Support for Civilians Fleeing Gaza

Debate between Peter Grant and Rachael Maskell

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I do not disagree with anything the hon. Gentleman said, although I would point out that some of the neighbouring countries are hosting between 1 million and 2 million refugees from Syria. That is why this is a global problem; the whole world has to take action.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. A constituent of mine is a Palestinian international student at university in York. His family remain in Gaza, and he is desperate for his children to join him, yet the Government have not opened up an opportunity or a scheme to bring his family to him. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the humanitarian thing for this Government to do is to open up visa opportunities for families to be reunited?

[Peter Grant]

Absolutely. I think the message emerging is that this situation is affecting significant numbers of people in the United Kingdom. A large number of our constituents have close family members who are in mortal danger. We cannot stand by and then wonder afterward why some did not survive.

Lives have been lost because aid has not always got through in time, and certainly not in sufficient quantities. If UNRWA has to scale down significantly, or even stop its activities, the situation will worsen—250 deaths a day is bad enough; it could get unimaginably worse. It is no exaggeration to say that if we do not start to act soon, we could see more civilian deaths in Gaza than there were in Rwanda in 1994. Gaza could become the new Rwanda. Regardless of what terminology people choose to use to describe the actions of the various warring factions in and around Palestine, regardless of the terminology used to describe what is being done to innocent civilians, and regardless of who we choose to point the finger of blame at, it is not tenable to suggest that we can stand back and let today’s figure of tens of thousands of preventable deaths grow into hundreds of thousands, or even more.

Part of the response has to be to get people out of harm’s way as quickly and in as large numbers as possible. What I am asking the Government to do, as a first step, is something that I know for a fact other countries have already done, so let us not pretend that it is something the Government cannot do. First, where civilians in Gaza have close family members in the United Kingdom, the UK Government should, at the very least, be negotiating safe passage for them to get out of Gaza. Secondly, the Government should be guaranteeing their right to come to the United Kingdom and join their families, not necessarily permanently—that is not what Palestinians want—but as a short-term, emergency measure, to keep them safe until their homeland, the land they want to return to, is once more safe and fit for human habitation. I appreciate that is not palatable to some Government Members, but the alternative is far less palatable.

I have referred to my constituent Dr Lubna Hadoura several times in this Chamber. She came here as a student, like the constituent the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) mentioned, but she liked Scotland so much that she stayed. She has given over 30 years—her entire adult lifetime—of service to our NHS as a consultant surgeon, most of it in Fife. She has probably saved the lives of many of my constituents. She has about 20 close relatives living under bombardment in Gaza, ranging from her elderly mum to two babies too wee even to walk. Dr Hadoura loves living in Fife. Most of her family have no intention of coming to live permanently in Fife, or indeed anywhere else in the United Kingdom. They want to live their lives in Palestine; that is home for them. But most important of all, they want to live, and living is becoming almost physically impossible in Gaza.

I make a particular appeal given Dr Hadoura’s outstanding contribution to her adopted country. We owe her, and I think that even getting her mum out to safety constitutes only a fraction of that debt. Most of the Members who are present have already made similar appeals on behalf of their constituents’ families, but—this is only my personal view—I do not think that we should be stopping at people with families in the UK. I do not think that we should knowingly leave anyone to die, but sadly I hold out little hope of the Government’s willingness to go as far as that this evening.

Defence Supplementary Estimate 2021-22

Debate between Peter Grant and Rachael Maskell

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

I am sorry, but I really do need to make progress. I could talk until 7 o’clock, if the right hon. Gentleman wants me to, but I think other Members wish to speak.

The Public Accounts Committee reported that the Commands—the Army, Navy and Royal Air Force—planned to use some of the £16.5 billion of additional funding to address the backlog in maintenance and repairs of that accommodation, which at the time was estimated to be about £1.5 billion. The Committee reported at the same time:

“However, this extra funding seems to have already been spent more than once before it had even arrived with the Department”.

As I am sure many hon. Members are aware, if we listed the number of times that Ministers or civil servants told us that an MOD funding problem would be fixed by that additional money, welcome though it is, it would certainly add up to many times. Perhaps that is why they are a wee bit coy about giving us a detailed breakdown of exactly what the money will be spent on, because once they do that we will find out that it will not go nearly far enough.

[Rachael Maskell]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Peter Grant]

The right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) is not looking, so I give way to the hon. Member.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachael Maskell]

I have been carrying out a bit of an inquiry into Annington Homes, which owns a lot of the MOD estate. The MOD is currently leasing 7,230 vacant homes from Annington Homes. Given the refugee crisis and the fact that we have 11,000 to 12,000 people in bridging hotels, would it not be worth investing in those homes and bringing them up to standard, so that they could be used to rehouse people who have now been languishing in hotels for more than six months, not least because many of them served with our armed forces?

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Member makes an important point, and she reminds us that if accommodation is lying empty, it should not matter which Department or public body has its name on the title deeds; houses are there for people to live in, so whether they are evacuees and refugees from Afghanistan or anyone else, it should be possible to give them the kind of accommodation they want.

I will go through some of the findings of the NAO report, “The Equipment Plan 2021 to 2031”. I think it is dishonest to state as a matter of fact that the equipment plan is affordable, because in order for it to be affordable, as the NAO report states in paragraph 2.7, £3 billion of financial risk was not included. For example, a future combat air system had an estimated cost in its business case up to 2031 of between £10 billion and £17 billion. The equipment plan allocates £8.65 billion, so that one project alone is, at best, underfunded by £1.35 billion, and at worst it has possibly been allocated barely half the money it will cost.

