Budget Resolutions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Each year during the September recess, I conduct a community consultation over three weeks, with about 40 meetings. This provides a really valuable snapshot of people’s top concerns. This year, right across the constituency, the common theme to those concerns was antisocial behaviour and low-level crime chipping away at the quality of people’s lives and undermining our communities: growing homelessness, street begging, people on motorbikes terrorising neighbourhoods, drug debris in playgrounds, and addicts openly injecting in parks.

There are some really great people in voluntary organisations, in the local authority and in the police trying their very best to tackle the issues, but their hands are tied behind their backs by the lack of resources. We are seeing the cumulative impact of cuts over the past seven years, and not just in statutory services. There is a vital relationship between the voluntary and statutory sectors, which work together to make a difference on drug and alcohol abuse, getting rough sleepers’ lives back on track, or addressing disengaged young people. The voluntary sector relies on local councils for much of its funding. Councils have been cut more than any other area of public spending, and because of the way that the formula has been adjusted, they have been cut most in towns and cities such as mine, where the need is greatest. Since 2010, Sheffield City Council has lost 45% of its grant from central Government—£195 million. Now, with all the pressures of social care, we are facing £60 million of further cuts in the year ahead. We are not alone. Even the Conservative-led Local Government Association said of the Budget that it

“offered nothing to ease the financial crisis facing local services…The money local government has to run services is running out fast and councils face an overall £5.8 billion funding gap in just two years”,

as my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Jo Platt) pointed out.

Like towns and cities across the country, Sheffield is at a tipping point. In such situations the pieces are often picked up by the police, who are doing a tough job that is made tougher by these cuts. In South Yorkshire, frontline police are down 18%, and we have lost almost one in five officers. Police civilian staff are down 24%, and their roles are key, too. Police community support officers are down 27%, in roles that have been vital to building the relationships that cut crime.

The Chancellor needs to reflect seriously on the perfect storm that the Government’s policies are creating in communities up and down the country, and he needs to address it in the local government and police settlements. It is not just the sustainability of our councils and our police forces that is at stake, but the sustainability of our communities.

Kashmir

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I rise to support the motion and to congratulate the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) on securing the debate.

Like many hon. Members present, I represent a richly diverse constituency, the people of which owe their origins to more than 120 countries. Those whose family roots are in Kashmir are one of the largest groups. One of the many advantages of having so many diaspora communities in my constituency is that when we see issues around the world, we feel them back home. For example, when the devastating earthquake hit northern Pakistan and Azad Kashmir in October 2005—killing around 90,000 people, leaving 3.5 million homeless, and destroying vital infrastructure—we felt the pain in Sheffield, through friends and neighbours whose families were in the region, and the city responded. As well as offering immediate support, we set about raising funds to rebuild the infrastructure. As a result of those efforts, seven years later Sheffield College opened on a wooded hill overlooking the city of Bagh—a community at the heart of the quake that lost 10% of its population. I pay tribute to my constituent Abdul Assim and all those who led the fundraising.

Just as that link through the diaspora community gives us a special responsibility for natural disasters beyond our control, so it gives us a special responsibility for events that we have shaped and that we can influence. The UK clearly has a special responsibility, dating back to our occupation of Jammu and Kashmir and the terms of our withdrawal after independence in 1947, so events of the sort that have occurred since last July should focus us all again on seeking a settlement to one of the most long-standing post-war grievances. The basis for that settlement should be, as others have mentioned, UN Security Council resolution 47, which was agreed almost 70 years ago in April 1948, calling for a plebiscite to enable the people of Kashmir to determine their own future.

The wave of protests and their suppression in the Kashmir valley following the killing of Burhan Wani have been a tragedy for the people of Indian-occupied Kashmir, and they should have prompted a concerted effort by the international community to reach a political solution. The Indian authorities have responded to the wave of strikes, rallies, protests and demonstrations with what looks to the whole world like disproportionate repression. In November the BBC estimated that more than 85 protesters had been killed and thousands more had been injured.

