Covid-19: BAME Communities

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) on securing this debate on how she opened it.

I want to focus on one point. The Public Health England review says:

“People of BAME groups are also more likely than people of white British ethnicity to be born abroad, which means they may face additional barriers in accessing services”.

I want to highlight one barrier in particular, and that is the “no recourse to public funds” restrictions on leave to remain, which has already been touched on this debate. We are talking about families who have leave to remain in the UK, who are law-abiding and hard-working, often with children born in the UK and who may well be British nationals and have British passports. Typically, they are on a 10-year route to securing indefinite leave to remain, and in the meantime they have to apply four times, getting two and a half years to remain each time. Throughout that 10-year period, when they are working here, typically very hard, doing exactly the kinds of jobs we have been talking about, they have no recourse to public funds.

That is a formidable barrier that those people face. It is exactly the kind of barrier that the Public Health England report refers to. I asked the Prime Minister yesterday about this, and I asked him about it at the Liaison Committee three weeks ago. His answer then was that hard-working families in that position should have help of one kind or another. I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, he did not say that when I asked him about it yesterday, but it is what he said to me at the Liaison Committee, and he was right on that occasion. The problem is that those families are not getting that help.

It comes as a shock to a lot of people to learn that the parents of children who have been born in the UK and might well be British nationals cannot claim child benefit for them, because no recourse to public funds excludes that. The families cannot apply for universal credit either, or access the safety net that so many people have had to depend on during this crisis—2 million additional people have been claiming universal credit since the beginning of the crisis. That safety net is not there for people with no recourse to public funds. That has created a very serious problem of destitution, a huge increase in food bank demand in many parts of the country and, in my area, the return of something I never thought we would see again: soup kitchens, where people are handing out free cooked food just to keep others alive.

[Meg Hillier]

My right hon. Friend raises a very important point, and a very pertinent point in our London constituencies particularly. No recourse to public funds means no housing benefit, and it is impossible pretty much to rent privately on a low wage, or even quite a good wage, in my constituency. Does he agree that that underlines how this policy is now out of date?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms]

I do agree, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point.

How many people are there in this situation? The Home Office does not know to how many people it has given the status and refuses to answer even the most basic questions on this subject.

Last month, I asked the Home Office a written parliamentary question: how many people were given leave to remain with no recourse to public funds in 2019? I received the reply on 20 May:

“The information you have requested is not assured to the standard required by ONS for publication and as it would be too costly to do so, we are unable to provide it”—

in other words, “We’re not going to bother answering the question.” I have asked the UK Statistics Authority what it makes of that answer and the attempt to hide behind the Office for National Statistics. I am looking forward to receiving the chair’s reply, which will arrive, I believe, quite shortly. Fortunately, the Children’s Society has made an estimate, drawing on the work of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. Its estimate is that at least 1 million people in the UK have leave to remain, but no recourse to public funds, including over 100,000 children.

I think most people in this situation are overseas students who have leave to remain, leave to study, but no recourse to public funds. I must raise the question: is it really right that we want to completely abandon those who—in many cases, at great sacrifice to themselves and their families—have come to the UK to study? They have been supporting themselves through working and their work has stopped. They have absolutely nothing, and they are depending on the soup kitchens I have referred to.

There is a form on gov.uk, which appeared on 3 April, allowing people to apply to be exempted from no recourse to public funds. The Home Office refuses to answer questions about how many people have applied, how long it is taking it to answer those applications and what proportion of the applications are successful, but from the experience of my constituents, it seems to be taking between two months and two and a half months to respond to applications to be exempted from no recourse to public funds. If someone is destitute, they cannot be expected to wait for a couple of months until a struggling Government Department gets around to deciding whether they might be able to get some help. I have had one person in touch with me who has been waiting since the middle of February for an answer.

As we have already been reminded by my hon. Friends, some people have had to carry on working during this crisis who should not have done for their own sake and for the sake of wider public health, but they have had no alternative because it has been the only way they have been able to achieve any sort of income. What would any Member of this House have done in that circumstance, with no money at all?

Finally, I want to pay tribute to organisations in my constituency that have been helping, including the Bonny Downs Baptist church and the Bonny Downs Community Association, a long-standing food bank that has had a massive increase in demand; the Masjid Ibrahim mosque; the Malayalee Association of the UK, representing people from south India; the London Tamil Sangam; and my friend and colleague Councillor Lakmini Shah, who has been supporting—single-handedly, I think—several dozen families in this position. The no recourse to public funds restriction must be suspended for the duration of this crisis.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)]

My hon. Friend has been absolutely passionate about securing the best possible outcome for his constituents. As he knows, the Edenbridge War Memorial Hospital is held by NHS Property Services on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. Local NHS bodies in Kent are considering the future of services in the Sevenoaks area, including their nature and possible funding. I am sure that my hon. Friend will recognise that I cannot intervene directly, but I would be happy to meet him to discuss this further.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

