Public Health

Debate between Mark Harper and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the Health Protection (Coronavirus, International Travel) (England) (Amendment) (No. 7) Regulations 2021 (S.I., 2021, No. 150), dated 12 February 2021, a copy of which was laid before this House on 12 February 2021, be revoked.

The House meets as the UK reaches a critical moment in our battle against the coronavirus. In the past year, the British people have shown remarkable fortitude in the face of this deadly threat and made extraordinary sacrifices to protect our NHS and save lives. The roll-out of the vaccine is now giving real hope to people that there is light at the end of this long tunnel. For that, we give thanks to the scientific excellence that enabled the vaccine to be developed so quickly, while we are indebted to the remarkable work of our NHS, military, local government, volunteers and all those frontline workers who have worked tirelessly on the roll-out. But amid this sense of optimism we know that very real dangers remain from this deadly and unpredictable virus, and one of the key threats is the importation of new strains that could threaten the efficacy of those vaccines. As restrictions loosen and people start to interact more, the opportunity for variants to spread becomes far greater. That is why protecting our borders against emerging strains of covid is such a vital challenge, and I am afraid it is a challenge that the Government are failing miserably.

That is why today we are taking this unusual step of debating Government measures that have been in place for months. I make it clear that it is not our intention to divide the House or to vote these measures down, because having them in place is better than nothing at all, but the verdict on the Government’s approach to quarantine is damning. They have failed to heed warnings that their inadequate system leaves the door open to new variants of covid, and the consequences are deeply worrying. Sadly, this is in keeping with the Government’s approach to protecting our borders against covid from the very start of the pandemic, with no formal quarantine until June of last year, no testing at the border until this year, and no hotel quarantining until 15 February—and then only a half-baked system. For months, Labour Members have been calling for a comprehensive hotel quarantine system to guard against variants reaching these shores and undermining the huge collective effort to defeat this virus.

As islands, we should have a natural advantage in guarding against bringing the virus into the country. Yet in the early days we allowed millions of travellers to enter the country—23 million between 1 January and 31 March last year—while cases of covid were rocketing across Europe. Millions of people coming into the UK with no tests and no formal quarantine requirements will remain a terrible case study for this Government’s approach of doing too little too late, lurching from one crisis to another, devoid of strategy. It is not as if Ministers were not told: constituents were travelling to our ports and airports, raising the lack of checks and tests from the start.

Of course I accept that dealing with a pandemic is hugely challenging, but the inability to protect our borders is a systemic failing. That failure to plan has made the current quarantine system ineffective and frankly dangerous. By extending the red list to only 40 countries, the Government are leaving the door wide open for new variants to enter the UK. On 1 February we gave MPs the opportunity to vote for a comprehensive hotel quarantine system and a sector support deal for the aviation sector, which Labour has been calling on the Government to introduce for months. The Government again refused to do what was necessary to protect our borders against covid.

There are a number of key reasons why a limited list is an ineffective strategy. Labour Members have set out those reasons, and sadly the warnings have come to pass. First, the hard truth is that we have no certainty about where the next dangerous covid strain will emerge. The thoughts of the whole House will, I am sure, be with the people of India, given the heart-breaking scenes we have seen. Countries not on the red list could have new variants in circulation that are spread by travellers to the UK before they are recognised and acted on. That is exactly what happened with the variant from India, which was classed as a variant under investigation in the UK only last week. Warning No.1 was ignored, and it came to pass.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman. How long does he propose that his regime would be in place? By worrying about potential variants coming from overseas, he seems effectively to be arguing for a system that will be in place forever, or at least until every other country is vaccinated. What is his position?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

No, I am not suggesting for a moment that such a system should be in place forever, and clearly there has to be scientific evidence about that. However, we certainly need to be at a more advanced stage of our own roll-out before we give such consideration, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests. The comprehensive hotel quarantine system should already have been in place.

The second weakness in the current position is that there are countries with significant outbreaks of the South African and Brazilian variants that are not even on the red list. We understand that the recent South African strain discovered in south London came to the UK via a traveller from an African country not on the red list. Warning No. 2 was ignored, and it came to pass. We know that people travelling to the UK on connecting journeys from red list countries have been mixing with people from non-red list countries on planes and in airports, creating dangerous opportunities for cross-infection. We have seen that in scenes from airports in recent months. Warning No. 3 was ignored, and it came to pass.

The Government try to say that their quarantine measures are tough, but the reality suggests otherwise. It is not just the Opposition giving these warnings. Minutes from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies on 21 January show that Ministers were told

“that reactive, geographically targeted travel bans cannot be relied upon to stop importation of new variants…due to the time lag between the emergence and identification of variants of concern, and the potential for indirect travel via a third country.”

When the director general of Border Force gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, he set out a damning statistic that of the 15,000 people entering the country each day, only around 1% were entering hotel quarantine. That leaves 99% of visitors entering the country with virtually no controls. It is no use the Government saying that other quarantine measures in place are working, because their own figures show that just three in every 100 people quarantining have been successfully contacted. It is a record of negligence that leaves the doors open.

We know things are in a dire state when a video exists of the Home Secretary speaking against her own quarantine policy, and even the implementation of the half-baked measures we have now has been beset by mismanagement. It took 18 days after the announcement on 27 January for hotel quarantine to begin—more time lost. Even now, I hear reports from colleagues about mismanagement of the system—people unable to book in, poor service, lack of support for disabled people, and exceptions not working as they should for people in difficult circumstances. Then there is the Government’s glacial pace of adding countries to the red list.