As many Members have said, of particular concern has been the use of pellet guns by the Indian authorities. Those are guns that fire shrapnel directly at protestors. As the BBC reported, despite Indian soldiers supposedly being required by their own standard operating procedure to target only the legs, and to do so only in extremely volatile conditions—the hon. Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) have described the nature of those weapons, which make that standard operating procedure irrelevant—90% of those who were injured received injuries above the waist. Those were horrifying injuries, and many children were blinded. That simply cannot go on.

I hope the Government will make the strongest possible representations to the Indian authorities and support the Amnesty International call for a ban on the use of pellet guns, but we need to go further and actively seek a political solution. When I tabled questions to the Minister, for whom I have high regard, in September, he confirmed that

“The longstanding position of the UK is that it is for India and Pakistan to find a lasting resolution to the situation in Kashmir”.

Of course that is right, but it is not enough. In other situations around the world, where we see the sort of injustice that exists in Kashmir, and we see it exploding, as it has recently, the international community tries to bring pressure to bear on the protagonists to seek a solution, and to engage all the key stakeholders in realising that solution. That is why I asked what the UK Government were doing within the United Nations and the Commonwealth to seek action. Frankly, the Minister’s reply that he had had no discussions and that:

“The United Kingdom does not intend to support an international conference or a plebiscite on Kashmir in line with UN Security Council Resolution 47”

is unacceptable.

I ask the Minister to think again. The UK played a part in creating the problem; let us now play a part in finding a solution.

Palestine

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

As on 13 October, there have been many powerful speeches today. I cannot hope to bring to mine some of the experience that other right hon. and hon. Members have shared with us, but I bring to it the concerns raised by hundreds of my constituents who signed the petition and contacted me because of their concern for progress towards a lasting peace. We must accept that such progress has time and again been frustrated by the Israeli Government, particularly through their continued policy on illegal settlements in the occupied territories.

After the world’s reaction to events in Gaza over the summer there was an opportunity for Israel to reflect and reach out, and to take steps to reopen the peace process. Instead, it marked the end of the conflict with the biggest ever land grab, appropriating 990 acres of Palestinian territory near Bethlehem. It was something that the Prime Minister was quick to condemn, rightly, and the world condemned it. Israel’s response was to give planning approval to 2,600 new housing units in a settlement across the green line. Words, clearly, are not enough. The international community needs to demonstrate that we are committed to moving forward.

The House’s decision on Palestinian statehood was an important step, but my constituents find it difficult to understand why there is not tougher action in some further areas. After the summer in Gaza, why is there not a comprehensive ban on arms exports to Israel? Given that something like 40% of the west bank is now under the control of illegal settlers—our Government condemn them as illegal—why do we not show our condemnation by taking measures to stop the trade on which those settlements depend, or by wider sanctions conditional on an end to illegal settlements?

I am proud that the university of Sheffield has made a practical contribution by offering a scholarship to a student from Gaza. Our first scholar, Malaka Mohammed Shwaikh, joined the university last year, and after completing her master’s degree, was elected by all the students of the university to be their education officer for this academic year. She is a deeply impressive young woman. I spoke to her earlier this afternoon and asked what concerns she would like raised. She asked for us to think about child prisoners, and drew my attention to the report that a week ago the Israeli authorities detained a 10-year-old child in the Silwan neighbourhood of Jerusalem. That is not exceptional; it is reported that since last June 600 Palestinian children have been arrested in East Jerusalem alone.

[Mr Robin Walker]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case. Like him, I have been contacted by many constituents. Does he agree that one thing we must address strongly is our constituents’ concerns about human rights in the Palestinian territories?

[Paul Blomfield]

I do; I am grateful for the intervention and was going to make that point. Children are not only detained, they are tried in military courts. Many right hon. and hon. Members have seen that at first hand, although I have not. UNICEF makes the point that Israel is the only country in the world where children are systematically tried in military courts and subjected to

“cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

We are all appalled by that, but Malaka asked me to convey to the House that being appalled is not enough. My hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) talked about the many words spoken in the House on the issue, but Malaka wants those words to be matched with action. We want the Government to respond more positively to the House’s resolution on Palestinian statehood, and to work with partners throughout the world on taking firmer action to bring the Israelis to the negotiating table.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

