Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen
Munira Wilson Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
As we mourn the loss of Her late Majesty and celebrate her extraordinary legacy, I wish to convey condolences on behalf of my constituents to the King and the entire royal family. We feel her loss deeply.
Twickenham is home to a royal palace, a royal park, more platinum jubilee street parties than any other English borough, and a rugby stadium whose rousing renditions of “God Save the Queen” have now been heard for the final time. I will share three quick stories of how the Queen’s kindness and humility touched the lives of my constituents.
Last year, Park Lane stables, a riding centre for disabled people in Teddington, was facing eviction. Campaigners were desperate to keep it open, so as the Queen’s love of horses is well known, they went straight to the top. Natalie O’Rourke describes the letter they received back from the palace as like a “modern day fairy tale”. It was an invitation to the Royal Mews to visit Her Majesty’s horses. One campaigner Caitlin said of the visit:
“we were drawn in to their community, we mattered, we were cared for.”
The Queen could make everyone feel at home.
Her late Majesty visited Twickenham many times during her reign, most often, of course, for the rugby, as she was patron of the Rugby Football Union for 64 years. Tom Gaymor remembers the Queen opening Twickenham stadium’s east stand in 1994. While he was a 13-year-old ball boy waiting in the players’ tunnel, the Queen stopped, greeted them and asked questions of them all. He told me that
“her grace and genuine interest in each and every one said everything about her human side and love for her role.”
My constituent the Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London, Sir Kenneth Olisa, accompanied the Queen to Grenfell Tower in the days following the fire. Despite the unbelievable tragedy, when the Queen arrived, the crowd broke into spontaneous applause. He said that she showed then, as she has so many times, her ability to unite, console and bring her hope to her people in their times of need.
I want to finish with what I personally most admired about Her Majesty: her deep Christian faith, which underpinned her commitment to devote her whole life to public service, to her country and her Commonwealth. During the platinum jubilee, the vicar of St Mary with St Alban in Teddington reminded us of the words of the Queen’s 2016 Christmas message.
“Christ’s example,”
she said,
“helps me to see the value of doing small things with great love, whoever does them and whatever they themselves believe.”
Queen Elizabeth II did many things with great love. Few of them were small. May she rest in peace. God save the King.
Oral Answers to Questions
Munira Wilson Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Elizabeth Truss
I was proud to vote for and support gay marriage, which has been a very important step forward for our country.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Oral Answers to Questions
Munira Wilson Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Kemi Badenoch
My hon. Friend is referring to the reform of succession to the hereditary peerage, to which I am sympathetic, but which raises a variety of complex issues. Various approaches have been proposed in both Houses to address the issue of male primogeniture for hereditary peerages, but there is not yet a consensus on the way forward. I am happy to work with her to look at the issue.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chloe Smith)
I cannot give that commitment, but I look forward to joining the hon. Lady and others at the reception this afternoon with Carers UK, because there are many important issues regarding how we can support unpaid carers.
Oral Answers to Questions
Munira Wilson Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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James Cartlidge
The hon. Gentleman takes a consistent interest in this point, and I am happy to mention his question to the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins). I can confirm that, since prison officer fitness testing resumed last July, 90% of female officers passed on the first attempt, and none failed by the third attempt.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)
“Inclusive Britain” is the Government’s response to the report by the independent Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, and it sets out a groundbreaking action plan to tackle negative disparities, promote unity and build a fairer Britain for all. This includes developing a new model history curriculum by 2024; working with a panel of academics and businesspeople to promote fairness in the workplace; and developing a new national framework for how the use of police powers is scrutinised at local level. The measures in the action plan will help to level up the country by tackling the drivers of persistent ethnic disparities in education, employment, health and criminal justice.
Munira Wilson
The Minister will be aware that a recent survey of 27,000 parents by Pregnant Then Screwed found that about two thirds are paying more for childcare than they are for their rent or mortgage. This is pushing many mothers out of the workforce or into working fewer hours. Does she agree that the Government need to address this as a matter of urgency if we want to keep women in the workforce and in well-paid jobs?
Kemi Badenoch
I agree with the hon. Lady that childcare is a very important issue if we want to keep women in the workplace. We have spent more than £3.5 billion in each of the past three years on our early education entitlement and we continue to support families with their childcare costs.
Appointment of Lord Lebedev
Munira Wilson Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Angela Rayner
The hon. Gentleman makes a point, but the point I am making is that security advice was given, and the commission made a recommendation. If the Prime Minister overrides that advice, surely we should have a reason and transparency about why he went against the advice of the security services and the commission. That is very important and a robust way of dealing with things.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
According to allegations in The Sunday Times, the Prime Minister went to visit the now Lord Lebedev about the advice he had been given by security services, and to assure him that he wanted to give him this peerage, at a time when coronavirus was raging, businesses were being asked to close, and schools were about to be asked to shut. That was a priority for the Prime Minister when the rest of us were having to put our entire lives on hold. Does the right hon. Lady think that is an appropriate priority for the Prime Minister in the middle of a national and global crisis?
