Iran

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

I will just finish my point. Just last weekend, a journalist was arrested and remains detained in Iran.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. I recently met a constituent who has had family members executed by the regime. She wanted me to make the point that this is not just an Iran issue—the erosion of human rights and women’s rights reverberates around the world. We have seen with the war in Ukraine what happens when the global community does not intervene quickly and firmly enough. I want to add my voice to that of the hon. Gentleman, and other Members present, in urging the Government to go further with sanctions and other methods to ensure we send the message that this is completely unacceptable and that we stand with all those protesting.

[Bob Blackman]

It is fair to say that the Government have not been inactive in this regard. On 11 November, the Foreign Secretary summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires to discuss the threats against journalists living in the UK. However, this has not deterred the Iranian security forces, so we must continue to put international pressure on the regime. It is crucial that we follow up the recent sanctions and lead our partners and allies to proscribe such an organisation.

I was pleased that, on 15 December, the UN General Assembly adopted the 69th UN resolution condemning violations of human rights in Iran.

Anti-social Behaviour Awareness Week

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) on securing this important debate, which is timely and very pressing. My first job after university was working for the former Member for Redcar, Mo Mowlam, so I know his area a bit, and some of the challenges that he talked about were similarly challenging back then.

Anti-Social Behaviour Awareness Week is a good initiative. There are lots of groups that I could pay tribute to, but I will highlight ASB Help and Resolve in particular —two really good organisations that work year-round to tackle this blight on our communities. Hon. Members who made contributions have spoken about the lack of a co-ordinated approach to tackling antisocial behaviour. The hon. Member for Redcar said that it was one of the most pressing issues in his inbox, and I think that is probably the same for all Members of Parliament, whether their constituencies are rural, urban or a mix of both. His call to return to a common-sense policing approach to antisocial behaviour is the right one.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) talked about all of the issues with off-road biking, as did others, and that is something that particularly affects people across the country. I did not know that he had written two books, but I do now—I will make sure that I read them. The hon. Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) talked about people feeling imprisoned in their homes, and had some good suggestions on off-road biking, which have been mentioned in this place many times before. There is a package of measures on off-road biking, and various Bills have been suggested by Members across the House, so there is agreement there and I hope the Minister is listening to those suggestions.

We are all aware of the real misery that antisocial behaviour causes. Before Christmas, in the autumn, I made trips across the country, in my role as shadow Policing Minister, to try to understand the scale and diversity of antisocial behaviour: how it affects different communities, the impact it has on them and what is being done about it. Those were eye-opening trips. Although each area was unique, everywhere I went it was clear that antisocial behaviour is not low-level crime; it is massively underestimated and massively under-prioritised in the way that policing is done in this country. It ruins lives, makes people feel unsafe and worried, and creates division in communities.

[Peter Gibson]

I would welcome the hon. Lady’s suggestions and ideas as to what she, her party or any of us could do to encourage and improve the reporting of antisocial behaviour.

[Sarah Jones]

That is an important question. Several things are linked to the reporting. First, people do not believe that anything will be done. Sadly, that is partly because twice as many people as 10 years ago now perceive that they never see a police officer on the streets. People do not feel that it is worth reporting, because they do not think they will get a response.

Secondly, at a national level, the Government do not collect data on antisocial behaviour. There was a debate in this place a few months ago where a Conservative Member made the case for the Government to record antisocial behaviour nationally, because it is not part of the metric so everybody reports and records it differently. Everybody has different approaches—some people use some interventions and some people use others—and there is no consistency across the country. In answer to the hon. Member’s question, people are loth to report it because they think that nothing will be done, and they do not see it as something that is prioritised at a national level.

[Peter Gibson]

I am truly enlightened by the hon. Lady’s response to my intervention, and truly shocked that we do not have national statistics and that there is not a level playing field across the country to assess and deal with that. I wonder whether the Minister, when she sums up, can address that problem and perhaps suggest what more we can do to drive forward that change, from which we would all benefit.

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Minister has obviously been in her position for only a short time, so we will all be gentle with her today, but there is a good conversation to be had about how we measure these things, which I will come to.

It is a hidden epidemic. Any constituent will say that antisocial behaviour is an important issue, but the stats do not bear that out. Polling by YouGov found that a third of the UK public had experienced an increase in antisocial behaviour in their area, with just 1% believing that the problem had decreased a lot.