Paragraph 2.17 refers to £7 billion of what the MOD terms “Planned Cost Reductions”—I think this is what the right hon. Member for Warley was referring to. At the time, according to that report, the top-level budget holders had plans to deliver less than half of the £3.1 billion. Some £2.6 billion of it needed to be achieved by 2025, within the first four years, and the first of those first four years is up in three weeks’ time. As the right hon. Member mentioned, the MOD has a dismal track record, assuming it will make massive savings all over the place and delivering very little of it. It cannot afford to get it wrong this time, but I think we all know that the chances of it getting it right and delivering that £7 billion, if its past record is anything to go by, are very slight. It is yet another hole in the affordability of the equipment plan.

Paragraph 20 of the NAO report picked up on an issue that the MOD does not like us to talk about but that I think is very important. It states that the top-level budget holders were

“deliberately spending more slowly on projects to keep within their budgets”.

In other words, they were given a budget to have something delivered and ready to use in 10 years’ time, but they spend the budget in 10 years and then the equipment is not ready until after 12, 13 or 14 years. There can be unforeseeable delays in the procurement of defence equipment, but if the MOD has assessed that the military will need that equipment in 2031, and then someone in the MOD deliberately delays procuring it for any amount of time, simply to make it look as if they are sticking to the budget, I do not see how that can possibly be acceptable.

Elsewhere, the NAO estimated that about £12 billion of savings built into the equipment plan were not savings at all, but were based on spending the money after the period of the equipment plan. They were based on delaying getting this vital equipment to our service personnel. An independent assessment carried out by the MOD’s cost assurance and analysis service, looking at projects that make up about 58% of the current year’s plan—although clearly there will be bigger expenditure on some of them later—reckoned that those projects alone were likely to cost £7.6 billion more than was assumed in the make-up of the defence equipment plan. It goes on and on. The NAO’s conclusion in paragraph 23 is that

“There is a real risk that, despite the additional funding it has received, the Department’s ambition outstrips the resources available to it.”

In layperson’s language, despite the MOD saying it has an affordable equipment plan, there is a very real risk that it does not.

Finally, the affordability of the equipment plan depends on getting an inflation plus 0.5% budget increase every year up to 2031. The Treasury has said it is comfortable with that, but given what has happened recently to public finances, the cost of living and inflation, I question whether it is still realistic to assume that is guaranteed. It is possible that it will be delivered; if it is not, that is yet another hole in the affordability of that plan. I make no apology for saying that where the equipment plan says that it is affordable and does not put all those caveats against it, it is a dishonest document for anyone to have published. It makes statements that are patently not justified, even by the information that was made available to Members of Parliament and, indeed, members of the public.

We can argue about whatever amount of money is allocated to the Ministry of Defence in this year’s budget or next year’s, or in any year coming, but we are failing our service personnel. The Government, this Parliament and the MOD are failing our service personnel, first because they are not being open and honest with them about the financial challenges they continue to face, but most importantly because surely, when somebody signs up and is willing to put their life on the line—let us not forget that two young men from Glenrothes lost their life fighting an illegal war in Iraq, and would probably be here today if they had had the best possible equipment available—the very least they are entitled to is living accommodation that is fit for human habitation, and to be given the best possible equipment available to defend themselves from enemy attack. I do not have confidence that this Government, or any future Government in this place, will genuinely honour those commitments.

That is why, whatever budget is set for the MOD through the due process, there needs to be a complete root-and-branch review of financial management—far too often, financial mismanagement—within the Ministry of Defence. It is costing billions and billions of pounds that the MOD simply cannot afford to waste, and there will be times when it risks costing the lives of our service personnel.

Child Maintenance Service: Payment Recovery from Absent Parents

Debate between Peter Grant and Rachael Maskell

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant]

Absolutely, and I will come on to some of the new powers that have recently been given to the Child Maintenance Service. Although those powers are draconian, there will be instances when they have to be used. Deliberately concealing income from people who you know want only to provide for your children should be a criminal offence. It is not a matter for the civil courts or for civil adjudication. If someone falsifies their tax returns, they go to jail, so if they falsify returns provided to assess their financial liability for their own kids, they should also go to jail.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have a constituent who has not received payment for years. Their former partner has moved home and jobs, and keeps changing bank account. They also disposed of two properties, yet that money is untraceable. Surely people should not be able to open new bank accounts if they owe all that money.

[Peter Grant]

Again, I entirely agree. I have had female constituents who use one name in their family and one in their professional work. They have difficulty opening two bank accounts, so it seems strange that others are able to get away with opening bank accounts all over the place.

Last year the powers available to the Child Maintenance Service were extended. I found it concerning to read the evidence submitted to the Work and Pensions Committee in 2016, because it seemed that the Department for Work and Pensions did not understood the difference between collection powers and enforcement powers. The DWP can implement collection powers immediately through the Child Maintenance Service—it does not need anybody’s permission—but enforcement powers are more severe and need the consent of the courts. If those who write the evidence for a parliamentary Select Committee are vague about the distinction between those two powers, it is no wonder that parents and children who are waiting for their money sometimes get confused about what the powers are.

Some powers that the Child Maintenance Service has should not be allowed as a form of debt enforcement, and even in certain cases I do not think that imprisoning someone for not paying their dues is acceptable. It should be an imprisonable offence if somebody falsifies information, but not if they refuse to pay money that has been established as owed. I certainly would not want any seizing of property, warrant sale or auction to happen in Scotland. One of the first private Members’ Bills put through the Scottish Parliament was to outlaw what I believe to be a barbaric practice. In a civilised country, there are other ways to carry out debt collection, without such draconian and barbaric actions. For example, we could restrict someone’s ability to open new bank accounts.