Windrush

Debate between Rupa Huq and Amber Rudd

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I was in Croydon this morning to make sure that I could have full confidence in the timetable set out and that we have sufficient people on the casework team to turn it around as swiftly as our expectations. That remains the case. The number of calls coming in and the number of face-to-face interviews taking place are manageable. I hope that that will remain the case, but I will not stop putting resources in to ensure that this group are properly addressed and get the first-class service I want them to have.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It is estimated that 50,000 people—a relatively small number—are caught in this indignity, incompetence and “It’ll be all right on the night” policy. None of them have presented themselves at my surgery because they have instructed solicitors, so will the Home Secretary commit to reimburse in full the legal fees incurred by those people? Will she also ensure that none of the much larger group of 3 million EU citizens—13,000 of them in Ealing Central and Action alone—suffer the same demeaning treatment of being denied services or, worse still, receiving a knock at the door from deportation, as has happened to the Windrush generation?

[Amber Rudd]

I can reassure the hon. Lady on the issue of EU citizens. We have put in place a thorough, simple, effective system, which will go live later this year. We have extensively tested it with EU citizen groups and I have a team over at the European Parliament this week, engaging with European parliamentarians to make sure that it is right. It has been prepared in a way that will be very straightforward to use and it anticipates the need that was not anticipated in the case of the Windrush cohort.

On the compensation for which the hon. Lady asks, as I have said, we are launching the compensation scheme, but I need to consult on it first, appoint someone independently and make sure that it addresses the issues she raises. On the actual applications being made now to the taskforce, while I was there this morning I listened in to some calls and the way in which the callers are engaging with the border people helping them has been very constructive. They do not need to have lawyers: in this process we have put in place, there will be no need for lawyers to engage.

Women’s Suffrage Centenary

Debate between Rupa Huq and Amber Rudd

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

Under the Equal Pay Act 1970, it is illegal to pay men more than women for the same work. We are focused now on making sure that we make more progress on the gender pay gap, which is why we have introduced legislation requiring all companies with more 250 employees to publish their gender gap by 4 April. After that, we will work with them to make sure that they take action to close it.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I am proud to be one of those making what the Home Secretary described as the most diverse Parliament ever. I am not only one of the one third who are women, but one of the 7.8% who are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. My maternal grandmother was illiterate; her passport had a thumbprint in it because she could not write her own name. Does the Home Secretary agree that on a day like today, it is not enough simply to pat ourselves on the back? We could do better not only on women, but on BME, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, disability, and all those things—some people may even inhabit more than one of those categories at once.

[Amber Rudd]

Yes, I agree with the hon. Lady. We can talk today, as we should, about making sure that we encourage more women into Parliament and ensuring that there is more opportunity for women, but there is a wider issue of equality. I hope that thinking about women in this way today will encourage us all to think about it more diversely as well.

Online Hate Speech

Debate between Rupa Huq and Amber Rudd

Thursday 30th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

It is certainly our intention to be absolutely clear that the type of organisation that the President appeared to be promoting in his retweet is wholly unwelcome and full of hate, and we will continue to call that out. I think my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made that clear in her criticism of him, but we will not miss an opportunity to make that point again—and we will do so strongly and firmly.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Back in 2010, the now Prime Minister, as Home Secretary, banned radical Indian televangelist preacher Zakir Naik from entering the UK for his repeated pattern of unacceptable behaviour—in particular his line that “every Muslim is a terrorist”. Her exact words at the time were:

“I am not willing to allow those…not…conducive to the public good to enter the UK.”

Surely the same applies to President Trump and his frequent repugnant outbursts? We are in Islamophobia awareness month, which was launched here the other day. The Government’s own Casey report was quoted. It says that trigger events feed Islamophobia, which means that women have their hijabs ripped off them; that grandads are murdered on the way back from prayers; and that pigs’ heads are left on mosque doorsteps. As a Muslim, I ask the Home Secretary to do the same as her predecessor, our Prime Minister, did in those previous examples. A rapper was also excluded for his misogynist lyrics. Can the Home Secretary not just continue on that track and ban this visit altogether?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank the hon. Lady, particularly for her point about Islamophobia, which we take incredibly seriously. That is why it featured so strongly in the hate crime action plan that I launched last year and why we have provided extra money to make sure that mosques can be protected. We have also given additional financial support for Tell MAMA, which does such great work in combating Islamophobia.

We are very serious about making sure that the type of hate crime that the Prime Minister addressed as Home Secretary is taken seriously and stopped so that we can protect people. She was absolutely right to ban the people whom the hon. Lady referred to. We do not comment on individual exclusion cases, but I will make sure that we always look very carefully at that when it is appropriate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rupa Huq and Amber Rudd

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I remind the hon. and learned Lady that nothing has changed: we are still in the European Union, and those citizens still have the same rights. In terms of their ongoing rights, the Prime Minister was very clear last week when she made her speech: she said it was going to be an early priority to give them the security they seek. I would urge all colleagues here to reassure their constituents that that is our intention, and we need to make sure that it is reciprocal for UK citizens as well.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Across Scotland, in common with other Europhile parts of the UK, there has been a huge upsurge in applications for indefinite right to remain from people such as Mrs Fabiola Power, who is Spanish by birth, but who got married and has been resident in Acton for decades. These people are dismayed that they have been rejected because they cannot prove that they have five years’ continuous service with the same employer or that they have paid into private health insurance. Will the Home Secretary revisit these rigid requirements, which penalise EU nationals such as Mrs Power, who have been homemakers, students, on short-term contracts or self-employed, and end this bureaucratic nightmare?

[Amber Rudd]

There is no penalising of people such as the lady the hon. Lady referred to. We continue to value the important contribution that EU nationals make to this country, and I urge the hon. Lady to follow the advice I previously set out, which is to reassure constituents such as the one she referred to that, in fact, we are doing our best to ensure that their future will be secure, and the Prime Minister says it will be an early priority to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rupa Huq and Amber Rudd

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

1. What estimate she has made of the number of homes that need to be brought up to the minimum band C energy efficiency standard by 2030.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)]

According to my Department’s latest fuel poverty statistics, less than 5% of fuel-poor households in England have a minimum energy efficiency standard of band C, leaving 2.2 million households below this standard. Bringing these households up to the minimum standard is a challenging ambition, but one we are determined to meet. That is why we have been clear that available support needs to be focused on those most in need. We will be reforming both the renewable heat incentive and the energy company obligation, to make sure that both schemes are sufficiently targeted towards the fuel poor and to tackle the root causes of fuel poverty.

[Dr Huq]

The Government recently spent £50 million of taxpayers’ money assisting a bunch of big businesses such as Sainsbury’s to change their lightbulbs. Meanwhile, they halved home insulation funding in the last Parliament, which was meant to help families out of fuel poverty. I will not ask how many Tories it takes to change a lightbulb, but does that not show whose side they are on?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady is in danger of misunderstanding demand-side reduction. Two pilots have been launched, and both have been effective in reducing the amount of energy used, which is one of our key targets in carbon emissions and energy security. That in no way interferes with our key objective of ensuring that we reduce fuel poverty at all levels.