We are having talks today, as I mentioned a moment ago. Our new non-resident chargé is visiting Tehran today. This is the first visit by a British diplomat in more than two years, since the evacuation of our embassy, and those talks will be about various aspects of our bilateral relations. Of course that can include regional affairs and we look forward to discussing those more with Iran over the coming months.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T2. Following the Prime Minister’s recent announcement that the UK will establish a public registry of the beneficial ownership of companies, will the Foreign Secretary tell the House what the Government will be doing to ensure that the UK Crown dependencies and overseas territories also establish registries, and what action the Government will take if they fail to do so?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)]

The hon. Gentleman hopefully will be aware that last week we held the joint ministerial council in London, which all the overseas territories’ leaders attended. All those territories which have significant financial services sectors have responded very positively to the Prime Minister’s G8 agenda of trade, tax and transparency and all of them have committed not only to join multilateral exchange of tax information, but to consult on both having central registries of beneficial ownership and on making that information public.

Europe

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). I was canvassing on Saturday in a village called Crick, in my constituency. I told one of my constituents there that I had applied to speak in this debate, and he said, “It’ll be a bit like a conversation between the man from Del Monte and the Churchill insurance dog, with one side saying ‘Yes’ all the time the other saying ‘No’”. It is a bit like that, but there are some common themes. A number of Members on both sides of the House do want to see some fundamental reform of the European Union, and the hon. Gentleman identified a couple of those areas.

One thing that no hon. Member can dispute is that the ongoing eurozone crisis means that Europe and the European Union is changing. We therefore have challenges that we must look out for and find solutions to. Currently, there are 17 countries within the eurozone, and there could soon be more. Many of the countries that signed the acquis when they joined the EU signed up to the euro, but at the moment, 10 EU countries are outside the eurozone. There is fear among those 10 of the caucusing of the 17. That is writ large in the United Kingdom.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Can the hon. Gentleman explain the logic of the position that takes us from the eurozone nations needing to assess how they can underpin the currency to wanting to repatriate powers over policing?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I think that I will be able to do that during my speech, in the next few minutes. It was a pleasure to take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, whose wife I enjoyed working with as an MEP. I believe that he was working for her at the time and so was obviously feeding her some good lines, but it was a pleasure working with her none the less.

The fear of caucusing could cause the UK and others outside the eurozone to be outvoted in the Council in the very near future—the voting weightings are just about to change—possibly affecting our access to the single market. Most Members from all parts of the House are keen to ensure that that access remains, so we need to have, at the very least, what the Prime Minister called “new legal safeguards” to protect us from that problem.

I am not as defeatist as many Opposition Members have been. I was getting concerned about the idea of a European banking regulator, which came out of the blue last year as a new thing that Europe desperately needed to correct problems in the eurozone. I was worried about how it might affect our banking system, but Europe, as ever, managed to find a reasonable fix—one well negotiated on our behalf by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—in the double-majority mechanism. Such a mechanism had not existed before, but it made sure that the UK position was fundamentally safeguarded. I am a great believer in the fact that these things that I and other Conservative Members might be calling for are achievable and that Europe will find solutions to problems if we enter the negotiation with a broad mind.

I am a founder of the Fresh Start group of Conservative MPs. Some Opposition Members are keen on detail, and we have detailed some of the areas where we think it would be worth while negotiating. In a way, we are making the Conservative political pitch, so I expect disagreement from Opposition Members, but I will try to explain why it is important at least to look at these areas, which include justice and home affairs. We highlighted a number of areas, and some Opposition Members might agree on some of them.

The first such area relates to a new legal safeguard to maintain access to the single market—I am sure hon. Members on both sides will agree that we need to ensure that the eurozone cannot prevent our accessing that. Secondly, we need an emergency brake that any member state can use on future EU legislation affecting the financial services market. That market is important to the United Kingdom, as a huge amount of our GDP is created in financial services. The single market has been important to that, by always providing an opportunity, but it is beginning to look a bit more like a threat, because of the 48 directives and regulations coming down the track at the moment.

Thirdly, we need the repatriation of competences in social and employment law. That is a controversial area for many Labour Members, but I was in the European Parliament when Labour Ministers appeared before its employment committee and were begging people to understand the different, liberal nature of the UK work force and were asking them not to put in extra measures on the working time directive and the temporary workers directive that would directly affect the number of people getting into employment in the UK.

