Contact in Care Settings

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sarah Jones

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It has been a privilege to chair this emotional and effective debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of guaranteeing the right to maintain contact in care settings.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The shadow Home Office team has been seeking clarity on security breaches involving the Home Secretary and serious discrepancies in the information provided to Parliament. Yesterday, the Prime Minister stated in this House that the Home Secretary

“made an error of judgment, but she recognised that, she raised the matter and she accepted her mistake.”—[Official Report, 26 October 2022; Vol. 721, c. 289.]

That was contradicted last night by the former Conservative party chairman, the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Sir Jake Berry), who stated that the Home Secretary was presented with evidence of her breach, rather than proactively reporting it. Similarly, the Home Secretary has claimed the breach related to a written ministerial statement on immigration, but the former Conservative party chairman claimed it related to cyber-security and other media reports state it was a set of Cabinet papers.

The Cabinet Office has now reportedly confirmed that it will investigate neither the circumstances of the Home Secretary’s original departure nor her reappointment. These are questions of national security and are incredibly serious. The public and Parliament deserve answers. Mr Deputy Speaker, this is the latest in a series of attempts to get answers. I ask your advice on how we can compel the Home Secretary to come to this House and answer questions about the accuracy of her resignation letter and the media briefings that have followed.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order and for advance notice of it. The Chair does not have the power to compel Ministers to come to the Dispatch Box in the way that she is asking, but there have been previous points of order on this matter and urgent questions—indeed, it was raised at Prime Minister’s questions. I know that the next question time for the Home Secretary is some way off, but none the less I have no doubt that there will be other opportunities for this matter to be raised. Those on the Treasury Bench will have heard the point of order and will ensure that it is brought to the attention of the Home Secretary.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sarah Jones

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

[Sarah Jones]

Indeed the Minister can heckle me from a seated position, but it does not make him right. Under the provisions in this Bill, protesters could be criminalised if the police determine that they are too noisy. We have suggested amendments, and the Lords have done the same. Conservative Members have expressed significant disquiet at the timing of such a draconian intervention. Why on earth is the Home Secretary pushing ahead with plans to stop protests that make noise? The police have never asked for these provisions, and I doubt they would ever use them. The public did not ask for them, and Members from the Home Secretary’s own party did not call for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The Minister is being very noisy at the moment.

[Sarah Jones]

Perhaps the Minister wants to stand up and make another speech, but I will carry on. The Home Secretary is pushing amendments that the police do not want and did not ask for, and that the public do not want and did not ask for. Why are the Government so constantly out of step with public opinion?

Part 3 of the Bill targets protests for being too noisy. It provides a trigger for imposing conditions on public assemblies, public processions and one-person protests if a protest is too noisy. It includes vague terms such as “serious annoyance” or the subjective notion of being too noisy, which create a very low threshold for police-imposed conditions and essentially rule out entirely peaceful protests. Lord Coaker in the other place has read the Government’s definitions of “too noisy”. Double glazing is a threshold. If someone is organising a demonstration and they are going to be noisy, they need to find areas where buildings have double glazing. You could not make it up, Mr Deputy Speaker.

One person’s “too noisy” is another person’s “not loud enough”. Keeping these provisions on noise will invite all sorts of problems of interpretation for the police in trying to agree on what “too noisy” might mean. The Opposition want these provisions removed from the Bill. Lords amendment 73 removes the trigger on noise related to public processions; Lords amendment 87 removes the trigger on noise related to one-person protests; and we support the leave-out amendment 80 to remove the clause from the Bill altogether, as well as Lords amendment 80G, which accepts a definition of “serious disruption” being added to the Bill, but removes from it any mention of noise.

The Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary have made one small concession on noise by removing the term “serious unease” from a range of conditions under which police can restrict protest. I am glad that the Government have partially admitted that the term should never have made it on to the statute book. As the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) has said, and as Liberty and others have pointed out, however, the drafting has unintended consequences. Now the police will be able to impose conditions on protests that they believe may cause persons to suffer “alarm or distress”. There no need for it even to be “serious” alarm or distress. We have a better solution, and a way for the Government to fix this legislative mess. All they have to do is support our amendments.

In the MPs’ offices in 1 Parliament Street that look over Whitehall and Parliament Square, MPs—including me and my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary—and their staff work with near-constant background noise coming from protests, be it loud music, singing or speeches. Of course it is annoying, and it can be very distracting, but that is the point of protests—to capture our attention, because they have something to say. I urge Members across this House to ask themselves tonight why they would vote for legislation that could criminalise singing in the street.