Crime and its causes are complicated and we do not have time to go into all of them now. Antisocial behaviour tends to be localised—whether it is noise, fly-tipping or graffiti—and there is a correlation between antisocial behaviour hotspots and deprivation. The rolling away of some parts of public services has had an impact on the support that is given to people with mental health issues and on youth services, which we have talked about many times, and that has had a knock-on impact on the prevalence of antisocial behaviour. Where antisocial behaviour is rife, other crime follows. We know that it can be the starting point for real issues building up in communities.

Since the 2019 Government came to power, crime overall is up 18% and prosecutions are down 18%. Rates of arson are spiralling: incidents are up by 90,000 compared with 2019 but the charge rate is just 4.3%, which is down from 8.3% in 2015, and nearly 60% of investigations—more than 280,000 cases—are closed without a suspect being identified. Arson does huge damage to local communities. It ruins property, of course, and it ruins people’s sense of safety and pride in their community, so the vicious cycle continues. When I was in the north-east, there was a particular issue with arson that local people were very concerned about.

On the sense that nothing will be done if these issues are reported, that is sadly now the case when it comes to some crimes. Recent figures on car theft, for example, show that just one in 100 thefts of cars resulted in a charge. If someone’s car is stolen, and only one in 100 get a charge, the chances of them reporting antisocial behaviour and thinking that something could be done are quite low. Recent figures showed that in nearly half of neighbourhoods in the country, no burglaries had been solved by the police in the last three years at all, which is truly shocking and shames us, and speaks to some of the struggles that the police are having in doing the common-sense policing that we all want them to be doing.

In this context, the presence of neighbourhood police officers is very important. There are over 7,000 fewer neighbourhood officers on the frontline now than there were 12 years ago. There is only one neighbourhood officer for every 2,400 people in this country now, whereas 10 years ago there was one per 1,600 people. That does make a difference.

For the first time, the Government have introduced a new metric for measuring neighbourhood crime, which is a combination of four other crimes: vehicle-related theft, domestic burglary, theft from a person, and robbery of personal property. It is an interesting measure. The Government will say that neighbourhood crime has fallen in the last year, but the metric does not include any level of antisocial behaviour and it does not include bike theft, criminal damage or arson, so it is not a clear and complete picture of what neighbourhood crime is. I ask the Minister to look at that issue in her new role.

We know that a third of 999 calls are now about mental health emergencies and the police just cannot cope; they are responding to mental health issues and not to the crimes that they should be investigating. They spend significant time dealing with other crises in the community, and the impact of noise, graffiti, fly-tipping, drug dealing and vandalism is felt more and more acutely.

Good work is being done in patches, and I am sure that all of us would pay tribute to the police and crime commissioners who are working hard to make a difference. When I was in Northumbria, I saw the rural crime network with police and crime commissioner Kim McGuinness, which seemed to be working really effectively. When I was in Cardiff, I learned of a reduction in antisocial behaviour through the Step into Sport programme; my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn mentioned the importance of sport earlier. In Merseyside, there is a youth diversion fund, which more than 6,500 young people engage with. These are pockets of good practice. Sadly, because the police simply do not have the resources to do what they want to do, they are only pockets and not the norm.

I hope that neighbourhood policing will be a real focus for the Minister. Last week, I had the pleasure of welcoming some police community support officers to Parliament to celebrate the 20 years since PCSOs were introduced. That was under the last Labour Government and Lord Blunkett, who was there to talk to them. Those PCSOs’ insights were really interesting: they knew their patch inside out, they had built up relationships with local people, and they were able to intervene to de-escalate and tackle some of the issues of antisocial behaviour in a really effective way. Some of them told me stories of how they had dealt with kids who had been antisocial who then, later in life, came up to them in the street and told them how proud they were of what they had become, in part because they had a good relationship with a PCSO.

However, the number of PCSOs has been cut by nearly half since 2010. The peculiar thing about that is that it has not been a Government policy; it has just happened because of cuts to services. It was not deliberate. I ask the Minister to look at PCSOs and consider whether we need to restore their numbers. I think that we do, because they are the eyes and ears of the police.

As I have said, hard data is not collected properly. I have made a series of freedom of information requests across the country about how forces deal with antisocial behaviour. They all do it in different ways. The issue needs gripping at the centre, with some good measurements in place.

