Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Dr Huq
I, too, welcome the Minister to what I hope is a long and fruitful career. My question is about services, not goods. Our biggest export is the English language—it is the lingua franca of the world, isn’t it?—but the language schools that teach teenagers over the summer months are collapsing at quite a scary rate. Only seven out of 20 remain in Hastings, and there are three in Ealing, but before 2019 there were five. Will the Minister—whoever it is at any particular time—and their officials sit down with me and the trade bodies? They say that there has been an 80% drop in business, which is now going to Malta and Ireland. We can do better than this in global Britain. Can we sit down to talk about removing those things for this once lucrative—
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Dr Huq
It is good to see the Minister back; there is nothing like organised labour to effect progress.
In reality the state pension has not managed to keep up with the multiple crises we face: we have the Ukraine crisis pushing up food and fuel prices on top of the existing cost of living crisis. Yet the Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991 dictates that last week’s non-returning Ministers, including an alleged groper, are set to net £423,000 in severance payments. Given the widespread public revulsion among our constituents feeling the pinch, including state pensioners, does the Minister not see that there is an argument for the non-exercise of that provision in this instance, because—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am not quite sure about the significance of this; the question is not that wide.
Tributes to Sir David Amess
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I rise to speak about the brutal killing of our friend, David Amess. I know that we have an adversarial workplace here—we have a face-off—but some of our best friends are often on the other side. I know that when I have been in a hole, it is people on the Conservative Benches who have helped me out and been friendly to me.
This killing was all the more shocking and painful to me because I was certainly the last Labour MP who saw him alive. It was on that delegation to the middle east last week—at the baggage reclaim as it happens. Everyone else had scarpered; everyone else’s stuff had gone. I had missed mine because I had been tying up my shoelaces or something. David said, “No, I will wait with you.” I said, “Come on, you’ve got to go to Essex. Be off with you.” That was the measure of the man and how kind he was. The next day, the last stragglers were saying, “We got back. It was a great trip, thank you.” His was the last WhatsApp message I saw, thanking everyone for their service. How shocking it is that he was taken in service—a public servant slain in the line of duty at his surgery.
Again, on the trip, his million-dollar smile, which we have heard so much about, won over everyone. To one of the dignitaries that I had to introduce him to, I said, “He has been a parliamentarian since the last century, but he never ages.” To another one, David said in his inimitable way, “Oh, you know what? I thought I had a lot of kids, because I have five, but you have 24!” On the coach, in advance of the meeting, he said to us, “Ladies, when we get there, I don’t want any ruffling of his hair, any sitting on his lap, any twiddling of his tie, because he already has three wives, and he doesn’t need any more.”
Everyone has so many Amess-isms. I was with him for a week and miss him dearly. I was shocked. I could not process the news. I had to go and do my own in-person surgery. When I got on the Panel of Chairs, he said, “You? You should be a shadow Minister by now”—no comment! He did not want party preferment and nor do I in that case. When our dear friend Jo Cox—it was so brilliant to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater), who is a dear friend already in a short space of time—was taken from us, we all said that we should live by the diktat of “more in common”. I feel that, in life, we should all be a bit more like David. That means being less cross and more cross-party.
Mr Speaker
We will now follow the Serjeant at Arms to process to St Margaret’s Church for the service of remembrance. For MPs and staff who wish to watch the service, it will be live on the Annunciator channel 505.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Huq [V]
With the Office for National Statistics finding that in coronavirus, black and minority ethnic people are less likely to be in management positions, more likely to be unemployed and more likely to earn less, confirming the Government’s own McGregor [Inaudible.] report, when will the Government implement its 26 recommendations?
Business of the House
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I would just add, to reassure the House, that on the agenda for Monday at the Commission is the road map to take us forward.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Local Government cuts, housing targets and a deregulated planning regime have meant that a lot of councils have had no option but to surrender municipal land for luxury flats. Can we have an urgent debate and Government statement on the “Planning for the Future” White Paper, because the future, no matter what the right hon. Gentleman says, will be different post-coronavirus? There will be virtual working, new strains and yearly jabs. Can he do that by Wednesday, because on that day, the glorious 1800s town hall of Ealing is potentially set to be dwarfed by a series of tower blocks, including one of 26 storeys, if these greedy developers get their way. Fight for us, Leader of the House!
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Let us head to Dr Rupa Huq for our final question. I am sorry about this, but we have taken a long time to get to this stage.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab) [V]
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
Point of Order
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder if I might seek your advice. Exactly a week ago in this Chamber, I asked the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care about the efficacy of vitamin D as an extra bit of armour against coronavirus. He said that he had conducted a trial and there was no effect. It turns out that there was no trial. Apparently it was a National Institute for Health and Care Excellence review of secondary evidence on 1 July. The word “trial” implies fresh evidence, not reheated leftovers. The Secretary of State is here, so I wonder if he can correct the record.