CPS and Disability Hate Crime

Debate between Mark Harper and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. It is also a great privilege to speak opposite the Solicitor General for the first time. As a fellow Welsh lawyer, I look forward to speaking opposite him and to our future debates.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) on securing this debate and on the nature of his contribution. He started his speech by defining disability hate crime very precisely. The only point I would add to that and to the debate is that we have been talking about disability hate crime in terms of open hostility, but there is also a very different type of crime: those who befriend disabled and vulnerable people, seek to take them into their confidence and take advantage of them. I hope that, in addition to hate crime, the Solicitor General will consider that strand of crime.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bootle set out the political context extremely well. Hate crime and disability hate crime have a detrimental impact on victims, their families and friends. This is a key issue that goes to the heart of what we are as a society. We in this place should judge the quality of our policies and those of our Government not by their effect on the strongest but by their effect on the most vulnerable in our society and by the protection those people are given.

This has been a constructive debate. The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) made a good point about the sensitivity of the prosecutors of such crimes. Indeed, she asked about a response to the Law Commission report, which I will come to in a moment.

The hon. Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) talked well about raising awareness and supporting disabled people in the reporting process. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who has momentarily popped out, spoke powerfully about how crimes are committed online—the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) also made that point—and there has to be a strong and powerful message that the keyboard warriors who spread bile and hatred online have no hiding place behind their monitor and keyboard. The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) spoke powerfully about attitudes in our society and what we must tackle in that respect.

I agreed with the vast bulk of the speech made by the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean, particularly what he said about awareness in schools. He made a number of constructive suggestions, including about support through the criminal justice system as more and more cases are, hopefully, brought. That will clearly be important. However, I want to take him up on one point. He is entirely right that it is not politicians’ fault what the press choose to write, nor should we interfere in that choice, but politicians can create a permissive environment. I will give one specific example. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), said on the “Today” programme in October 2012:

“It is unfair that people listening to this programme going out to work see the neighbour next door with the blinds down because they are on benefits.”

The problem with a statement like that is that, first, it divides people into workers and non-workers. Secondly, it implies that all those on benefits are the same. It also seems to imply an inherent sense of unfairness that people are on benefits. We must be careful with our rhetoric. The environment that it creates can lead to the demonisation of disabled people in our society.

[Mr Harper]

I tried hard not to be tempted, but the hon. Gentleman has pushed me too far. I take his point, but the former Chancellor made it clear which people he was talking about. The Government made it clear that people who can work should work. He was not attacking people who cannot work, and I do not think that anyone honestly thought that he was. The Government have been clear that we support people who cannot work, but that we expect those who can work to do so, and not to live off others. That is the point that the former Chancellor was making, and it is a reasonable view that I think would be shared by people across the country.

In my experience, the people who get most cross about people who could work but do not are those who live next door to them, who are struggling hard and who see others not doing their fair share. It is in no way an attack on people who cannot work. The Government spend £50 billion a year on supporting disabled people. It is right that we should do so. We will continue to support disabled people who are not able to work, as is right in a civilised society.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

All I can say is that it is a shame that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not go on to make that distinction when he made those comments on the “Today” programme, which I was careful to quote precisely and not to paraphrase. I am afraid that such comments, in isolation, can have the effect that I mentioned.

I will turn to my remarks to the Solicitor General, because I want to make some constructive contributions. One good point made by the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean involved the provision of Hansard reports of debates on this subject to the ongoing Crown Prosecution Service consultation. In its 2014 consultation paper on hate crime and whether the current offences should be extended, the Law Commission said that

“we share the view expressed by most consultees that it is undesirable for the aggravated offences not to apply equally to hostility based on race, religion, transgender identity, sexual orientation and disability. It sends the wrong message about the seriousness with which such offending is taken and the severity of its impact, if offences attaching a specific aggravated label and a potentially higher sentence only exist in relation to two of the five statutorily protected hate crime characteristics.”

Can the Solicitor General comment on the possibility of reviewing the operation of aggravated offences to consider parity across all protected characteristics?

There is also a great issue involving data. Last month, a report by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance found a number of areas of concern involving incidents of hate crime in the UK and apparent failure to prosecute such crimes, including specifically a lack of data on the use of extended sentencing powers. It made a couple of recommendations. One involved sections 145 and 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, with which the Solicitor General should be familiar. Where they are imposed, that should be recorded, including, as the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean said, on the criminal records of offenders. I suggest that we also need to collect data on where aggravated offences and enhanced sentencing have been invoked initially but then dropped through the process of accepting a guilty plea. The ECRI report also recommends, finally, that steps be taken to narrow the gap between hate crimes being recorded and subsequently referred for prosecution. I would be grateful if the Solicitor General commented on that in his remarks.

Such measures are extremely important when one looks at the statistics. The latest statistics that I could find, in “Hate crime, England and Wales, 2015 to 2016”, published only last month, show that 3,629 disability hate crimes were recorded by the police in 2015-16, a 42% rise from the previous year. That should be welcomed, of course, but concerns remain that levels of reporting are still extremely low. The 2014-15 national crime survey for England and Wales estimated that the annual figure might be closer to 70,000, which shows that there is much more for us to do.

The Crown Prosecution Service’s own 2016 “Hate Crime Report” showed that 941 of those 3,629 offences, or 26%, were prosecuted, and that 707 of those prosecutions were successful. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle pointed out, that is a 75% conviction rate, which is still below the rate for hate crimes generally, which is 83%. Although we are, admittedly, discussing a low base and small figures, the conviction rate is pretty stubborn. We have managed to move from 503 convictions in 2014-15 to 707, but successful convictions are still around 75%. I also urge the Solicitor General to consider carefully the regional variations, why they exist and what can be done to make the policies comprehensive across this country and give them an impact as close to universal as possible.

Finally, I return to where the debate started. It is vital that we have strong measures, that the Solicitor General reviews and keeps under review the position on aggravated sentencing, that we have strong and robust data and, above all, that we seek with the laws of our land to protect the most vulnerable in our society.