[Peter Gibson]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about the value of our PCSOs and the work they do in our community. In Darlington, we have seen 136 new officers recruited to Durham constabulary, and some of those new recruits to our police force were directly recruited from among existing PCSOs. The skills, talents and abilities that those PCSOs learned in their job have not been lost to public service, as those PCSOs have gone on to work in the police.

[Sarah Jones]

That is a really interesting point. The same has happened with specials, but there is then a shortage of PCSOs and specials, because they go up to become officers. Alongside that, we have lost the experience of all the police who have been cut over the last 10 years. Although we have the new recruits coming in, some of whom are PCSOs and specials, the experience of local communities and the knowledge that the police have built up over many years has gone, and it will take some time to bring that back.

Labour has made commitments to put police back into neighbourhoods through police hubs. That way, there will be a space in every community where people can interact with the police, but with the infrastructure around them of local authorities, enforcement officers and youth services. Such neighbourhood prevention teams, as it were, could work collectively to try to crack down on some of the antisocial behaviour and its causes in the community. We think that would have a big impact on presence, problem solving and focus on antisocial behaviour. That is really needed, as are some of the measures hon. Members have mentioned, such as changing legislation around off-road biking and similar issues.

We also think that there should be a recruitment drive for special constables. I was with the south Wales special constables last night, who have won a Queen’s award for volunteering. They give up their time for free and it is quite extraordinary how proud they are of the work that they do. Their numbers have also fallen by about 50% over the last 10 years, and it will be interesting to see whether the Minister has any thoughts yet on specials and whether those numbers need to increase.

There is much to be done. We talk about antisocial behaviour often in this place, particularly in Westminster Hall, where Members often feel the need to come and talk about it because it is such an issue. Sadly, we do not get the response from Government that we would like. I ask the Minister to think about PCSOs and specials, about measurements of antisocial behaviour and about how we grip the issue nationally and really understand it.

I also ask Conservative Members to think about these issues when they are considering who to vote for to be the next Prime Minister. The right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) wrote in The Daily Telegraph yesterday that he would ringfence child exploitation teams from any future policing cuts. Does that mean he is planning future policing cuts? That is a question that hon. Members should ask him and others, because it is an important issue for the next Prime Minister.

The Home Office has a key leadership role to play, and I ask the Minister to make sure that is happening. Criminals cannot be given free rein. When low-level antisocial behaviour is not tackled, it leads to greater and more significant crime—drug running and all the other issues that have been mentioned. That is not good enough for our communities; they need more support and reassurance. I hope the Minister will take these issues seriously.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

Let me be clear: the British Council’s budget has not been cut. We agreed in the spending review settlement an amount of £189 million, which is a 27% increase in funding on the previous year. While we had to make difficult decisions on cuts in other areas, we actually increased the money that we are providing to the British Council. We have reviewed the physical Council presence in countries as part of a wider modernisation process. I visited the British Council in Senegal last week, and its work was outstanding.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I have a wonderful Tamil community in Croydon, and they still feel the devastating impacts of the civil war. May I add my voice to those from across this House for sanctions against General Silva who has been accused of great crimes? Does the Minister have some words of comfort on this point for my constituents?

[Amanda Milling]

As the hon. Lady will be aware, we do not comment on any possible future sanctions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Duddridge]

I think I got the drift of the question, although I missed the beginning. We recognise that there are human rights concerns both in India-administered Kashmir and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. We encourage all states to ensure that domestic laws are in line with international standards, and any allegation—any allegation—of human rights violations or abuse is deeply concerning and must be investigated thoroughly, promptly and transparently.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)]

The UK has led international efforts to press China to grant urgent and unfettered access to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

[Sarah Jones]

Is the Foreign Secretary concerned about the deliberate erosion of trust in America’s electoral system—in particular, what is playing out in Arizona—and what lessons should be learned here, where, as in America, there is no evidence of electoral fraud on anything other than a minuscule scale? Does he really think the Elections Bill is going to help or hinder our democracy?

[Dominic Raab]

We obviously follow attacks on any democracy—particularly, as we have talked about, through misinformation or cyber-crime—very carefully. Ultimately, we work in collaboration with partners such as the US and we will take our lead from them.

GCHQ Centenary

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who puts the point well. It is an extremely complex threat landscape, but I am pleased that there are people working there—my constituents and his—who are equal to the task.