I put this matter in as a written question to the Department of Health and Social Care and the answer came back that it had not been able to answer in time. It was the press office that told me about the secondary review of evidence. Is it not unsatisfactory when we do things through the correct channels and it is the spin doctors who end up answering? Can we do better by not embellishing the facts and by getting things in the proper way?
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Member for giving me notice of her point of order. The Secretary of State is here if he wishes to make any comment.
Forensic Science Regulator and Biometrics Strategy Bill
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay HoyleFriday 25th September 2020
(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Huq
Goodness me, we live and learn, and we learn a new thing every day. What a gory story. It is sad that we are leaving the European Union, because we had access to all those databases, including Europol’s. I think that is a cause for lament, but that is probably another debate for another day.
Dr Huq
Unfortunately, the reality of Britain’s forensic services is far removed from the glamour of “NCIS”. Britain’s Sherlockian sleuths and Clouseauian crime detectives do exist in our police forces, and they do a sterling job, but they have been hampered and held back for years—for at least seven years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West said. There are three reasons for that.
First, cuts in police and research budgets have adversely affected spending on private forensics. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) attempted valiantly in the previous Parliament to raise that issue. Sadly, the election, which not all of us wanted, put paid to that. Whatever happened to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011? I think it is going soon. Anyway, as he pointed out, expenditure on private forensics has come down from £120 million in 2008 to £50 million at the moment. The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee uncovered those figures last year.
Secondly, there is a lack of competitiveness. Even for fans of the free market, this is not a good way of running the system. The forensics marketplace is in a fragile state, because it is not purely one thing or the other. Thirdly, there is the laxity of the regulatory regime, despite the fact that there is a Forensic Science Regulator. The Bill seeks to address that by calling for a new Forensic Science Regulator, so that our justice system is better equipped to deal with modern crime.
When the regulator itself states that innocent people are repeatedly wrongly convicted and criminals are escaping the long arm of the law due to the failure of the forensic science system to meet basic standards, something has obviously gone very wrong. It is no exaggeration to say that it is positively criminal that the watchdog—currently incarnated as Dr Gillian Tully, who acknowledges this herself—is so toothless, so lacking in cojones, that it is purely advisory. It does not have legal powers to require private providers to meet standards, or to impose fines if they do not meet them.
How did we get here in the first place? It was actually under David Cameron, another PM who swiftly left the crime scene. Paul Roberts, a Nottingham University professor of jurisprudence who specialises in this field said in 2015:
“in a moment of penny-pinching madness that future governments may regard with incomprehension, the UK coalition government closed down the world-famous Forensic Science Service, arguing—quite improbably—that the private sector would fill the gap…this move to free-market forensics is not meeting the justice system’s need for high-quality scientific support and has put in jeopardy long-term forensic research, development and training.”
He laments the closure as part of what he calls a “landscape of ‘austerity justice’”.
Kit Malthouse
Although the hon. Lady is right that the Forensic Science Service was closed, and that part of the argument for its closure was the cost, because it was losing significant amounts of public money at the time, there had also been a series of forensic science failures resulting in high-profile abandoned trials, which meant that reform was felt necessary. It was not purely ideological; it was as much a practical and results-driven decision as anything.
Mr Speaker
Just for the record, the FSS provided a very good service. The labs at Chorley were fantastic.
Dr Huq
I am grateful to the Minister and to you, Mr Speaker, for pointing out what used to go on in the labs of Chorley—not the stuff that happened in Germany, obviously. [Interruption.] This is quite different to the German case.
I do not want to pick a fight with the Minister, because we all agree on this. That article was from 2015, and to be fair, some austerity justice cuts have since been reversed. Fees for employment tribunals have gone. Like the Labour party, the Government are under new leadership, so let us hope we can reverse all those things. We have been told repeatedly that austerity is over, so let us rectify the situation now.
Numerous authorities on the subject, including the National Audit Office and the Science and Technology Committees in this House and the other place, have concluded that our forensic system is close to broken, and that harms the criminal justice system as a whole. Putting the forensic science regulator on a statutory footing is a vital first step to saving the field. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West pointed out, it is not a panacea, but it is a good start.
Statutory enforcement powers are badly needed in the wake of the weak market that has emerged since the FSS was privatised in 2012. As has been pointed out, 90% of traditional forensic science is delivered by just three large providers, to the detriment of competition and market resilience. Even fans of the free market cannot like the way that is functioning. Large providers are exiting the market left, right and centre, creating system-wide capacity shortfalls and increased turnaround times. Simply put, there is not even a profit motive to uphold the standards of those companies, let alone a powerful watchdog. The rest of forensics is done in-house by police forces, which brings its own set of problems.
In the context of rapid technological change, police forces have reported difficulties in managing increasingly voluminous and unmanageable workloads, particularly in digital forensics. Local police forces cannot realistically be expected to deal with those new forms of crime, or deliver the same high-quality fingerprint evidence that the FSS once provided. They are forced to spin all those different plates at once, and juggle all those balls, some of which come crashing down.
