Antisemitism in Modern Society

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (Ind)]

It is a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan).

In my limited time, I would like to concentrate on just a couple of points. I am not Jewish, but I was talking to a constituent of mine a few months ago, a perfectly ordinary, normal middle-aged lady who is a Brit. I did not even know that she was Jewish, but during the conversation, it became clear that she was. She told me something quite shocking. She said that, with the change in antisemitism over the past couple of years, she and her friends no longer feel safe in the United Kingdom. This was so astonishing and extraordinary that I chanced it a bit and said, “How can you really feel that, considering all the challenges around the rest of the world?” but she was absolutely clear on that. In the ensuing months, I spent time talking to a number of other Jewish British people in Eastbourne with a similar background—they are not into politics or campaigning—and again and again I found that genuine fear.

That brings me to two outstanding speeches, one of which was from my friend, the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) who I have known for a long time. He made a very strong point about enablers, which is crucial. The other speech—I am sorry to see that she has left the Chamber—was from the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). Again, I have known her for over 30 years from before I got into politics. She made a crucial point about how promoting pro-Palestine and pro-Palestinian rights has over the years gone over the line, so that it is no longer a case of, “I disagree with the Israeli Government,” but “I disagree with Jews.”

How did that happen? Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember the hard left from 30 years ago. I hate to say it, but many of us in the Chamber will know that that was always there in the hard left 30 or 35 years ago; it was just that the hard left then did not have any control. Bluntly, it was ignored. Should something have been done? Perhaps, I do not know, but it was ignored. What has changed—I am afraid this is true, although I do not mean this about every member of the Labour Front Bench—is that a cabal of people I would define, many would define and I suspect colleagues behind me would define as the hard left now controls the Labour party. That very same nonsense—and it is nonsense—openly talked about 30 years ago, but by those who had no power, influence or traction, is now everywhere. It has got into normal, ordinary day-to-day conversation. That is why my constituent—this lovely lady who is a friend of mine in Eastbourne who is British, middle-aged and just happens to be Jewish—feels frightened.

That strand now walks the land, and I do not really know what the Labour party is going to do about it—I really don’t. It is different from the hard-right antisemitism that is hundreds of years old. That is thuggish and thick and has been around forever. We could almost take that on. It was easier in a way. But the antisemitism we now have is mainstream with a lot of the supporters of the current Labour party, sadly, and some of its members. That is a real problem. What I do know is that that type of antisemitism is the canary in the mine. The canary is choking and we really have to deal with it. We have to deal with it now or we will all live to regret it.

Local Government Finance

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend is a fine champion of the interests of the Isle of Wight and I commend him for his work. He has made representations to the Local Government Minister and seen a recognition that different communities are affected in different ways as we look at the review of relative needs and resources. Obviously, we will listen carefully to representations we receive from hon. Members of all parties as we move forward with the review.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (Ind)]

The Secretary of State talks about the additional cash for local authorities. I spoke to a colleague who was at East Sussex County Council’s budget meeting today, and I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that the situation is a catastrophe. The situation with core funding means that meals on wheels are being cut. Unless additional money comes next year, services for vulnerable children will be savaged. Will the Secretary of State today commit to giving East Sussex County Council fairer funding? Even though this is a Tory-led county, the council is on its knees. It needs the money urgently.

[James Brokenshire]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that East Sussex is part of the business rates pilots and gets the benefits that attach to those involved in that process through the additional resources that are garnered from it. Councils across the south-east will get an extra £226 million in their core spend in the settlement if the House approves it today, which will mean around £7.1 billion of funding.

Budget Resolutions

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray]

Of course, what the hon. Gentleman does not mention is that before the Budget the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was calling for the work allowances to be fully restored to pre-2015 levels, so I shall take what the hon. Gentleman has to say with a pinch of salt.

That cut of £2,400 a year is before we look at the cuts in other areas of universal credit that will swallow up any gains made from the Chancellor’s announcements on Monday. According to the House of Commons Library, the benefit freeze is going to cost low-income families just short of £5 billion next year alone. That one-year cut via the benefit freeze is worth more than the entire work allowance investment announced by the Chancellor for the next four years, which will be worth £3.8 billion. It is your typical Tory giving half with one hand and taking back double with the other. It is not an end to austerity; it continues to ingrain austerity. Little wonder, then, that the Government’s own expert adviser on social security, Sir Ian Diamond, has said that the next phase in the universal credit roll-out could push thousands into hardship or even out of the benefits system altogether. For shame!

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Given what the hon. Gentleman has said, will the Scottish National party support the Lib Dems and vote against the tax cut for those earning more than 50 k? That £1.3 billion could be put into the work allowance to make it back up to what it was before George Osborne slashed it in 2015.

[Neil Gray]

The hon. Gentleman will see what we do later this evening. He will also see what we do with our reasoned amendment to the Finance Bill, which will be coming next week.