As I had begun to indicate, successive Foreign Secretaries have made clear their respect for GCHQ and their deep appreciation of its responsibilities. William Hague perhaps put it best when, referring to the surveillance and interception decisions made by GCHQ and others, he stated in this House:

“If the citizens of this country could see the time and care taken in making these decisions, the carefully targeted nature of all our interventions, and the strict controls in place to ensure that the law and our democratic values are upheld, and if they could witness, as I do, the integrity and professionalism of the men and women of our intelligence agencies, who are among our nation’s very finest public servants, I believe they would be reassured by how we go about this essential work.”—[Official Report, 10 June 2013; Vol. 564, c. 34.]

He cited the work of the Interception of Communications Commissioner, who had said:

“it is my belief…that GCHQ staff conduct themselves with the highest levels of integrity and legal compliance.”

I believe that the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which I and other hon. Members grappled with on entering Parliament in 2015, creates probably the strongest system of checks and balances and democratic accountability for secret intelligence anywhere in the world. In particular, the stringent judicial double-lock safeguard that I and others argued for means that the most intrusive investigatory powers require the approval of a judge—and that is exactly as it should be. That is not to say, of course, that mistakes will not be made—I am afraid that is inevitable whenever human beings are involved—but professional integrity and respect for the law are institutionally ingrained at GCHQ.

I want to say a word or two about the National Cyber Security Centre, which is superintended by GCHQ. Since the introduction of the national cyber-security strategy in 2015, the NCSC has the mission of making the UK the safest place in the world to live and work online. It supports British business, with its “Small Business Guide: Cyber Security” providing guidance on improving resilience. Its “10 Steps to Cyber Security” guidance is now used by two thirds of FTSE 350 companies—and it is having success. The UK’s global share of phishing attacks has dropped from 5.4% in 2016 to below 2% in March 2019. In 2016, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs was the 16th most phished brand globally; now, it is 146th. That suggests the UK is becoming a harder target, thanks in large part to the work of the NCSC and GCHQ.

What about the impact on Cheltenham, my constituency? After the end of world war two, GCHQ staff reduced from about 10,000 to fewer than 1,800 and left Bletchley Park. They moved to Gloucestershire in September 1949, and GCHQ has had a continuous presence in Cheltenham ever since. In 2004, the famous “Doughnut” building opened—the largest secret intelligence building outside the United States. It is that impact on Cheltenham that I want to take a few short moments to talk about.

In 2013, when I was first selected to stand for Cheltenham, I thought long and hard about how I could try to make my home town better for the people who live there. One of the issues that really troubled me was that, of the 18 wards that make up the constituency of Cheltenham, three were in the bottom decile of income per capita anywhere in our country and had been for many years. Wherever we sit in the political spectrum, every Member has to have a plan for how to try to address that issue. It always struck me that GCHQ could be better harnessed to galvanise the local economy and generate the invaluable opportunities that can break the cycle of deprivation and turn lives around.

I then read a Policy Exchange paper called “Silicon Cities”, and the penny dropped that GCHQ could support a local tech cluster to foster start-ups in the growing cyber-security industry. That was the main message of a speech I gave to Gloucestershire businesses at local IT firm Converge in 2014.

How far we have come since then. In November 2015, George Osborne, then Chancellor of the Exchequer announced at GCHQ that Cheltenham would receive a cyber-innovation centre and cyber accelerator, which he described as

“an ecosystem in which our best people move in and out of institutions like this one, bringing the best minds and deepest expertise into the private sector, and the latest innovation back into government.”

That accelerator is now up and running, and 21 companies have been through it so far. Between them, they have invested £30 million and created valuable tech jobs.

As was always hoped for, this is now starting to catalyse the local cyber-economy. Hub 8—a play on Bletchley Park’s Hut 8—in the centre of Cheltenham is a new co-working space where start-ups in this £5 billion a year sector can scale up. Meanwhile, Gloucestershire College is now offering cyber-degrees accredited by GCHQ in collaboration with the University of the West of England. There are exciting plans for a cyber-park adjacent to GCHQ, with a GCHQ-avowed building close to the Doughnut, to anchor a local cyber-ecosystem. The plans continue to be supported by Government and the local borough council and are progressing at pace. The new frontier is cyber, and Cheltenham is uniquely well placed—through the presence of GCHQ and its connectivity to the midlands, the south-west and the Thames valley—to benefit from it, securing a better future for people of all backgrounds.

