Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Steve Barclay)]

[Stephen Timms]

[Steve Barclay]

The Economy

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments. He knows better than most what a difference our welfare system and, indeed, the Department for Work and Pensions and its phenomenal staff can make on the ground. I know that he will join me in welcoming not only the increase, temporarily, that we have put on universal credit for this year, providing almost £1,000 extra to those who are in receipt of it, but our further increases in and generosity with the local housing allowance and the provision of hardship funds to those struggling to pay their council tax bills, distributed through local authorities. In some areas, that represents a significant amount of support for the most vulnerable in our society—a point that was borne out in the distribution analysis that we published this summer, which showed that the most vulnerable in our society had benefited the most from our support.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

On universal credit, the Chancellor rightly, at the start of the pandemic, suspended the minimum income floor in universal credit to avoid an unnecessary barrier to new self-employment. Given his welcome announcements today, will he extend the duration of that suspension beyond the middle of November, when it is currently due to end?

[Rishi Sunak]

Decisions on the exact operation of our welfare system are for the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, but I will happily reflect on the point that the right hon. Gentleman makes. He is right that that has made a significant difference in the early stage of this crisis, but as we go through it, we will make sure that we adjust and tailor our support to match the needs of the moment.

Public Health England Review: Covid-19 Disparities

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the concerns that we have been hearing anecdotally. This is something that needs to be handled sensitively, because on the one hand, we know that there are areas that need to be addressed, but on the other hand, I do not want anyone to think that we are criticising NHS workers for not looking after their own. It is something that needs to be handled absolutely sensitively, but we are on top of it. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree with the report that there are additional barriers that make it harder for BAME communities to access key services? In particular, will she press her colleagues to suspend the “no recourse to public funds” restriction, which has prevented thousands of hard-working BAME families, many with children born in the UK, from claiming universal credit during this crisis?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I refer the right hon. Gentleman to the answer that I gave earlier. I know that a lot of people are concerned about this issue, and we have taken extensive action to support those with no recourse to public funds. We understand that there may be difficulties for failed asylum seekers who cannot return home, and we are continuing to provide free accommodation to those who would otherwise be destitute. That is just another example of how the Government are looking at these things intensely. We have not forgotten anyone.

Covid-19

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab) [V]]

Representing, as I do, the borough with the highest age-adjusted covid-19 mortality rate in the country, I will focus on just one point, which is families with leave to remain in the UK but no recourse to public funds. They are law-abiding, hard-working families. They are carers, cooks, cleaners and cab drivers in modestly paid but important roles. They have permission to work and are complying with the rules, but for many of them, as for others, their work stopped when the crisis began.

Many are not eligible for the job retention or self-employment schemes. Others in that position can claim universal credit, but those with no recourse to public funds are not allowed to obtain an income in that way. Many have children who were born in the UK. Some have children who are UK nationals. Being unable to claim any benefits may be manageable when work is available, but in the current circumstances, it is not.

The Home Office, inexplicably, will not say how many people we are talking about, but last week, drawing on the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, the Children’s Society reported that there are more than 1 million people with leave to remain but no recourse to public funds, including at least 100,000 children. It has been suggested that the £500 million emergency fund for local authorities can help those families, but not according to the ministerial guidance for the fund. The guidance states that the fund is to increase council tax support, which families with no recourse to public funds cannot apply for, and that any left over can go towards local welfare assistance schemes that some councils run. A written answer from the Home Office last week confirmed that people with no recourse to public funds are ineligible for help from local welfare assistance schemes. Families with children can apply for help under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 from their council, but it is hard to find and can be very modest indeed. The Children’s Society report quotes one council that pays £3.10 per person per day. In households without children, even that is not available. Some who should self-isolate because they have symptoms have no choice but to work and endanger others, because they cannot otherwise get any income at all.

It cannot be right to deny any possibility of an income to people who have broken no rules and whose contribution we have all benefited from for years. I plead with Ministers to suspend the no recourse to public funds condition for families for the duration of this crisis. The High Court, as it happens, struck it down in an important case last week. Those arguments will continue, but for the duration of this crisis, on moral and on public health grounds, no recourse to public funds must be suspended.

Financial and Social Emergency Support Package

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

It is not in my power to say yes to that, I am afraid, but the request has been noted and, of course, I will pass it on.

I think I can speak for everyone in this House in wanting to put on record my thanks to all those across Government, in Parliament and in our public services who have made this astonishingly fast speed of reaction possible. The result has been an unparalleled package of measures that we have brought forward with great rapidity and resolve, and I pay tribute to them for that. I reassure the House that Ministers and officials continue to work day and night to consider how best to provide further support, including for the self-employed, which I will touch on later.

Ultimately, however, success in defeating this virus rests not with Ministers and officials in Whitehall, but on the actions of millions of individual people throughout the country. Our common aim must be to reduce the rate of infection and prevent the national health service from becoming overwhelmed. In that way, our doctors and nurses, and all those who support them, can focus on helping those in greatest need. Every man, woman and child can be a lifesaver by staying at home, only venturing out when strictly necessary for food, medicine and essential exercise, and even then staying at least two metres away from other people.

The Government are in no doubt of the scale of the challenge. The action that we must take collectively represents a profound, but temporary change to our way of life in this country. Indeed, it runs counter to human nature.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Does the Minister recognise that, in order to be able to stay at home in the way he is describing, people need financial support? Will he respond to the shadow Home Secretary’s earlier point that large numbers of people working legally in the UK have no recourse to public funds? At the moment, there is no support available to enable them to self-isolate in the way he is rightly advocating.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the question. Of course, if people are falling through the social safety net as it presently exists, we will stand ready to address that and support them. He will recall that when the Prime Minister was Mayor of London he called for an amnesty on illegal immigrants and others, so he has a wide and capacious interest in that area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am pleased to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I begin my echoing his appeal for support for local charities and community organisations, on which we are going to be very dependent over the next few weeks, and which we need to survive the challenges they face with loss of funding, bookings and so on in the period ahead.

