Exiting the European Union: Sanctions

Debate between Meg Hillier and Chuka Umunna

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. If we add on the other changes in Government Departments—the DWP is going through some changes of property and where jobs might be—that poses a challenge. We face a challenge with skills in this country anyway, and we can add to that our exit from the European Union and the fact that we have so many unanswered questions about what will happen to EU citizens residing in the UK and others who need to come here. We heard only the other day that the NHS needs to bring in a large number of GPs from the European Union because we are unable to recruit in this country. Whatever one might have thought of these policies before, we are now seeing skilled people who are potentially unable to move to new locations and we do not yet have a skills strategy to fill not just those gaps but the others we might see as we leave the EU. A perfect storm is perhaps a polite way of putting it; I could think of fruitier ways of describing it, but I will leave the fruity conversation to the hon. Member for Saffron Walden, who stretched the boundaries further than I will on this occasion.

I will not list every Department and its problems, but we have a long list if other hon. Members are interested in seeing it, given the challenges that each Department faces in its exit from the EU, the lack of planning, and the lack of joined-upness across Government. A problem in one Department, such as HMRC, will have knock-on effects in another, such as the Department for International Trade. We cannot see these things in isolation and there is not yet a coherent plan.

I hope that when he sums up the Minister can reassure me that what I am saying is not true, but the evidence we have seen in Committee suggests that this is the reality. As I have said, senior civil servants acknowledged that they were told very definitely not to plan for the leave scenario, which has put us very much on the back foot.

[Chuka Umunna]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this reinforces the need for proper transitional arrangements? We are talking not only about the time that will be necessary. It seems to me that all the points she has just made are an argument for this country remaining part of the customs union and part of the EEA—the single market—at least in the interim, as we make our way out of the European Union.

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. As we approach the summer recess—with only one Bill published for our exit from the EU, with no serious plans on the table, and with it becoming apparent that when we come back in the autumn we will not get going seriously until October—we are getting to a point at which we will not even have 18 months to get this show on the road. I am assuming and hoping that Ministers will work 24/7 over the summer to get us to a better place, but even then the timetabling of business through this House means that practically—whatever one’s philosophical view—this cannot be done in time.

I am not saying this because I am a remoaner or a doomsayer. I might have been very positive about wanting to stay in the EU, as was my constituency, but let us be practical about the reality. The delay in delivering the sanctions Bill is another of the many concerns.

It is important that I highlight the concerns of many of my constituents who are EU citizens about the uncertainty they are still facing. Even now people are phoning me or coming up to me in the street in tears because of their concerns about their future. We have heard some degree of certainty from the Prime Minister: she has told us that there will be a mechanism for those people already living here who are EU citizens to regularise their stay, but that will not be published until the end of 2018 and there is still no certainty about the costs.

I was a Home Office Minister, and much as I like to gloss the previous Labour Government as one of the best we have ever had, the reality is that the Home Office—then and now—faces huge challenges in the number of people going through its immigration system. I grappled with that as a Minister, and I did not solve it. We grapple with it as Back Benchers. I certainly do in my constituency, where I have a high number of people going through the system. The idea that, between the end of next year and when we leave, all those who so wish will be able to go through a regularisation process is cloud cuckoo land. It is not surprising that those who can afford it are going through the long-winded process of regularising their stay, getting residency and applying for citizenship.

I spoke at the weekend to a constituent, an international banker who has children. It costs £300 to reach the first hurdle in the legal process. She told me, “If I’m not wanted here I might just leave.” For her, leaving is a real option as she could get a good job elsewhere. Other good, skilled people who have given up their lives in other countries to work in the UK and pay taxes feel like turning their back on us. Some who have been settled in the UK for 15 or 20 years, whose children have grown up here, are very concerned about what the future means for them. Despite the Prime Minister giving some words of comfort—late in the day, and I do not know why this could not have been dealt with before—we need to resolve this sooner rather than later.

Sanctions are the main thrust of the debate. I am strongly of the view that UK-EU co-operation needs to be maintained. I say that not because I am trying to rewind the clock on the referendum—much though this is not where I wanted us to be—but because of a simple question: where would we have differed from the EU on sanctions? There are issues with money laundering and our approach to big international questions such as freezing assets across boundaries, travel bans, trade, and market restrictions, which are but a small part of that approach.