I now want to say a word about the extraordinary community work that GCHQ staff do. GCHQ is truly Cheltenham’s charity superpower. It has raised more than £1.5 million for charities over the last 10 years. GCHQ staff use their three days’ special volunteering leave a year regularly to volunteer at local charities. That has included supporting projects such as the hamper scamper, a Christmas scheme run by Caring for Communities and People that provides gift hampers to vulnerable families; the James Hopkins Trust Easter Egg appeal; and GCHQ’s Poppyfall installation, which was hanging in Gloucestershire cathedral last year and was incredibly and unbearably poignant. On 19 May this year, a charity bike ride from Bletchley Park to Cheltenham raised around £30,000.

To secure its future, GCHQ continues to recruit new generations of people with the right skills, aptitude and mindset. It sponsors the young entrepreneurs competition, which aims to encourage young people to think creatively and innovatively, with the final held at GCHQ. Its CyberFirst Girls competition had 40 finalists from 40,000 participants. Meanwhile, the NCSC has supported its first ever cyber schools hubs in Gloucestershire. I have seen their work, and it is incredibly uplifting and exciting to see young people engaged in such a dynamic way.

The UK may not have faced a category 1 attack yet—one that causes sustained disruption to the UK’s essential services or affects our national security—but the director said on BBC Radio 4 earlier this year that he thought it was a question of when, not if. Those seeking to act against our country in that way or perpetrate organised crime know that this is a nation with the capability, partnerships and resolve to protect its citizens in accordance with our laws and values.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is making a powerful speech and I am privileged to be here. A dear friend of mine is a senior official in the NCSC, and I know the important work done there. The hon. Gentleman is talking about protecting the institution in the future. We have been talking about the ever more complex and universal threat against citizens. Does he agree with me and many other Members who have spoken in recent days that it is incumbent on all of us as Members of Parliament to back up our excellent civil servants, fight the politicisation, in any form, of the civil service and give them all the support they need?

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point extremely well. The strength of our civil servants is their scrupulous independence and preparedness to serve political masters of whatever hue. We see that across our civil service and we see it very clearly at GCHQ. That is its strength and that is what we must safeguard.

The point I really want to emphasise is that this is a nation that can defend itself because it has the capability, partnerships and resolve to do so in accordance with the law and with our values, and it is able to do so because of the skill and integrity of those working at GCHQ.

GCHQ’s centenary just so happens to coincide with the 175th anniversary of the first use of Morse code to send a message between cities. It is, therefore, perhaps fitting that I should conclude by playing a message to GCHQ in the form of Morse code, which will last for 13 seconds:

Happy birthday to GCHQ.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)]

My hon. Friend is right. The discovery of those tunnels has highlighted concerns about a re-armed Hezbollah in Lebanon, and it is essential for them to be dealt with by both UNIFIL and the Lebanese armed forces. They constitute a clear breach of UN Security Council regulation 1701.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

T7. My constituent Mr Niranjan Rasalingam is currently shackled in a prison in Myanmar, serving a 13-year sentence after being forced to sign a confession in Burmese, a language that he does not understand. Regardless of his guilt or innocence, he is a British citizen being mistreated. I have raised his case in this place before, but I understand that the Foreign Secretary did not make representations on his behalf during a recent trip to the country. May I ask him again please to give more support, and to advocate on behalf of my constituent?

[Mark Field]

I shall be happy to deal with this matter in my role as Minister of State. I hope to go to Burma, or Myanmar, within the next few months, but I will obviously try to deal with it from London at an earlier stage.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is now a premium on brevity. I call Sarah Jones.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

My constituent Mr Rasalingam has been in prison for four years in Myanmar, having been sentenced to 17 years on a fraud conviction. There is evidence that his conviction represents a major miscarriage of justice. Next Wednesday, the facts of his case will be reviewed by a judge to assess whether Mr Rasalingam can appeal. Will the Secretary of State look into his case and see whether action from the UK Government might help with the appeal?