Fewer than 10% of police forces have met basic quality standards for fingerprint evidence. Three years ago, all UK forces were ordered to ensure that their laboratories met international standards for analysing prints found at crime scenes, yet as of last year, only a handful had completed that. Police forces that have failed to obtain accreditation have to declare that in court, which prompts the concern that cases could fall apart because of unreliable evidence.
Police forces are in an impossible catch-22 bind. They can outsource forensics to private providers, which is costly and incurs spending beyond their means, or they can try to cobble something together themselves. With the latter option, police stakeholders are let off the hook in the absence of a regulator that can say, “No, think again.” Outsourcing digital work to unaccredited private labs that are subject to no regulatory oversight runs the risk of punishing police forces when their commercial partners botch things up. The much cited example of Randox Testing Services highlights that point. That private provider was suspended in 2018 after a number of motorists convicted of drug-driving offences were cleared after evidence of manipulation was found in Randox’s testing processes, and there are other examples of serious offences being quashed as a result of faulty data and contaminated evidence. The sector is badly crying out for quality control, rather than unsatisfactory quasi-casino capitalism that does not quite work, fused with police services that are unable to cope.
The public and private arms of the UK’s forensic services are at breaking point. That has led to a mass shortage of skills, particularly in digital forensics and toxicology. No wonder Dr Tully said in February that
“forensic science has been operating on a knife-edge for years”.
When we cut corners in legal matters of this type, it is the public who lose out. It is a false economy for which we all pay dearly. Reliable, high-quality, trusted evidence underpins our justice system in this country. It is simply wrong that victims of some of the most heinous crimes do not see perpetrators put behind bars where they belong, because the evidence was not handled properly. That “anything goes”, sloppy culture has to stop. We should be striving for excellence in every lab, whereas now we do not have a system fit for purpose. We should not be scrimping on justice and putting up with unreliable evidence, as that destroys public confidence in our entire legal system. Saying that the wheels of justice will probably turn is not good enough. We need certainty that justice will be served.
We have heard before that we have had enough of experts, but I am glad that that thinking has given way to following the science. As I say, there is a long list of expert opinion in favour of such legislation. The Minister said it was in his own manifesto—buried away somewhere—and it is good to hear heavyweight Government support for it. As well as reports from the two Select Committees, the FSR’s own annual report this year says that the quality and delivery of forensic science in England and Wales is “inadequate”. This raises alarm bells that crimes may go unsolved and that the number of miscarriages of justice may increase.
I know that, at this time in the cycle, we are all receiving emails from conspiracy theorist types denouncing the Coronavirus Act 2020 as interfering in all our lives. I am no fan of totalitarianism, but on this one, regulation can be a force for good. Clauses 2 to 4 would introduce a code of practice with safeguards and standards, which means protecting consumers and encouraging levelling up—to coin a phrase. That means companies on the wrong side of the regulations will simply go out of business. Clauses 5 to 8 would allow for investigations with a built-in appeals process. Clause 11 defines “forensic science activity” as the application of scientific methods for the purpose of detecting or investigating crime and preparing evidence in criminal procedures, but it is flexible enough that there is scope to expand to areas of civil law, if needed.
Forensic science plays a pivotal role in modern criminal proceedings, and there is an increasing reliance on it. Yet such evidence can be boon as well as bane, because it poses such multifarious challenges when it is unreliable or misleading. Biometrics are not covered by this Bill, although the word is in the title, but we do not want forensics always to be associated with miscarriages of justice, which is in danger of happening. Making provision for the appointment of a beefed-up Forensic Science Regulator, ensuring the regulation of forensic science outfits and requiring the Secretary of State to publish an annual strategy are eminently sensible things. I am delighted that this proposed legislation has so much support from so many powerful quarters, and I, too, commend the Bill to the House.
International Travel
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
This in-out, hokey cokey of on-off air bridges and quarantine comes without interruption. Passengers have landed at Heathrow and gone straight on to the Piccadilly line through Ealing and Acton, which is now a petri dish—we have an above-average virus rate—so can he please stop playing politics and give Transport for London the bail-out that it deserves at a time of national crisis to save the whole of London and my constituents from that second spike?
Educational Settings
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
As a representative of a borough that has suffered cuts of 64% under this Government, can I ask what additional assistance will be available to Ealing to absorb some of the consequences of this decision? Our libraries, for example, are volunteer-run on reduced hours, when they should be at more than full tilt—or will they be next to close? As the mum of a year 11 pupil, can I also ask whether his exams will now be indefinitely postponed? For all his cohort, can I ask whether their sixth-form admissions, which are not automatic nowadays, will now be based not on actual grades but on predicted grades, in a Mystic Meg kind of way?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rupa Huq and Lindsay Hoyle(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)