At this late stage of the Bill’s journey, we are debating specific amendments. Members all know that voting against the Government’s public order amendment tonight does not mean voting against other measures in the Bill or stopping it from passing. The time for that has come and gone. It would simply mean that Members do not want to vote through measures that restrict peaceful protest based on noise. When Members walk through the voting Lobby this evening, I hope they have the voices of those protesting for Ukraine ringing in their ears.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sarah Jones

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. As everybody can see, the Lords amendments are in three groups. Please speak only to the Lords amendments in group 1 and do not stray into groups 2 and 3, as there will be opportunities to speak about those Lords amendments later.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his speech. He comes late to this party—he was not part of the Committee stage—and he has done well to catch up at this point.

We believe parts 3 and 4 of the Bill represent a power grab that bans peaceful protests and compounds inequalities, which is why we voted against the Bill in its entirety on Third Reading, but we also think that this Bill is a huge wasted opportunity. With crime up, prosecutions down, victims losing faith and criminals getting away with their crimes, there has never been a more crucial time to get to grips with law and order. Throughout the passage of the Bill, we have urged the Government to use this opportunity to move further and faster to tackle the epidemic of violence against women and girls.

Time and again, however, this Government have failed to act with the urgency that this epidemic requires. During the passage of the Bill, the Government have already rejected minimum sentences for rape and stalking, our plan to make street harassment a crime and our plans to protect victims with proper legal advice, but we still have time tonight, thanks to our friends in the other place, to make some changes. I urge the House to consider two Lords amendments in this group that the Government are rejecting that would make a real different to women’s lives.

I will start with sex for rent. Lords amendment 141 introduces a new offence of requiring or accepting sexual relations as a condition of accommodation. There are few things more horrific than someone using their power as a landlord or an agent to get sex. Predators advertise sex for rent blatantly. We can see in internet searches hundreds of adverts offering rooms or beds for free to young people, usually women, in return for sex. I understand the Government saying that they are going to look at this and potentially act at some point in the future, but women are being exploited all over the UK now and they cannot wait for another long Government consultation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) has pointed out—the Minister needs to talk to Shelter to understand this better—the impact of the pandemic means that more people, especially women, are facing financial hardship, which is making them vulnerable to this vile exploitation.

Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sarah Jones

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The plight of people in shared ownership properties is dire and needs to be looked at by the Government, as does the plight of the many thousands of people who are still trapped in unsafe buildings or buildings they cannot sell, who face extortionate bills for remediation work or who face huge increases in insurance and waking watch costs and other costs that they simply cannot afford. People are going bankrupt.

We cannot feel it in this place, but every time we have a debate or a vote on this issue, thousands of people write to all of us and say, “We are hoping against hope that you do the right thing this time.” We have people writing with heartfelt pleas. Their stories are stark, and every time we have this conversation, people’s hopes are raised, and there is a groundswell on social media and in our inboxes of people saying, “Maybe now the Government are going to do the right thing.” They are watching us now, hoping that we are going to do the right thing. It is very sad that the Government are indicating at the moment that they are not going to take this issue seriously.

This is taking a heavy toll on people’s mental health and putting millions of lives on hold. Leaseholders have been trapped in this impossible position for too long. Throughout the passage of the Bill, we have continually campaigned on this issue, and we welcome the latest amendment from the Bishop of St Albans. Like Labour’s previous amendments and those tabled by Members on both sides of the House, this amendment would prohibit the cost of replacing unsafe cladding being passed on to leaseholders or tenants.

In February, the Housing Secretary told thousands of people across the country that they will be locked into years of debt to fix fire safety problems that were not their fault, and we hear that the Government have decided to lay a motion to disagree with the Bishop of St Albans’s amendment. That is a direct and deliberate betrayal of the promise that Ministers have made over 17 times that leaseholders should not be left to foot the bill. Over the weekend, I wrote to Members of Parliament across the House who have constituents affected by this, urging them to back the amendment, and I sincerely hope that together we will stand up for the rights of leaseholders today and all Members will do the right thing. Given the risk of fire and looming bankruptcy, we cannot wait while the Government delay with inaction and failed proposals to keep leaseholders out of debt.

Today is another chance for the Government finally to put public safety first and to bring forward legislation to protect leaseholders from the deeply unfair situation of paying for fire safety repairs for which they are not responsible. Members across this House are united on this issue and are determined that innocent leaseholders should not foot the bill. Today should be the day when people across the country can go to sleep with a great sense of relief that the Government have listened and put into law protections for leaseholders, so I sincerely hope that the Minister will change his mind. It is not too late for the Government to do the right thing and protect innocent leaseholders across the country.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

A three-minute limit is being imposed now on all contributions. Apologies to those Members who are on the call list and simply will not get in because there will not be enough time.