Angela Rayner
The hon. Lady makes a good point, and no, I do not think that is a good priority. I cannot get into concerns about what the Prime Minister thought was appropriate under his own lockdown rules during this debate, because it is not on the motion.
These dangerous links to Putin’s oligarchs threaten our national security, but today we can take a step to defend it. There can be no better answer to the aggression of a dictator than to show that in a democracy, our leaders answer to the country they serve. The Minister should stop hiding behind the excuses and denials that we have heard about why we cannot have this transparency. I urge the House: let us get to the facts behind this whole murky business, publish the advice, and come clean with the British people. I commend the motion to the House.
Shaun Bailey
I hear the hon. Member’s point about transparency and I get that—there is a broader conversation to be had about that—but as my right hon. and learned Friend the Paymaster General stated, we cannot do that at the risk of undermining the processes that are there. What I will say to the hon. Member—perhaps she and I will agree on this—is let us change the process. How about that? There is stunned silence at a Conservative MP suggesting changing the process, but that is the point I am trying to make.
There is a fundamental flaw in today’s motion. Okay, the documentation is released, but what then? Labour seems to be clamouring for something that it skirts around in the motion but does not go forward to suggest change. It strikes me as absurd.
Munira Wilson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He says that there are no ideas forthcoming from the Opposition on how to change the process. Let me give him a bold and radical idea that my party has been championing for decades, which is that we should have a fully elected upper Chamber, not an appointed one. We would therefore not have to have this appointment process at all, and we would not have to have this discussion at all.
Shaun Bailey
Just to clarify, I never said that the Liberal Democrats did not have an idea, just the Labour party. I am fully aware of the hon. Member’s party’s position.
Let me respond to the undertones of the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland pointed out, our response to Ukraine has not been hindered by this situation at all—with the 22,000 troops that have been trained, 10,000 missiles, the fact that we had the President of Ukraine appear in this Chamber and that he has thanked this Government for their intervention in Ukraine. The Ukrainian people say that this country stepped forward and they see us as their biggest ally in their fight for freedom—the undertone of the motion and the debate is disgraceful.
The motion is fundamentally flawed. I have no issue with backing a motion when it works, but this one does not even meet the procedure it tries to use. I come back to the point that we have been told that this is not party political, but I have been sitting in the debate for an hour now and I do not know how it could not be perceived as party political. Clearly, there are broader conversations to be had and I look forward to those ideas, but the motion is flawed and does not work. It is procedurally just not right and it seeks to undermine the existing processes, putting at risk the disclosure and transparency that we are trying to put across and the confidence people have to engage with the system. The motion is completely flawed, as I say, and it cannot be supported today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Munira Wilson Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend, in his usual manner, has put his finger on the button of part of the solution to the reoffending cycle. We firmly believe that there are three pillars for success in rehabilitating offenders: the first is a home, the second is a job, and the third is a friend. We are committing to providing all three to those who leave the secure estate. With all other Departments, we will publish our outcome delivery plan in the new financial year. I can reassure my hon. Friend that our right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister is setting extremely challenging and ambitious targets for the Department, particularly in regard to housing and employment.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (James Cartlidge)
We are taking action across all jurisdictions to bring backlogs down and improve waiting times for those who use our courts by expanding physical capacity, introducing new legislation and ramping up judicial recruitment. We are already seeing the results of our efforts. In the Crown courts, the outstanding case load has reduced from approximately 61,000 in June 2021 to approximately 59,000 at the end of January 2022; in the magistrates courts, the case load is close to recovering to pre-pandemic levels; and for most of our tribunals, the outstanding case load is either static or already beginning to reduce.
Munira Wilson
The Minister will be aware that a recent report by the Public Accounts Committee revealed that the number of rape and sexual assault cases waiting to be tried increased more than 400% in the first year of the pandemic. Delays in such cases were already over 18 months pre-pandemic. The toll that those delays take means that the victims of sexual assault are much more likely to withdraw their case. Will the Minister support greater investment, as the Committee and indeed the rape review recommend, in independent sexual violence advisers, whose support for victims halves the likelihood of their withdrawing from the process?
Oral Answers to Questions
Munira Wilson Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is noticeable that the hard-left Administration in Wales, backed up by separatists, is not acting in the interests of the people of Wales. It would be much better to accept the democratic result of the Brexit referendum. The people of the United Kingdom voted to leave; we have now left and the opportunities will flow. To waste taxpayers’ money on taking fruitless legal action is, to my mind, the sort of thing that only the hard-left socialist would do.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
The One Public Estate programme has provided support and £140,000 to explore estate collaboration across the emergency services and wider public sector partners in London. The programme is working with the Metropolitan police and the Greater London Authority to establish where project opportunities could be progressed.