T9. The Central and East London breast screening service was performing well until last April, when it was transferred from Barts Health NHS Trust to the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, even though the Royal Free and did not have enough staff. The number of women invited plummeted from 3,000 a month to 1,000 a month. Why was that transfer allowed to go ahead, given the clear warnings about what the consequences would be? Who is responsible for this failure?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)]

The award of the contract for the Central and East London screening service to the Royal Free was approved by both NHS England’s London region and NHS England’s commercial executive group. An agreed recovery plan was put into place to address the various issues. While the service did plummet to 1,100 in April 2018, it is currently inviting 3,000 women per month, which has been the normal monthly invitation rate for the service for the past three years. Women are currently being offered appointments in line with the agreed recovery plan and with the national breast screening standard, with 90% or more being invited within 36 months of their previous screening by October 2019.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

There are good plans in place for getting Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and the Alex, specifically, out of special measures. A package of support is in place to enable the trust to improve its quality of care. Delivery of the acute service redesign plan is a key driver to sustaining services in the medium term and £29.6 million of STP funding has been agreed to support that.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

At the weekend, NHS England, as my colleagues have pointed out, gave up on the key A&E waiting time target. Does the Minister agree that it is very important that when people go to A&E they do not have to wait longer than four hours, as more than 2.5 million did last year? Whose responsibility is this delivery failure?

[Mr Hunt]

I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but he is saying something that is a big exaggeration. What the NHS has committed to is that by the end of the year coming up more than half of the trusts in the country will meet the A&E target and that we will go back to meeting it across the whole country in the following year. So we are absolutely committed to this target. We recognise there are real pressures, which is why it is going to take time to get back to it, but we will get there.

Agenda for Change: NHS Pay Restraint

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Evans. I also thank the SNP spokesperson. I had not intended to speak but will grab this opportunity because it is an incredibly important debate.

First, I pay tribute to the Royal College of Nursing and the Nursing Times, which have captured the voices of nurses all over the country. We heard some of those voices in the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), and I think they speak for the vast majority of those in the nursing profession.

We meet at a time when the NHS is under unprecedented strain—certainly in recent times. Workforce morale is at the heart of the quality and sustainability of NHS services. What is often forgotten and missed when we debate this subject is that the vast majority of nurses in the NHS—nearly all, actually—work beyond their contracted hours.

I will never forget being at a meeting in Bristol with a nurse from the Bristol Royal infirmary. It was when the Government were looking at introducing regional pay, which the RCN led a campaign against. At the time, the nurse was being presented with a contract and asked whether she was prepared to vary her Agenda for Change conditions by moving from a 37-hour working week to a 39-hour one—it may have been 39 to 41 hours, but it was an increase. I asked her, “What did you do?”, and she said, “Well, I signed it straight away.” I asked why, and she said, “Because I’m currently doing a 45-hour working week, but they don’t know that.” In many ways, that illustrates the point: management do not know the value of what they get from the nursing profession.

That anecdote tells the story about the job. It is more than a job to people. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North said, people give all of themselves to this job, but they have limits. When they feel as though those above them do not understand the commitment and the huge contribution they make to the NHS, and when they feel taken for granted, the good will and morale start to dry up. That is when the Government are in danger of achieving a false economy. The price of holding down nurses’ pay in the way that has been done over the past six years is, in the end, nurses not feeling able to go above and beyond as they normally willingly do.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I agree with the points that my right hon. Friend is making. The RCN has told us that the pay of a significant group of nurses has fallen in real terms by 14% over the period he refers to. Does he agree that that is a pretty startling statistic?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said that this is a pay cut. We should not call it a pay freeze because it is, in fact, a pay cut. The Government have manipulated the figures in this area. Let us call it what it is: a pay cut that has now been sustained over a number of years.

People are at their limits. They cannot carry on having their pay cut every single year while they face other pressures and rising costs, such as accommodation costs, without there being a consequence. The consequences will be for their own sense of wellbeing, their own mental health or, indeed, their children’s quality of life. Nurses are now saying, in large numbers, that enough is enough.

Changes to Health Services in London

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

As so often, my hon. Friend speaks wisely. It is very important that in all this we do the right thing for patients. My view on all these big changes is that once we have decided what to do, it should be done as quickly as possible, but within the bounds of what is clinically safe. It is very important that safeguards are in place and I would always follow the advice of local doctors as to the right moment to proceed with an important change in safety.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State commit to doing better against the four-hour A and E waiting target in London in the future? Will he put on the record today his acknowledgement of the value of the contribution being made by those A and E units—too few at the moment—that are doing well against that target at the moment?