Westferry Printworks Development

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sarah Jones

Wednesday 24th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I gently remind Conservative Members that in the past 10 years of Tory austerity rough sleeping has seen extraordinary increases. Fewer social homes were built last year than at any time since the second world war, and the Grenfell fire atrocity revealed a huge issue with bad buildings. Numerous blocks with Grenfell-style cladding are still in place three years after the Grenfell fire. I just ask Conservative Members to take care with the attacks that they make, because they do not have a record to stand on.

Last week I asked the Secretary of State if he knew, when he signed the planning consent for Westferry, that the very next day the new levy would come into effect, which would have cost the developers tens of millions of pounds. The Secretary of State said that that was a matter of public record.

In the ministerial code published last year, the Prime Minister said that to

“win back the trust of the British people, we must uphold the very highest standards of propriety…no actual or perceived conflicts of interest.”

The code goes on to say that it

“should be read against the background of the overarching duty on Ministers to comply with the law”.

The Secretary of State has admitted that his decision was unlawful.

The code says:

“It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.”

The Secretary of State told us that he advised the applicant that he was not able to discuss the issue. He now implies that he watched a video about it, and he has not qualified the facts.

The code says:

“Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament and the public, refusing to provide information only when disclosure would not be in the public interest”.

The Secretary of State has only today, after several weeks, said he will publish some papers after the debate.

The code says:

“Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias.”

The Secretary of State has admitted that a fair-minded person would conclude that his decision was biased in favour of the developer.

The code says:

“Ministers must not use government resources for Party political purposes”.

Richard Desmond gave the Conservatives a large donation shortly after the Secretary of State made his decision. We think that the Secretary of State has admitted that he watched the promotional video, although he was unclear, and the rules on the Secretary of State’s decision making in planning state:

“Privately made representations should not be entertained unless other parties have been given the chance to consider them and comment.”

We cannot legislate for integrity, but surely we can ask the Secretary of State to tell us whether he watched the video, did he tell his officials the next day, and does he now think—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

Local Government

Debate between Nigel Evans and Sarah Jones

Tuesday 5th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

We are living through extraordinary times. Covid-19 has dealt a great blow to our country—its health, its economy and its way of life—and we are mourning the loved ones we have lost. But in the midst of this crisis, we have seen countless acts of extraordinary resilience and bravery.

As usual, as the Minister just said, the fire service has been front and centre in this battle, answering our calls for help, driving ambulances, delivering personal protective equipment, helping to distribute food and even, I hear, delivering babies. The fire service is the most trusted of all our emergency services because it is always there when we need it, so it would not be right to begin this debate without paying tribute to the work of our firefighters across the UK. Yesterday was Firefighters Memorial Day. The minute’s silence at midday was a moment to reflect on the more than 2,300 UK firefighters who have lost their lives in the line of duty. Each one of those tragic lives lost paints a stark picture of the realities faced by firefighters. They risk their lives every day to ensure the safety of each and every one of us.

We are here to debate the draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Fire and Rescue Functions) (Amendment) Order 2020. The Labour party supports the order. It is nearly two years since the Greater Manchester Combined Authority asked to bring responsibility of fire and rescue services into the hands of the deputy mayor for policing and crime, with no particular reason for the delay, as far as I can see, and there is precedent elsewhere in England for this model.

This relatively straightforward order represents the gentle evolution of devolution. As Donald Dewar said at the opening of the Scottish Parliament, devolution is not an end, but a “means to greater ends.” We should be constantly open to change, to better serve our local populations.

The order allows the Mayor to make arrangements for fire and rescue functions to be exercised by the deputy mayor for policing and crime, and amends the remit of the Greater Manchester police and crime panel to include scrutiny of the exercise of those fire and rescue functions in addition to their existing remit of police and crime commissioner functions. That allows the Greater Manchester police and crime panel to scrutinise the delivery of all the main functions of the deputy mayor for policing, fire and crime.

The order will build on the success of devolution that we have already seen in Greater Manchester. Under Andy Burnham, we have seen real action to tackle rough sleeping, real support for young people and the biggest investment in cycling and walking outside London. Devolution enables good local, joined-up and effective policy making.

I would like to take this opportunity to commend the efforts of the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, his deputy mayor and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority for their recent work on fire and rescue services. Following the tragic fire at Grenfell, where 72 people lost their lives, they set up the Greater Manchester high-rise taskforce, chaired by Salford City Mayor Paul Dennett, to provide fire safety reassurance. They carried out proactive inspections of all high-rise residential premises to ensure that all buildings comply with fire safety regulations.