The Resolution Foundation has done a cumulative analysis of all the tax and social security decisions from 2015 to 2023. It shows that the people in the first five income deciles—the five poorest groups of people in the UK—are set to lose out by between £100 and £500 a year, on average and in real terms. Of course, some families will continue to get hammered to an even greater extent, as I have already pointed out. The top income deciles, however, will all see an increase in their incomes. So when the Chancellor chose to bring forward a tax cut that disproportionately benefits higher earners the most—instead of stopping the benefit freeze, which is the single biggest cash grab from low-income families, or stopping the most draconian cut to universal credit, which is the disgusting two-child cap, which targets children with austerity—it was clear that his priorities were skewed. He keeps up an income squeeze on the many to pay for the biggest tax cuts for the few. That might have been a line from the shadow Chancellor, but of course Labour is supporting this disgrace.

The tax shambles that Labour has got itself into was compounded yesterday by Scottish Labour putting out a statement asking the Scottish Government to do the exact opposite of what the Labour Front-Bench team here wants to do on tax. For Scottish Labour, it is the old Groucho Marx line: “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them, well, I have some more in London.” Of course, the Scottish Government are already plotting a different, progressive path on taxation, leaving 70% of all taxpayers paying less this year than in 2017-18. I am confident that that will continue in next week’s budget.

Let me return to the impact that Tory austerity is having on families. The OBR has warned that unsecured debt has risen as a share of household income. In other words, people are relying more on loans and credit cards to stay afloat. We know that from the evidence that the Trussell Trust and Citizens Advice have provided about food bank use and people seeking help. The OBR falls just short of saying that the growth outlook is dependent on an unsustainable debt-fuelled increase in consumption, but even its need to mention that in the report should be a warning to the Government and their Front-Bench team. Their squeeze on living standards and family incomes is pushing people into debt, and that has not just social but economic consequences.

Most fundamentally, we should struggle to believe that any of the Budget will be delivered anyway. The OBR has struggled to do its analysis because the Government failed to provide the figures in time. I wonder why that was the case. The Chancellor himself essentially said that his Budget was a wish list—and a wish list that is entirely contingent on Brexit. The OBR’s blue book quotes studies from the Centre for European Reform and the Centre for Economic Policy Research that say that, by the middle of 2018, the UK economy was 2% to 2.5% smaller than it would have been had it not been for the Brexit referendum. In other words, the Brexit referendum itself almost halved the already slow annual economic growth enjoyed by the UK. I doubled checked this with the Library, and UK annual GDP is around £2 trillion, so 2% to 2.5% of that is worth £40 billion to £50 billion. That is £40 billion to £50 billion lost from the UK economy thanks to David Cameron’s failed Brexit gamble and the Vote Leave campaign that broke the rules. The Schadenfreude for the Prime Minister, who claimed that austerity was over, is further compounded by the fact that the estimated cost of ending austerity ranged from £19 billion for the IFS to £31 billion for the Resolution Foundation. Had there been no Brexit, the Chancellor could have ended austerity while staying within his own fiscal rules and still had enough money to fix the roof while the sun was shining.

On Monday, the Chancellor let us all believe that the space he had to loosen the Tories’ vice-like grip on the financial purse strings was down to austerity economics. Let us have a little look at what the Chancellor did not say on Monday and provide bit of the cautionary detail referred to by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe. Many Tories point to cuts to corporation tax as the reason for greater-than-expected tax receipts. Sadly for them, that does not appear to be the case. Last year, the IFS discussed recent trends in corporation tax receipts and said:

“Weak investment post Brexit is forecast to boost receipts in the short run because it is expected that firms will make less use of tax-deductible capital allowances.”

Analysis in the Financial Times in April last year made basically the same point:

“Companies can offset some of their investments against their profits to reduce their tax bill. The idea is to give them a tax incentive to make more investment. For this reason the OBR has a rule of thumb that a 1 per cent increase in business investment leads to £50m less in tax receipts…But business investment fell by 2 per cent in 2016, according to the ONS. This was good news for the public finances, which received more in corporation tax revenue, despite being bad news for the overall economy.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. In the short time allocated, I will focus on the universal credit side of the Budget. In 2015, George Osborne made a dreadful mistake, cutting out from universal credit £3 billion per annum from the work allowance. Since my re-election in 2017, I, like my Lib Dem colleagues, have constantly been advocating a restoration of that work allowance element, so that work really does pay—it would not do so without that. For a year and a half, the Conservative party has been constantly pushing back to say, “Work does pay. We do not need to restore the work allowance.” I am glad that finally, on Monday, the Chancellor listened to us and restored £1.7 billion, albeit not all the work allowance that George Osborne had cut.

A number of Opposition Members have discussed this, but I say to the Conservatives that rather than give a substantial tax cut for those at the top end of salaries, people like us and many others, why not put that £1.3 billion, which is the equivalent in respect of the people earning over £50,000, £60,000, £70,000 and 80,000 a year, back into the rest of the work allowance so that it restores what George Osborne catastrophically cut all those years ago? That would mean, first, that work would pay properly within UC, which the Lib Dems agree with—even Labour did years ago, when I was in coalition. Most importantly, it would mean that people earning under £15,000 a year, who were shockingly ignored by this Government in the Budget on Monday, would get some of the tax cut that would be part of the larger work allowance. I believe this House would support that. If the Government do not do that, the Lib Dems would certainly be voting against them on this. So I say to the Chancellor and to the Conservative party: fully restore the work allowance to what it originally was by not giving the extra £600 or £700 a year to the highest paid in this country. That is the right thing to do and I urge the Chancellor to listen.