Fourthly, we need to opt out from existing policing and criminal justice measures, as some of them are not working, some of them are defunct and some of them are based on mechanisms that no longer exist. Europe does not repeal things and it really should; there should be sunset clauses in some of the legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow a thoughtful contribution by the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer). The debate has had a more welcome tone, perhaps because, with one or two honourable exceptions, it has been boycotted by some of the more extreme Europhobes on the Government Benches—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) walks in on cue. Perhaps they have boycotted it because they think they have the Prime Minister cornered.

I certainly agree with the hon. Member for Ipswich in congratulating the Prime Minister on the opening remarks in his speech last week. I thought it went rapidly downhill, but he was right to remind us of the big picture, of the wider national interest, of the bigger strategic goals and of the peace dividend from the European Union, which has been complacently disregarded by many. My father was a pilot in the second world war and my grandfather was in the trenches of the first. I am a member of the first generation of my family since the 19th century not to have been called up to one of the bloody conflicts that have engulfed our continent for centuries, because the European politicians who survived the last war said, “Enough,” and recognised that if we created economic and political interdependency among the countries of Europe, we would stop killing each other. And we have, for the longest period in our history.

Peace, safety and freedom: those were the objectives for post-war Europe that Churchill described in Zurich in 1946 and they have been delivered by the European Union. How has the Conservative party been transformed from the party of Churchill to one in which outright hostility to the European Union has become almost an article of faith for so many of its members? It has clearly not been helped by the tabloid press. As the Leveson inquiry reported:

“At various times, readers of these and other newspapers may have read that ‘Europe’…is intending to ban…kilts, curries, mushy peas, paper rounds, Caerphilly cheese, charity shops, bulldogs, bent sausages and cucumbers, the British Army, lollipop ladies, British loaves…and many more.”

[Oliver Colvile]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Blomfield]

I have been asked not to give way because of the time available—I would otherwise have been delighted to do so.

All those claims by the tabloid press were nonsense, but there are more sophisticated myths, too. One, which was most recently reported during this debate by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), is that the people of Britain were misled about the Union we were entering and were not told that we were signing up for anything more than a single market. Again, that is simply not true. The Conservative Government’s 1971 White Paper was clear that the aim was

“an ever closer union among European peoples”

and went on to say:

“If the political implications of joining Europe are at present clearest in the economic field, it is because the Community is primarily concerned with economic policy. But it is inevitable that the scope…should broaden as member countries’ interests become harmonised…what is proposed is a sharing and an enlargement of individual national sovereignties in the general interest”.

The prospectus for the 1975 referendum was clear and so was the result.

Of course, the rhetoric of repatriating powers will sound attractive to some, but, as a number of Members have pointed out, we must be clear about exactly what powers we mean. Top of the list for many Government Members are the powers on employment. They need to be honest with the people of this country. Why repatriate those powers if not to abolish the rights for working people that come with them? We deserve an answer.

I do not think that Government Members want to abolish social Europe. They want the other 26 member states to keep it, but they want the UK out so that our USP in Europe is offering the lowest labour costs, leading a race to the bottom and offering companies the chance to boost profits at the expense of hard-working families. Why would the British people vote for that and why would the rest of Europe allow it? The single market is about a level playing field, not about skewing the market to the advantage of one country at the expense of its people. How will the British people be persuaded by a Prime Minister who cannot even win an argument in his own party? As he struggles and fails to control his party, he is undermining business confidence, damaging our economy, limiting the chance for growth and weakening the creation of jobs.

National Referendum on the European Union

Paul Blomfield Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee, and particularly my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who is not in his place, on securing this debate. It is important, and the strength of support behind the online petition shows that people in this country care about it. I congratulate the Government on introducing the Backbench Business Committee.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Some hon. Members have cited the feeling of people in this country. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Ipsos MORI conducts regular polling on the most important issues to people and that this month, as in several months, this issue is the 22nd most important, with only 3% of the population believing that it is?

[Jake Berry]

I am aware of that polling, and that is why I do not support today’s motion.