Papers Relating to the Home Secretary

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

This debate has as its core the issue of standards and integrity in our politics. When he was appointed as Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) proclaimed that he would bring integrity back to Government. He certainly had a front-row seat to its disappearance, seeing that he served faithfully next to a previous Prime Minister with form on the issue. Yet one of his first acts as Prime Minister was to bring back a Home Secretary who just six days before had quit for not one, but two breaches of the ministerial code. They were not accidental breaches or a one-off mistake where an official forgot to tick a box; they were clear breaches of the ministerial rules.

The issue of standards relates not just to emails and the use of personal IT, but to the ethics of how the Home Office works as a Department. Like all of us, Ministers are public servants. We all sign up to the seven Nolan principles of public life: integrity, openness, selflessness, objectivity, accountability, honesty and leadership. Ministers also have a duty to this country on public safety, national security and human rights and a duty to the taxpayer. Have we seen that from the current Home Secretary? No—and that is what this debate is about.

I want to focus on the record and decisions of the Home Secretary and the Home Office in relation to their approach to the crisis in the UK response to asylum seekers. For instance, last week the Home Secretary played to the anti-immigration gallery by implying that asylum seekers had to be stopped from wandering our streets—hence the Government’s policy on Manston—yet her Department was responsible for two groups of destitute asylum seekers being found wandering the streets around Victoria and having to be picked up by a small charity to ensure that they had warm clothes, warm shoes and food.

I also remind the Conservative party that asylum seekers are seeking refuge. They are fleeing—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am afraid the hon. Lady is also going a little wider than the terms of the motion. If she could bring herself back to the motion, that would be very helpful to everybody.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I appreciate that, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I hope you will let me continue, because I will bring my speech back to the point about standards in public life, which is where I started and what I think this motion is fundamentally about.

Just to give some background, if you will indulge me, Madam Deputy Speaker, in Hounslow there are currently almost 3,000 asylum seekers in nine hotels, and more than 500 in dispersal accommodation, which are mainly rundown houses in multiple occupation with shared kitchens and bathrooms. There are 140 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The challenge locally is not asylum seekers roaming the streets causing problems for the community, because by definition asylum seekers want to play by the rules because they want to be given asylum. They do not want to cause trouble, and they are not going to cause trouble. The problem is the challenge for our public services in making sure that these vulnerable people have the right to education and social services to ensure that they are safe and comfortable while they are waiting in the ever-lengthening queue to get their status. The Home Office—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Lady absolutely must come back to the terms of the motion, because she is roaming much wider, and I have pulled up other Members for that. She must come back to the motion itself.

[Ruth Cadbury]

The Home Office has contracts with organisations such as Clearsprings Ready Homes, which then has contracts with a network of other agencies that are providing a terrible service. One person who works with these services said that asylum seekers receive food not fit for a dog and accommodation not fit for animals.

The hotels—I am coming to my point, Madam Deputy Speaker—receive £40 a room, yet the agencies are receiving Home Office money and taxpayer money at £130 a room, and they are pocketing the difference. The agencies are getting £15 a meal, yet the caterers are receiving £5.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am sorry, but the hon. Lady is not talking about security, as set out in the motion. If the hon. Lady can tell the House how what she is saying relates to these issues of the release of papers, that would be very helpful.

Skills for Jobs White Paper

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab) [V]]

West Thames College in Isleworth has a strong reputation, long developed, for providing courses across the range, including basic skills and English as a second language, but also locally specific courses developed in conjunction with employers, such as in aviation, hospitality and media. With so many people in my constituency losing their jobs at Heathrow and its supply chain, courses will have to re-orientate and colleges will have to provide retraining in other sectors. For people whose jobs will not come back for many years to come, will the training and retraining be available for colleges such as West Thames College, and will they be available to students on universal credit?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We must have shorter questions.

Town and Country Planning

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Baroness Winterton of Doncaster

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I rise to oppose these three SIs. The planning system exists specifically to address and balance often conflicting demands: public versus private; local community versus national requirements; environment versus the economy; and financial capital versus human need. Every planning application is judged against clear policies and clear demands, and every planning decision considers quality as well as quantity. It is a transparent and accountable process that enables community involvement. Permitted development rights were introduced to reduce bureaucracy in specific, clearly understood circumstances, but these SIs put a coach and horses through the normal system of judging and determining a proposed development.

I had 30 years of involvement in the town planning system before being elected to this place, and these instruments give me a terrible sense of déjà vu. In 2013, the Government introduced an extension of permitted development rights; then, as now, there was cross-party and cross-sector opposition. Why? Because extending PDR created, and will create, new slums of substandard housing, over which local planning authorities have little or no control and there is little or no opportunity for community input.

Now the Government have come back for more, ignoring the conclusions of their Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. Although they have conceded, after a lot of pressure, on minimum light and space standards, there are still major concerns about issues such as neighbour impact, access, parking, play and amenity space, and of course the proposals remove section 106 contributions from larger developments to the community on things such as affordable housing, traffic and transport improvements. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, I also share the concerns of my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), and of the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) about the implications for leaseholders.

Where is the evidence that these SIs will deliver more homes? There are 318,000 homes granted planning permission between 2011 and 2018 that remain unbuilt. The Government say that these measures will provide affordable housing for younger people, but there is no evidence that suggests they will. In my west London constituency, even a substandard rabbit hutch would still be affordable only to a young person working on a City of London salary who has a chunky deposit from the bank of mum and dad. As usual, families on UK average and below-average incomes remain invisible to Ministers.

There is, of course, inconsistency between the high-falutin’ intentions in the White Paper about sustainability and quality, and what will actually happen when these SIs are implemented. Speculators and owners will be able to use these regulations to avoid all the normal conditions that are to be expected when someone goes through the normal application process, which are there to address the principles of planning that I listed at the start of my speech, and of course they will avoid community engagement.

If the Government think that we are worried unnecessarily about these issues around standards and that it will all be all right, why do this in the first place, when we have a perfectly adequate planning system? We will see yet more homes that are bad for those living in them now, bad for their neighbours, and bad for those living in them in the future.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call Rachel Hopkins—I need you to sit down at 6.27 pm.