[Mr Hunt]

There are a number of hospitals that are doing extremely well, and we are doing everything we can to support those that are in difficulty. I absolutely recognise how hard front-line NHS staff are working: we are working with them in an incredibly detailed way on a hospital-by-hospital basis, not just in London but across the country, to see what additional support we can give to people as we go through a difficult winter. We have already announced £250 million of support for the third of trusts in the greatest difficulty, and we are looking at what other, non-financial means we can use to support other trusts. The search continues, because we recognise how challenging winters are for the NHS under this Government as under previous ones.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

I have just seen a piece of straw flying over, which the hon. Lady attempts to clutch at. [Interruption.] “Clutching at straws”—it is a bit lost on the Opposition, but that is more a sign of their difficulties than ours. The minutes of the meeting with that tobacco company have been published this morning. The reason for the delay—I very much hope the hon. Lady is not suggesting for one moment that my officials have been in any way dishonest—is because unfortunately the tobacco company did not agree the minutes, and there was some to-ing and fro-ing. I really wish she would not subscribe to conspiracy theories where they do not exist.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of the effects on NHS services of changes in local authority spending on adult social care.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

Data on delayed transfer of care suggest that the interface between health and social care has improved since this Government have been in office. In 2012-13, the number of bed days lost because of delays attributable to social care was nearly 50,000 lower than in the previous year.

[Stephen Timms]

In May, the King’s Fund report,“Paying for social care” warned that local authority spending is continuing to fall and that fewer people are getting help. It is my understanding that last month an internal NHS document recognised that pressure on social care budgets meant “more delayed discharges”, increasing the problem in accident and emergency. Therefore, cuts to care budgets are increasing delayed discharges. What will the Minister do to tackle that problem?

[Dr Poulter]

The right hon. Gentleman would have done well to listen to my answer before he read out a pre-prepared question. In 2012-13, the number of bed days lost because of social care delays was 50,000 fewer than the year before. However, he is absolutely right that we need to do more to ensure better integration and better joined-up care between the NHS and social care. That is what this Government are doing, and that is why we have allocated a £3.8 billion fund to do just that in the spending review.

Health and Social Care

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend follows such matters extremely closely and I reassure him that the Government will update the House on that issue very soon.

The Care Bill will take a critical step forward in addressing each of the big questions that I raised, so let us consider how. First is compassionate care. Labour’s target culture led to warped priorities in our NHS and appalling human tragedy. No one disputes the value of targets, and the four-hour target played an important role in improving A and E departments. We do not, however, need targets at any cost, as we saw at Stoke Mandeville, Maidstone and Mid Staffs.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I agree with the Secretary of State about the value of the four-hour target. Is he disappointed, as I am, that that target has so often been missed in major A and E units over the past few months?

[Mr Hunt]

I am pleased that we hit our A and E target in the NHS last year, but disappointed that in Wales, which is controlled by the Labour party, the A and E target has been missed since 2009. Those on the Opposition Front Bench still refuse to condemn that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter). He is right: we have heard a wide variety of views about Europe from the Government Benches in this afternoon’s debate. The most compelling case was the one set out in the first Back-Bench contribution, by the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames). He made a compelling case for the UK to remain in the European Union. He was also right to make the point that what his constituents are really concerned about is the state of the economy.

That is the background to the Queen’s Speech. There is wide anxiety across the country because of our economic difficulties—rising unemployment and falling living standards. Their root is in the global financial crisis that has engulfed us and others, but they have been compounded by the failure of the Government’s economic policy to deliver what we were promised it would. We were told—I remember the Prime Minister telling us this three years ago—that the policy would deliver steady growth and falling unemployment. Instead, we have had no significant growth since, and unemployment has stayed high. It is rising at the moment and is forecast to become higher still later this year. We will get an update on Wednesday, but the key backdrop to the rather thin Queen’s Speech that we are debating over these few days is rising unemployment, falling living standards and the inability of the Government’s economic policy to deliver what we were told it would.

There is also a lot of anxiety about what is happening in the health service. That was clear from a survey of 1,700 nurses, the findings from which were published in the Sunday Mirror yesterday. Fifty-five per cent of them said things had got worse in the NHS since the election, compared with 6.5% who said they had got better. More than half the nurses surveyed said that morale in the national health service was either poor or at rock bottom. Rather startlingly, more than 40% said that there had not been enough staff to provide safe cover on their most recent shift. It is quite difficult to reconcile that description of what is happening in the health service—which tallies with some of the things we have heard in this debate about what is happening in hospitals—with the rather rosy picture that the Secretary of State presented to us at the beginning of the debate.

When this Government were elected, they criticised the health service targets that had been set under Labour, but there is no doubt that some of the targets delivered massive and very welcome improvements. In particular, the target for 98% of accident and emergency patients to be seen within four hours was very valuable. I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State affirm its value this afternoon. Before it was introduced, I regularly saw constituents who had experienced terribly long delays in accident and emergency. It was not unusual to hear from people who had been kept waiting all night, for example, but when the target was introduced the problem was resolved completely, and remarkably quickly.