Govia Thameslink/Rail Electrification

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

Obviously, no staff in GTR or any other train operating company should accept, or should expect to suffer, abuse of any sort from passengers in these circumstances. As the hon. Gentleman knows, a hard review of GTR’s performance is now under way, and all options will be on the table following that review.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Since the timetable changes, travelling on Southern from Eastbourne and Hampden Park has been horrific for my constituents. I was told this morning that a journey that should have taken an hour and a half had taken three and a half hours. The Minister has talked about substantial additional compensation for people travelling on Northern. May I urge him also to make a commitment to those long-standing passengers on Southern?

Grenfell Update

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman asks a wider question about council houses and support for council house building, and I agree with his point. Ambitious local authorities want to build more council houses to help their local communities to get support. That is why I am pleased that, at the last Budget, the Chancellor announced additional support.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s important statement. According to the Metropolitan police, the Grenfell fire was, as we all know, caused by a faulty electrical appliance. Rates for electrical product recalls currently sit at around only 20%, leaving millions of potentially dangerous appliances in homes nationwide. What are the Government doing to implement product recall as a matter of urgency?

[Sajid Javid]

Ever since this terrible tragedy, my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary has been looking at this issue. The hon. Gentleman will know that certain criteria have to be in place before a product recall can happen, and I know that, in the light of this tragedy, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is looking at this again.

Local Authority Financial Sustainability: NAO Report

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the National Audit Office report on the financial sustainability of local authorities, HC 834.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans. I will start by doing something very simple that we do not do enough in this place, or in the political world more broadly: saying thank you. I want to say thank you to our councillors, mayors and local government staff. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] As a former councillor, I know that local government holds our communities and services together and makes our towns and cities what they are. Our local government leaders take decisions and hold responsibility for budgets that directly affect their constituents just as much as, if not more than, many Members of Parliament. They deserve more recognition and respect for that than they are sometimes given. However, since 2010 their very challenging job has become almost impossible. The National Audit Office report makes it clear that funding has been cut by nearly 50%.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. The Times, which is not known for its hyperbole, stated recently in an editorial:

“All politics is local, and local government is going bust”.

Does he agree that the Government are culpable and must take responsibility for their funding decisions, and that it is down to them to stop local government going bust?

[Mike Amesbury]

I do. As a result of that 50% cut, services have been drastically reduced. Pressures and demands are increasing, but the Government have failed year after year to provide councils with fair and sufficient funding.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Stephen Lloyd Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for sponsoring the debate. It is a pleasure for me to co-sponsor it. This is the fifth or sixth time I have co-sponsored a debate on this important day. When I was first a Member of Parliament, I was proud to do so, and now that I am back in the House, I am even more delighted.

Let me also congratulate the indomitable Karen Pollock, who is in the public Gallery and whom I have known for many years. Without her, I do not believe that this day, and the impact and reach that it has across the country, would be as strong. She really does deserve an enormous amount of credit.

The theme of Holocaust Memorial Day this year is the power of words. I was reminded of that when I read some words only earlier this morning from Anne Frank, that remarkable young girl who wrote so beautifully in Amsterdam all those years ago. She wrote:

“When I write I can shake off all my cares; my sorrow disappears; my spirits are revived.”

That is such a powerful set of words for such a dreadful time by a remarkable young woman.

That comment and the power of words brings me to my own constituent. Eastbourne does not have a large Jewish community; in fact, it is fairly minuscule—probably only 40 or 50. Like everyone else in the Chamber and many across the country, however, I am here because we know that what happened was so wicked—as was what has happened so many times since in the different genocides from Rwanda to Cambodia and the rest—that if we do not emphasise and talk about this day, there is the constant danger that it will happen again. Indeed, it is depressing that when I last spoke on this day in the House the Yazidis were perfectly safe in Iraq and Syria. Two years later, they have almost been destroyed as a people. I therefore profoundly believe that the commemoration and remembrance on this day must never stop.

I have an extraordinary constituent in the small Jewish community in Eastbourne called Dorit Oliver-Wolff. She is a survivor, and she recently wrote an autobiography called “From Yellow Star to Pop Star.” She was born in Yugoslavia. When the Nazis invaded, she and her mother moved to Budapest when she was only five or six years old, and they somehow survived through the four or five years of the war from hand to mouth, travelling from place to place, creating new identities. It was when she was in Budapest that she first realised she was Jewish: she was only five years old and a woman spat at her in the street and called her “A stinking Jew.” Can anyone imagine anything more utterly incomprehensible than that to a five-year-old?

Dorit survived and flourished, and moved to Eastbourne 10 or 15 years ago. She is a remarkable woman. I highlight her story because in many ways she emphasises one fundamental strength irrespective of the wickedness of Governments and people: the unfailing goodness and strength of individuals. That was true in the war when so many individuals saved so many Jewish people from Poland to Bulgaria to Albania. They are the reason why I profoundly believe this day is worth remembering and will continually improve human nature.