HEALTH
Debate between Simon Hughes and Lyn Brown(12 years ago)
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Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, for presiding over our last debate before Christmas. I have one specific subject that I want to raise, and a couple of very little things that I shall mention at the end.
A lot of my constituency casework—about 40%—relates to the Home Office and to the UK Border Agency, and many of the cases involve people who are here legitimately and who want to renew their visas. The process is simply not working, and we need to sort that out. All sorts of people are affected, including people who are working here and need to renew their visa in order to carry on doing their job, and people who came here as spouses and need to renew their status to be able to continue to live with their wife, husband or partner.
People can choose how to apply to renew their visas. They can apply by post, or in person after booking an appointment online. The applications are not free. The minimum cost is about £300 and the maximum is about £2,000, so people are making a significant contribution. Both application systems have problems, and they are causing my constituents, and those of many other colleagues, severe inconvenience. It is possible to use the premium same-day service, and it costs between £300 and £400 more to apply in person than to apply by post.
My constituents tell me that the system often releases new appointments at midnight, which is inconvenient, and because everyone logs on to the website at midnight, the system regularly crashes. The website also has basic technical errors. One constituent, a friend of mine named Selcuk Akinci, found that it was offering appointments only for 2020, which was not particularly useful. There are rarely any appointments available within two months, although that fact is not advertised anywhere. Most people, quite reasonably, think about applying to extend their stay only one or two months before their current visa is due to expire. Many therefore find that they cannot get an appointment before their leave expires. They then have to apply by post, which often means a six-month wait without being able to travel. People will not have expected that, and it can cause real problems for them, especially if they need to visit family regularly or if their work involves frequent travel. This problem can often prevent people from doing their job, if they need to travel for work.
Appointments can be made at any of the seven public inquiry offices in the UK. The system tells people where the next available appointment is, and they might find that they have to go from south London to Glasgow or Birmingham. Many people have to travel a long way for their appointment. When they arrive, even if they have booked the premium same-day service, there is no guarantee that the application will be processed on the same day. If the UKBA decides that further checks are necessary, the application is taken out of the premium service queue and put into the postal applications queue, which means that it could take up to six months to process. There is no refund of the premium fee in those circumstances.
People have no way of knowing whether their case will require further checks, which can be triggered by many different factors. There can be genuinely good reasons for carrying out such checks. For example, the person’s name might generate a hit on the police national computer, they might have used a different identity in the past, or they might have no leave to remain at the time of their application. However, further checks are sometimes triggered for bad reasons. Whatever the reason, the person concerned is not allowed to talk to anyone. They are taken out of the premium application process and told that their case has gone into the postal system and that they have to go home and wait, perhaps for more than three months. The case is placed in a kind of “cannot process it today” queue and sent away to a casework centre.
Cases are sometimes referred for further checks for illegitimate reasons. My senior caseworker, James Harper, deals with such cases every day in our Bermondsey office, and I deal with them often. For example, a person’s records might not have been properly updated on the UKBA database. In a recent case, a Ghanaian couple travelled all the way to Birmingham so that the husband could apply to extend his marriage visa in the normal way. However, Mr Kusi’s records had not been properly updated on the Home Office system to show his existing leave to remain. It therefore appeared to the officers at the inquiry office that he had no right to apply, even though he did, and the couple were turned away and left with only three days to apply by post before his existing visa expired. The couple pleaded with the officers to ring the visa office that had dealt with the original application, but were told that that was not possible and that they would have to leave. This is really unacceptable.
In a further case, an Iranian woman in my constituency was applying to extend her stay as the wife of a British citizen. Her case was referred for further checks because it was believed that she did not have high enough English language test scores: level 4.0 on the IELTS—International English Language Testing System—scale in reading and writing. In fact, this was a misinterpretation of the rules, as level 4.0 is required only in speaking and listening. My constituent qualified and her case was sent on, but it was subject to a long delay; only after we intervened did the UKBA admit that an error had been made and then refund the additional premium fee.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
This is quite unusual, but I find myself in agreement with the right hon. Gentleman for the second time in two weeks. In the spirit of Christmas, may I offer him another minute?
Simon Hughes
I am grateful, and I hope there will be a lot of common ground on these issues.
When people apply by post, the system often takes far too long. We need a system whereby people have certainty, because they are trying to organise their lives, and UKBA gets its act together.
I offer some suggestions for a solution. First, if someone has paid the premium fee and gone to the office but a question arises, they should not automatically be told, “It’s going off to the casework centre.” A real person should speak to the individual and seek to resolve the question there and then—it cannot be beyond the wit of people to sort that out—as with any other normal customer service operation.
Secondly, when people have paid a premium fee, they are entitled to expect a quicker service than if they had applied by post without paying the premium fee, even if their case is referred for further checks. That does not happen, but it should do, and I hope UKBA will change it, as such cases should not just go into the same pool as the postal applications. Lastly, if it emerges that somebody’s case has been referred for further checks in error, as is frequently the case, there should at least be a partial refund of the premium fee, if not a total refund.
I hope that this part of the UKBA operation, which is clearly not fit for purpose, can get its act together. I will be grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), for taking this matter away with him, passing it to the Home Office and, hopefully, getting it sorted soon.
To finish quickly, I entirely endorse the comments of the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz): the Government should be very careful about reducing the judicial review system. We have developed administrative law in this country for a purpose. There are many more Government decisions so we need to be careful about taking away people’s rights to challenge administrative decisions. I shall certainly put in my submission, and I hope that the Government will pay heed to it.