After the election, this Government weakened the target from 98% to 95%. I am glad that there is still a target in place, but, as I said to the Secretary of State in an intervention earlier, there are growing signs that it is not being hit. The NHS in England has now missed the new, reduced target for major accident and emergency units for 32 weeks running. I hope, as he has reaffirmed the importance of the target today, the right hon. Gentleman will take steps to ensure that it can be delivered rather than be missed.

I want to mention two other parts of the Queen’s Speech. My first point is not a matter for the Ministers on the Front Bench today, although it is likely to be of some interest to them. The Mesothelioma Bill, announced last week, is the culmination of a process begun by the last Government, in which my noble Friend Lord Mackenzie played an important role. The plan was for the insurance industry collectively to compensate the victims of diseases caused by exposure to asbestos during their employment, often many years previously. Problems have arisen when the original employer’s insurance policy cannot be found.

The Bill is starting in the other place. I was struck by a report in The Independent on Sunday—not yesterday, but the week before—that the proposal had been so

“watered down after extensive lobbying from the insurance industry”

that it would help only a fraction of the victims, and that payments would be 30% lower than was standard. The report went on to say:

“Department for Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud met insurers 14 times about asbestos between October 2010 and September 2012. Over the same period, he met victims’ groups twice.”

It also stated that the scheme would apply only to people with mesothelioma and not to the similar number of people affected by other conditions caused by exposure to asbestos, and that one of the victims’ groups had described the Bill as an “insult”. As the Bill goes through the other place and then through this House, I hope that the Government will accept that many of us want to see a fair settlement for asbestos victims, rather than a scheme that simply minimises the costs to insurers. We know what a terrible disease mesothelioma is, but the other asbestos-related conditions are also very troubling.

I also want to comment on the commitment in the Queen’s Speech to ensure that

“it becomes typical for those leaving school to start a traineeship or an apprenticeship, or to go to university.”—[Official Report, 8 May 2013; Vol. 563, c. 3.]

I do not know what that means. I searched through the speech made by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on Friday without finding any illumination of that commitment. Indeed, when my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) responded, he accurately described the proposal as “vague”. It is not at all clear what “typical” means in this context, for example.

I was in Germany with the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), last month. In the jobcentre in the town we were visiting, we were struck by the fact that young people were expected either to be on their way to university or to have an apprenticeship place arranged by the age of 15. For the 20% of youngsters who are not in that position, the jobcentre sorts it out for them. I hope that we can do something similar here.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the debate, but I need to raise a matter of extreme urgency. At the weekend, a constituent of mine, Augustine Umukoro, came to my surgery to consult me about his immigration situation. He handed me a letter and told me that he had had a meeting with representatives of the UK Border Agency, who said that in two weeks they might have to start removal proceedings, for which they would visit him and his family—his wife and their two children—in their home. I therefore dictated a letter to the Home Secretary today, asking her to look into the matter. Within the past hour, I have had a telephone call from Mr Umukoro to say that when he reported to the UK Border Agency office at Dallas Court in Salford, as he does every week, he and his children were taken into custody. His wife was not, as her whereabouts appeared to be unknown. He was taken down to Heathrow, and he is due to be removed from this country at 10 o’clock tonight without any warning and without the Border Agency having fulfilled any of its conditions.

I took the matter up with the office of the Minister for Immigration, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), half an hour ago. His principal private secretary told me that, as far as he knew, the Minister was content for the removal to go ahead. This is not a removal; it is a kidnapping. It is against every aspect of the rule of law in this country, and I am making it public because it is about time that acts such as these were stopped and because, in this particular case, Mr Umukoro should be allowed, through his Member of Parliament, to make representations.

Mental Health

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow]

That intervention rather helpfully moves me on to the point that has been made by several hon. Members about Atos. Although it is not my ministerial responsibility, a number of important points have been made about how it operates in particular cases. I will ensure that those points are taken into account by my ministerial colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions. I will gladly pass them on.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that mental health charities have proposed changes to the mental health descriptors in the work capability assessment for employment and support allowance. There seems to be some delay in implementing those. Will he pick that up in his discussions with his colleagues?

[Paul Burstow]

I will certainly act as the messenger and pass that point on, as the right hon. Gentleman has requested.

Stigma has been referred to in this debate. It is undoubtedly one of the biggest barriers to access to mental health services in this country. The Government are determined to reduce the prejudice and discrimination that surround mental health, but we recognise that we cannot do that on our own. That is why Mind and Rethink Mental Illness have developed a major anti-stigma programme called “Time to Change”. That campaign is working and is delivering significant behavioural change across society. That is why the Government are contributing the substantial amount of £16 million up to April 2015.