Greater Manchester has 78 high-rise buildings that have had to adapt interim safety measures because of serious fire safety deficiencies and slow Government action to support remediation. In late February, I watched Andy Burnham, City Mayor Dennett and other civic leaders and MPs from across the country join residents caught up in the cladding crisis at a rally on Parliament Square, calling for urgent action from the Government in the Budget. The Government listened, and the Chancellor announced the £1 billion building safety fund for the removal of dangerous cladding of all forms from high-rise buildings.

With thousands of leaseholders across the country still living in buildings wrapped in unsafe cladding, the focus must now be on completing remediation works as quickly as possible. We only need to briefly read the accounts of the Manchester Cladiators to know the dire situations they face on a daily basis.

From blocks like Imperial Point in Salford Quays to Albion Works in central Manchester, the stories are painfully similar: lives put on hold as residents are trapped in unsafe buildings, unable to sell their properties, and living in constant emotional and financial distress. I do not want to rehearse all the arguments from last week’s Fire Safety Bill, but we know that there is much more to be done by the Government and that we must move faster. I press the Minister again to provide an update on the progress of the review and the costs that residents are incurring while paying for waking watches. Is this review looking into the whole costs of interim fire safety measures?

As the Fire Brigades Union said yesterday, each time a firefighter dies at work, we need to understand what led to their death and what could have been done to prevent it. Yesterday we remembered the 2,300 firefighters who have died in service, but we must never accept their loss as inevitable. It is our duty to learn from every firefighter death and to fight for the improvements to operational practices that could save lives into the future. But that job has been immeasurably harder over the last decade, as we have seen brutal funding cuts.

After a decade of austerity, we have 11,000 fewer fire- fighters, so when fires sadly do occur, fire engines may answer the call without enough firefighters to tackle the blaze. That is not only dangerous for the public, but potentially deadly for firefighters too. We could not debate this order without considering the heavy hand of 10 years of cuts to our fire services in Greater Manchester and across the country. The landscape of complexity post Grenfell, with the enormous fire risk of so many buildings across the country, compounds an already difficult situation. Given the extent of the crisis in recent years and the number of individuals who live in unsafe buildings, we need a strong fire service to be ready to deal with what can perhaps be described as a ticking time bomb for as long as the cladding remains in place. Central Government funding for fire and rescue services in Greater Manchester has been decimated over the past decade; it has fallen by almost a third from £75.2 million in 2010 to £52.9 million now. Across the UK, between 2010 and 2016, the Government cut central funding to fire and rescue services by 28% in real terms, followed by a further cut of 15% by 2020. These cuts have led to a cut of 20% in the number of firefighters.

When a Grenfell Tower resident first called 999 just before 1 am on 14 June 2017, it was five minutes before a fire engine was at the scene and 13 minutes before the first firefighters entered the building. Equally, it was only a matter of minutes after the first call was made that fire services were on the scene of the fire at the student accommodation in Bolton in November last year. Clearly, when operating on such fine margins as the hazard of fire presents, fire services rely on rapid turnaround to be effective. It is shocking, then, to see that fire response times across Greater Manchester since 2010 have risen from seven minutes and 14 seconds to seven minutes and 20 seconds, with a rise of over 40 seconds across England. It may seem like only a matter of seconds, but with the fine margins that exist in fire and rescue situations, a rise in fire response times is unacceptable.

But this is no damning indictment of the fire service across central Manchester or anywhere else. No—it is far more a wrong that stems from a decade of successive Conservative Governments’ neglect of fire and rescue services. While funding has been cut, the number of firefighters across Greater Manchester has fallen by 29% since 2010—down from 1,923, to 1,368 in 2019. The number of operational appliances has fallen by 14% over the same period. The Mayor and deputy Mayor in Greater Manchester, and their teams, are doing their best in these circumstances—namely, with their pledge to bring in 108 new firefighters—but, despite their best efforts, there remains a gaping hole left by increasingly scarce central Government funds.

On Friday, we will celebrate VE day, marking the end of world war two. In the first 22 nights of air raids during the blitz, firefighters fought nearly 10,000 fires. According to Winston Churchill, the fire service

“were a grand lot and their work must never be forgotten.”

Well, the Opposition—and I am sure the Government—agree. With such extensive cuts across the past decade in provisions for fire and rescue services, and with a far more precarious environment facing those services in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy, will the Minister tell us when the Government are going to begin to make fire and rescue services in Greater Manchester and across the rest of the country a priority? With firefighters risking their lives to save our lives, the bare minimum they can expect is a properly funded service. After a decade of cuts and a covid crisis where our firefighters have gone above and beyond, we must now see real change.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

There will now be a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench contributions. I hope that those who are contributing have a timing device available to them.