The timetabling of a sanctions Bill to fit with the great repeal Bill is another practical problem. For three years, on behalf of the British Government, I negotiated home affairs at the table in Europe with 27 member states. It took long enough to reach agreement but it was possible. However, trying to enact our Bill and align us, where we would normally agree with our European counterparts, will be incredibly challenging. It will be difficult, at this pace, to write that into law.

We must be frank: this House is not very good at legislating. The Government draft legislation—often in a hurry, and quite a lot will now be written in a hurry—the House has little chance seriously to amend it but must instead pick on the bits we can most likely amend, and as a result it often does not hang together very well. We legislate in haste and repent at leisure, taking a long time to unpick things. That is not true in every case, but as Ministers or Back Benchers dealing with our constituents’ problems we have seen it often.

Would the UK seriously go it alone? No, I think we would not, and I hope the Minister will be clear on that. Why do we not find a way of maintaining the status quo, for a transitional period at least? I fear how the Bill will fit in when it eventually comes before the House.

I have some simple questions for the Minister. How do the Government intend to timetable the repeal Bill and the future sanctions Bill, ensuring that they can work together and there is no contradiction? It would be crazy if we ended up legislating on two separate issues related to Europe, only to find that they do not work together.

Jobs and Business

Debate between Meg Hillier and Chuka Umunna

Friday 10th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I will make more progress.

Ultimately, for employment schemes to work, there need to be jobs for people to go into, created by businesses, and for that we need to create the conditions for businesses to expand and for wealth to be created. We need to create an environment in which businesses can grow the top line. On many occasions, the Business Secretary has pointed to how our economy is structured, which he says stands in the way of progress. I agree that we need to restructure our economy, to increase our exports and to diversify the sectors contributing to GDP—there is consensus on that—but I must say to him that blaming the Government’s predecessors starts to wear thin after three Queen’s Speeches and after three years in government. It is time that he and his colleagues took responsibility for their actions.

I have always thought that to achieve both rising and shared prosperity, we need to rethink the relationship between the Government and markets and to be far more discerning about the kind of capitalism we want in this country. We need to set aside the neo-liberal dogma propagated by some Government Members that markets are automatically efficient and best left alone. There is a lot that active Government can do to improve the healthy functioning of markets. Importantly—this is a key point—markets cannot set a strategic direction for our economy; they cannot set a direction for how we will compete and pay our way in the world—Governments working in partnership with business can do that.

Making that a reality requires a modern industrial strategy—the kind of strategies that our competitors are prosecuting with good effect—and an agenda in which the role of the Government is not to step back, but to step up; to work with businesses to create better outcomes at home; to ensure that we can pay our way in the world; and to ensure that growth is more broadly based across sectors and geographically across regions as well. We must also empower consumers as drivers in making markets work more efficiently, not only for themselves but for producers. That helps to provide the foundations for UK businesses to succeed in other markets.

[Meg Hillier]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s approach to funding for lending has been the polar opposite of what he has just described, and has in fact fuelled the housing market rather than helped businesses such as mine in Shoreditch? It has done nothing to deal with day-to-day finances and only touched potential loans, rather than things such as overdrafts. What would his approach be were he in the Secretary of State’s position?

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend is right to identify some of the risks with the funding for lending scheme. The problem is that it has reduced the cost of borrowing for existing business borrowers without increasing access to finance for those other successful, profitable businesses. The other problem—this is why we advocate setting up a regional banking network, to which I shall turn in a minute—is that the scheme sees as its delivery mechanism the very high street banks that have been the problem. In fact, the transmission mechanism for many of the schemes that the Government have introduced since they came to office has been the high street banks, which have been the problem.

I will continue to discuss industrial strategy in more detail before touching more briefly, due to time constraints, on consumer issues. I do not think that the Business Secretary would disagree that in opposition he did not really share our view of the need for an active industrial strategy or even of the need for a Department, which he now runs, to be its champion—he argued for his own Department to be abolished at the time. After two years in government, however, he appears to have come round to our way of thinking, and we saw his embryonic industrial strategy published last September.