[Mr Hunt]

I am very happy to make all consular assistance available to the hon. Lady’s constituent.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

7. What steps he is taking to promote human rights in discussions with his counterparts in other countries.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

10. What steps he is taking to promote human rights in discussions with his counterparts in other countries.

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

11. What steps he is taking to promote human rights in discussions with his counterparts in other countries.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

These are very alarming developments, and the transition from what was believed to be an Islamist Government to a nationalist Government appears to have coincided with a crackdown on such issues. The Foreign Secretary has raised the matter directly with President Sisi and we will continue to champion these issues and raise them in every interaction with the Egyptian Government.

[Sarah Jones]

We saw again this weekend the perils of the sea crossing from Libya to Europe. Migrants in Libya are also in danger. Amnesty says that 20,000 people are being held in detention centres, subject to torture, forced labour, extortion and unlawful killings. What are the Government doing to put pressure on the European and Libyan authorities to allow NGO rescue ships access to Libyan waters and ensure that people are not trapped in that country and refugees are able to exercise their right to asylum?

[Rory Stewart]

We are very focused on and aware of this issue. A lot of our focus at the moment is on the detention centres, and on ensuring that we work with the UN, with the EU and through DFID programmes on improving conditions in those detention centres.

Budget Resolutions

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

The big story from last week’s Budget was clear: there is little room for manoeuvre on the economy unless we improve our productivity. We need to spend only five minutes in the company of anyone from the Institute for Fiscal Studies to see that our downgraded productivity forecasts spell real problems for the UK, particularly as we approach the full force of the Government’s chaotic Brexit.

Britain’s influence in the world has always had at its heart a strong economy, driving trade and growth across the globe. My own constituency of Croydon developed as a town on the principal route between the south coast and London, a gateway to this country since mediaeval times. Competing on the world stage necessitates an economy that the world can work with easily and that it will look up to. Those who enjoy this sort of thing, as I do, will follow the various global country-branding matrices, which always place Britain satisfyingly near the top as a nation brand; but these things shift, and as our economic performance becomes stunted and freedoms of movement and trade are taken away, our reputation as a place in which to work and invest will suffer.

I think we would all agree that productivity holds the key to maintaining and building on our place as a world-leading economy, so how do we help our businesses, and the people employed by them, to become more efficient? There are two clear concerns that we must address before we go any further: the two pillars of education and infrastructure. The correlation between a strong education system and productivity is clear, and it was extremely disappointing to see no significant mention of education in the Budget. My borough of Croydon has the largest number of young people in London. We have 16,000 people in further education or apprenticeships, but I was devastated to hear that the number of apprenticeship starts between May and July fell by 61%.

There is a growing crisis in our schools, which threatens to undermine our local and national economy for a generation. I surveyed over 50 Croydon headteachers recently, and 93% told me that they had been forced to cut staff due to funding. Three quarters had cut teaching assistants and, shockingly, 85% said they had been forced to cut support for children with special educational needs. This is not helping our country’s productivity. In the last Parliament, the Conservatives cut adult education by 47%. This is not helping our country’s productivity. Prospective university students in England are now looking at average debts of an astonishing £50,000—higher than almost anywhere in the developed world. This is not helping our country’s productivity. The Chancellor’s Budget and today’s industrial strategy allocate some money for parts of our education sector, but to avoid real-terms cuts we need billions more in investment just to restore real-terms funding to 2015 levels.

The second pillar of productivity is, of course, infrastructure. London is our most productive location and it is where our housing shortage is most acute, yet London recently slipped to the bottom of the regional house building tables. The Mayor of London was right to say that this was the most anti-London Budget in a generation. It did not offer a single extra penny in grants for affordable housing in London, and, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Government’s headline measures on stamp duty are more likely to benefit current owners than first-time buyers. The Government must change their mindset from seeing housing as a commodity to seeing it as a pivotal means of increasing our nation’s productive potential.

More housing will kick-start productivity only if the right type of infrastructure supports it. Croydon Council recently gave the green light to a transformative project led by Westfield and Hammerson to bring thousands of new jobs and homes to Croydon, but we are hampered by our infrastructure. East Croydon station has the second highest number of rail interchanges in the country. The Brighton mainline, which serves Croydon and other important south London destinations, desperately needs £l billion to handle the increase in demand that it will face in the coming years. Overcrowding on the network is hampering our productivity.

To sum up, the challenges we face, from artificial intelligence to an ageing population, from climate change to Brexit, are serious, but unless we get the foundations in place to improve our productivity, we will not stand a chance.