Munira Wilson
With police stations throughout London up for sale, including in Teddington, the Mayor of London is determined to flog them off to the highest bidder, which generally means luxury housing developers. Does the Minister agree that if precious taxpayer-owned sites such as Teddington police station must be closed, they should routinely be part of the One Public Estate programme so that they can be repurposed for community use—for example, for Park Road surgery, an important GP facility in my constituency—and for affordable homes for key workers and young people?
Mrs Wheeler
I thank the hon. Lady for her interesting question. She led a Westminster Hall debate on the disposal of Teddington police station yesterday; as the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), said then, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime is responsible for the disposal strategy, but it can take into account the wider social, environmental and economic benefits. He will write to the hon. Lady with further information on this matter.
Health and Social Care
Munira Wilson Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
That was brilliantly and succinctly put. Does the SNP want the money or not? Do the people of Scotland want investment in their healthcare and social care or not? There is more money coming for Scotland; let us hope that the SNP spends it wisely.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
A little over two years ago, the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised the nation an oven-ready deal on social care, yet the announcement of a tax on jobs only promises a plan later this year. Crucially, the detail in the statement says that only people starting care after October 2023 will be helped with these catastrophic costs. What does the Prime Minister say to the 1.5 million people missing out on care and to the millions of hard-working families facing crippling costs between now and September 2023 but paying for it from April next year?
The Prime Minister
What I say to the hon. Member is that, frankly, she should take that up with the former leaders of the Labour party, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and all the former Ministers responsible who did absolutely nothing to fix the problem when they were in office. It is this Government dealing with it now.
Covid-19 Update
Munira Wilson Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
As my right hon. Friend knows, the hospitality sector in Sutton Coldfield, which I know from my own experience to be wonderful, will, like the rest of the hospitality sector across the country, be able to open up in full on Monday, including indoors. As we go forward, we hope, and I cannot see any evidence to contradict this, that we will be able to open up fully from 21 June—although people will still clearly need to exercise caution and common sense in the way they go about their lives, because the virus, I am afraid, is still going to be present in our lives for a long time to come.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The public inquiry is very welcome and desperately needed so that the public can understand why the UK has suffered one of the highest death tolls in the world. It is critically important that this inquiry is properly independent and has the confidence of the public, including the bereaved families of the over 127,000 people who so tragically lost their lives. Consulting those families once the inquiry has started is too late. Will the Prime Minister today commit to urgently meeting representatives of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice to consult them on both the chair and the terms of reference for the inquiry?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Munira Wilson Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]
Today’s Budget statement represents a massive missed opportunity. There were a number of measures to be welcomed, but the silence in so many areas was utterly deafening. There was absolutely nothing on social care, despite grand promises from the Prime Minister on the steps of Downing Street and the Heath Secretary promising proposals this year. There was nothing on further support for the NHS. With the backlog of non-covid care stacking up, lives are at risk, and our heroic NHS staff are on their knees. There was nothing on boosting mental health and wellbeing support for our children and young people, who have been hit so badly by this pandemic. Investing in our future means investing in our youth, not just in bricks and mortar.
There was nothing to help those exporters hit by Brexit red tape. Just last week, a chocolate maker in my constituency told me that he has been unable to export a single bar of chocolate to the EU since 1 January. He normally exports a quarter of a million pounds-worth per year. There was nothing on building more affordable and social homes—just measures to make homes yet more unaffordable. There was precious little on the environment and building a green economic recovery, and there was close to nothing for the 3 million hard-working entrepreneurs and small business owners excluded from Government support, on whose backs our economic recovery will be built.
I briefly want to focus on that last point: the small business owners who continue to be ignored by Government, despite having paid their taxes and often being so central to our local economies and our communities. With a year having elapsed since the emergency economic measures were introduced by the Chancellor, it is unforgivable that the vast majority of the 3 million excluded remain overlooked—in particular, directors of limited companies. These are not wealthy tax dodgers, as the Chancellor likes to make out. These are ordinary, hard-working folk at the heart of our high streets, including hairdressers and others—often women—who have built flexible, home-based businesses to fit around caring responsibilities.
My constituent Claire Leroux built her travel business from scratch as a single mum, eventually employing five people, with a turnover of £350,000. She has had to make her staff redundant, and her business hangs in the balance as she lives off her savings. Hairdressers, such as Elements in Teddington High Street, are struggling for survival. Owners are let down by the lack of personal financial support as directors and no VAT relief from the Chancellor for personal care businesses, as there has been for hospitality. The Treasury has had a compelling, workable proposal for a directors income support scheme put to it by experts, yet still nothing was offered today. I say to the Chancellor, it is not too late to help the 3 million excluded and put forward a revenue support scheme to support small businesses.