An industrial strategy consists of different elements. I have welcomed some of the sector-specific interventions that the Business Secretary has announced since the Queen’s Speech—in aerospace and with the ongoing interventions and assistance in automotive—and we will scrutinise the Bills in the Queen’s Speech closely to ensure that they support those key sectors. Another such sector is our creative industries, which were disappointed not to see a communications Bill in the programme for this Session. The point is that so much of what we have seen coming from his Department or the Treasury has been rather “piecemeal”—to use the Secretary of State’s own language—and does not meet the scale of the task at hand. As ever with this Government, if we speak to any business organisation, we hear that the problem is one of delivery.

I will focus on a few key areas and the extent to which the Queen’s Speech moves things forward. I will start where the Business Secretary finished. Of course, we must reform our banking sector, not only so our banks are made safe but primarily so that the financial services sector better serves the real economy. We have said, and he referred to this, that we should have better regulated the banks during our time in office. We did not, however, and that is a source of regret. Listening to the Secretary of State lecture us on that, I should say to him that mea culpa in that respect is due across the political spectrum. The tripartite regulatory regime that we put in place in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 enjoyed widespread support. In the House on Second Reading of the Financial Services and Markets Bill, the Business Secretary said:

“I want to express broad support for the Bill, whose philosophy and whose architecture of financial regulation reflect a broad consensus. I appreciate the extent to which there has been broad and extensive consultation with practitioners and with Parliament, and the fact that the Government have responded to very many of the anxieties that have been expressed.”—[Official Report, 28 June 1999; Vol. 334, c. 55.]

He went on to say:

“Like the Conservative Opposition, we shall approach the issues constructively. There is no reason to hold back the Bill.”—[Official Report, 28 June 1999; Vol. 334, c. 58.]

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Meg Hillier and Chuka Umunna

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

Absolutely. I completely agree with what my hon. Friend has just said.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend hit the nail on the head when he talked about abolition by stealth. Anyone who has ever had cause to take an issue to the Equality and Human Rights Commission knows that going to an independent body that has rights over other bodies to take action is vital. Taking an internal route through an organisation is sometimes too slow and inadequate. Will he make a commitment about what the Labour Government will do when we are back in power in 2015?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Umunna]

It is absolutely true. The Minister should check Hansard.

With this latest new clause, the Government are doing precisely what they said they would not, and we oppose it, as do more than 70% of those who responded to the Government’s consultation.

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend is making his point very powerfully. My worry is that under the umbrella of saying that they want to get rid of regulation, the Government are affecting some of the most vulnerable workers in our society, who do not have the protection of a well-paid job and education to argue their case but rely on the law in question. Without it, they will just have to shut up and put up with the harassment that they face daily, often in domiciliary situations such as the one that he described.

[Mr Umunna]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head and identifies the Government’s real motivation. We are in the third quarter of a contraction, which we will hopefully come out of in the next quarter. We were promised many things in relation to the economy that have not turned out to be the case. In their desperation to get the economy moving, and with their complete refusal to stimulate the economy, the Government are now doing the traditional thing and looking to water down people’s rights at work as a substitute for a proper growth plan.

New clause 13 would abolish discrimination questionnaires, which employees can submit to their employers to obtain further information and make up their minds about whether to institute proceedings, or maybe to assist them in reaching a settlement with their employer. I know those questionnaires well, because I was professionally involved in drafting them on behalf of employees. I was also involved in drafting the responses on behalf of employers.

From the employees’ point of view, there is no doubt that those questionnaires help them access evidence at an early stage, which is incredibly important so that, as I said, they can determine whether to litigate or precipitate a settlement. They will now be all the more important because of the large fees that the Government are levying on people who wish to institute claims in an employment tribunal.

Turning to the employers’ point of view, the Government’s own Equalities Office carried out research on the questionnaires and found that only 2% of private sector employers had had to complete one in the past three years, and that most of those who had done so agreed that responding to them had been straightforward. We do not need to abolish the questionnaires, and I do not accept the reasons for doing so that have been put forward by the Minister. I say that not only from a political point of view but in the light of my professional experience of working for a number of years on these matters.