range of issues, but particularly, and alarmingly, national security, I suspect that the politics within the Conservative party and its divisions over Europe are having a far too great a bearing on deliberations right across the House.

That brings me to the substance of my concern. People complain about a lack of influence, or Parliament’s lack of involvement in the making of laws and directives that affect our people, our courts and how we go about our business in this country, but every Member of Parliament could have had the opportunity to debate these important measures had the Government accepted the European Scrutiny Committee’s recommendation and held a debate on the Floor of the House. I cannot be convinced that we do not have time to discuss something as important as draft measures to combat terrorism. Members of the public would be surprised that we cannot find the time to debate such matters. We find the time to debate all sorts of issues in Parliament, including on the Floor of the House. I have sometimes felt, particularly in recent weeks, that the Chamber has not been as busy or as focused on the big issues as it should be.

It is not because I have anything against the Minister, or just because I love listening to the Security Minister, but I am disappointed and surprised that the latter is not present, because there are several questions that he needs to answer. In his explanatory memorandum, on the one hand he says that opting into the proposed directive might require “significant changes” to UK domestic law, notably in relation to provisions on the liability of legal persons and extraterritorial jurisdiction, but on the other hand he indicates that only “limited changes” to UK primary legislation would be needed. Which is it? Would opting into the directive require substantial changes to legislation? In which case, what are they and what would we be debating? If not, why the contradiction?

I have already asked the Minister to share the outcome of his analysis of the operational need for the elements of the directive that go beyond the requirements of international and UK law. I hope that he will go away and consider publishing that analysis, so that all Members can scrutinise it. He should also comment on the risk that differences between the legal framework established at EU level and the UK’s domestic law could impede practical co-operation, as we have set out. It would be deeply unfortunate if a party political headache turns into an obstruction to the UK opting into a directive that could bring practical benefits in tackling international terrorism and the specific threat to the United Kingdom.

The difference of opinion among Committee members underlines the importance of holding such debates on the Floor of the House. Plenty of Members, particularly Government Members, would like us withdraw from the EU altogether. I do not agree with that position, but I respect it. Whatever difficulties the Conservative party leadership is currently dealing with, they do not warrant us having such an important debate in Committee, rather than on the Floor of the House, where it should take place.