I join in the congratulations to the Government on at last and belatedly announcing the honour for the Arctic convoys veterans. I have regularly raised the issue with Ministers, and constituents have regularly raised it with me. These brave people, who went through the most difficult circumstances to make sure that the lifeline between us and our Russian allies was kept open, did a phenomenal job. They rightfully deserve to be honoured. Thank God some of them are still alive to enjoy that honour.
This year has been not only jubilee year and a fantastic Olympic and Paralympic year, but the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. I end with a quote from him:
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and keep it all year.”
Thus said Dickens, who had big Southwark connections. To that, I add greetings to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to all my colleagues, and my thanks to House staff for looking after us so well. I also give my particular best wishes to two people: the oldest woman in Britain, a constituent of mine who became 113 on 7 December and who still lives in her own council flat in Bermondsey; and my older brother, who has a significant birthday tomorrow.
Church of England (Women Bishops)
Debate between Simon Hughes and Lyn Brown(12 years ago)
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Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for leading the debate so well and to the Backbench Business Committee for choosing it.
I will declare my interests. I was baptised into the Church of England and confirmed into the Church in Wales—the latter makes me much more comfortable, because I support disestablishment. I am chair of a Church primary school, nominated by my diocese, Southwark, a trustee of a Church secondary school in my constituency and a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee in Parliament.
Like everybody who spoke immediately after the Synod’s decision, I despaired at the folly of the Church of England in making a huge public mistake. After so long, everybody was clear about the view of the Church as a whole. We have heard that 42 of the 44 dioceses are in favour of women bishops, and we have heard the view of the leadership, including Archbishop Rowan Williams, who did everything he could to ensure that the change was delivered during his time as Archbishop, for which we thank him.
I come from the evangelical tradition, and many evangelicals support the ordination of women as both priests and bishops. The situation is not one category in favour and another against. In the church to which I belong, St James in Bermondsey, which would be classed as an evangelical church, I do not think there is a single person who does not support the ordination of women as bishops.
Evangelicals look back to the scriptures, as does everybody else who gets involved in this argument. Although I understand why people have come to the view that they cannot accept that there can be women priests or bishops, that has very little biblical foundation. Nothing in my New Testament says that Christ set up a structure by saying, “You will have churches, and you will have deacons, priests and bishops, and they will all be men.” I may have missed something, but I have read the whole New Testament at one stage or another and there is nothing that says that. Although a tradition of having men has built up, some of the early leaders of the Church right from the beginning, when Christ was executed and rose again, were women. Indeed, in the early days some Churches had women bishops, for heaven’s sake. I do not understand why we are having to revisit this issue after so long.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I find myself agreeing with the right hon. Gentleman. It has always surprised me that women seemed to have a good, established position in the early Church, right up until it was legalised and then became the state religion of Rome. That leads me to feel that we should overturn the centuries of discrimination against women in the Church, possibly by disestablishing it. Maybe, once it is disestablished, it will be able to see a proper route to incorporating women as a proper and fundamental part of the Christian family.
Simon Hughes
The hon. Lady and I are on the same wavelength on that. I understand the arguments for establishment, but I believe that a radical Church should not be part of the establishment. We should be outside the establishment campaigning for Christian values, but we have ended up being in the establishment by accident. That is a debate for another time, and we will not resolve it today.
One paradox is that the established Church of England has decided not to have women bishops when the head of the Church of England, the supreme governor, is a woman. The whole thing is inconsistent. There is another anomaly in the argument that, because of the relatively recent history of the Church, only men can be priests, and that people want to be under the pastoral responsibility of a male bishop. The Church has provided that option in relation to priests, and it works. Now it has come up with a similar proposal for those who want a male bishop. It seems to me that if the first worked, the second is likely to work. I ask people to be generous and less suspicious and untrusting. It is understood that some people have a different view, and everybody has tried hugely hard to accommodate it.
Local Government Funding
Debate between Simon Hughes and Lyn Brown
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak in a debate on local government. As I said in an intervention on the shadow Secretary of State, local government is very important, as is funding local government properly, and I think it is perfectly proper for the Labour Opposition to choose the funding settlement for local government as the general subject for an Opposition-day debate. The title of the debate is therefore entirely appropriate; we should debate the distribution of local government funding and the effects of changes to it.
The only real matter of dispute that I have with the right hon. Lady and her colleagues is that many of them are making comments today as if the settlement had been announced, when instead we are, I hope, using our last chance to tell Ministers what we would like to happen. A whole succession of colleagues on the Labour Back Benches have reeled off figures as if they were the final settlement, and one has complained that one of his councils has not finally decided what cuts it should make. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) complained that Stockport council has not finalised that. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter) used to be the leader of Stockport council. Those of us who know that council, and many other councils, well understand that it has not yet finalised its budget—and neither has my local authority, which happens to be run by Labour, whereas Stockport is run by Liberal Democrats. They are waiting—
Simon Hughes
No, the hon. Lady entered the Chamber only a few minutes ago and has already intervened twice, and I want to deal with the contributions that have been made.
Most councils wait until the provisional settlement, which will be announced next week, after which they make representations if they feel it is not fair or appropriate, and then there is a final settlement. Of course there is planning for a budget, but today’s debate is an opportunity for us not to be doom-mongers about decisions that have not been taken, but to make sure we put cases and arguments publicly, that some of us have been making to Ministers and colleagues privately, as to what we believe will be the best possible settlement in the difficult financial circumstances of the time.