I warmly welcome the employment support package announced by the Government last week, including the commitment to pay up to 80% of the wage costs of those employees who are furloughed. I welcome the fact that it came forward quickly, just one week after the Budget. A huge package was put together in a very short period and I congratulate those responsible for it. I must say that, over the following week, the package has stood up quite well to the scrutiny to which it has been subject. The Government and those involved can take credit for that.

Like others, I think it is a shame that we still do not know what is going to be done for self-employed people. It is particularly regrettable that we are not going to know before the House rises, so Members are not going to be able to scrutinise that package when it is unveiled. Inevitably, we need to talk about the position that self-employed people are going to find themselves in over the next few weeks. Whatever is in that package tomorrow or the following day—I have no idea what is going to be in it—it is clear that universal credit is going to have to carry a fair amount of strain in supporting people through the period ahead.

I therefore want to speak about universal credit, picking up on some of the points made by the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), who was at the Select Committee on Work and Pensions session that I chaired this morning. He has referred to the very large number of people who have applied for universal credit—470,000 since Tuesday of last week, and 105,000 yesterday—and it is a good thing that, so far, the systems have not collapsed. We can be thankful for that. Like others, I have seen screenshots telling people that they are in a queue—due to the incredible volume of new users, there is a queue—and:

“Number of users in queue ahead of you: 79129. Your estimated wait time is: more than an hour.”

Indeed, it is quite a lot more than an hour.

It is right, however, to pay tribute to all those in the Department for Work and Pensions who are working very hard to deliver much-needed urgent support over this period. I am grateful to the DWP’s permanent secretary for offering this morning to give the Select Committee weekly updates on how things are going. It is clearly very important that, once people apply for universal credit, they get the help to which they are entitled quickly, because people are going to need urgent help, including those self-employed constituents we have heard about whose businesses disappeared last week. They need help urgently.

[Chi Onwurah]

My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly important point about universal credit.   The system of universal credit has been in design for years and was supposedly designed, so we were told, to be agile, adaptable and scalable. Is this not absolute confirmation that the system cannot be effectively scaled? Does he agree that universal credit needs to be scrapped and a system put in place that actually works?

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We took evidence this morning on that very point—the need to improve universal credit and change some of the problems. Unfortunately we were told that, because of the IT systems, there is very little that can be done in the short term.

For example, one thing the Government have agreed to do is reduce the maximum deduction from people’s standard payment of universal credit. There are deductions for people to pay back the advance they receive up front and for other reasons. There is a case for suspending those deductions for the time being, but that is not the Government’s intention at the moment. They have agreed that the maximum deduction will be reduced from 30% of the standard amount to 25%, but they tell us that they cannot do that until October 2021 because of the problems with the IT system.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) for reminding the House that, years ago, we were all told that this was going to be done in agile, precisely in order that changes could be made quickly. I am afraid that those promises have not been fulfilled. We were assured time after time that all the problems of the old DWP systems would be solved by adopting the agile approach. Sadly, that does not seem to be the case. Despite that, I am going to press this afternoon, as I and the Committee did this morning, for changes to universal credit. A way has to be found to overcome some of the problems and to get these things done much more quickly than is suggested will be the case.

I very much welcome the fact that the headline rate of universal credit and working tax credit has been increased, although only for a year. Given the long freeze in the rates of benefits, there is a case for making that increase permanent rather than temporary. That is something we will no doubt come back to in the months ahead.

When it comes to universal credit providing much needed support to the self-employed, people who come off zero-hours contracts and freelancers, there are some serious problems with the way it works at the moment. The Trussell Trust has found that people on universal credit are two and a half times more likely to need a food bank than people on legacy benefits, such as jobseeker’s allowance.

There is a remarkable article in this month’s issue of The Lancet Public Health about universal credit, which finds that

“an additional 63674…unemployed people will have experienced levels of psychological distress that are clinically significant due to the introduction of Universal Credit”.

It goes on to estimate that more than a third of those people

“might reach the diagnostic threshold for depression.”

A little further on, the article states:

“When the policy change was introduced, the prevalence of psychological distress started to increase among those eligible for Universal Credit; however, the prevalence remained constant for people not affected by the change”.

Lastly, the article states:

“We also tested if there was an increase in the number of participants transitioning from unemployment into work in the intervention group after the introduction of Universal Credit relative to the comparison group; the reform had no effect on employment”.

There are serious problems with the way universal credit is working, and we are now forcing—understandably—hundreds of thousands of additional people on to this benefit. What is the problem? Why does it cause so much more difficulty for people than jobseeker’s allowance and other past benefits? A big part of the answer is the fact that people have to wait five weeks after applying to receive their first regular benefit payment. That is inevitably pushing people into debt with the Department for Work and Pensions. A lot of people are then choosing to say, “In that case, I’d better not pay my rent for a bit,” and they are getting into rent arrears. The National Housing Federation is reporting that people on universal credit are significantly more likely to be behind with their rent than people on jobseeker’s allowance, both in the past and currently. This is a problem that will affect very large numbers of those who are now applying for universal credit.

It seems to me that it cannot be a good idea—given the boldness and generosity and the welcome characteristics of the package for employees that was introduced last week— to force self-employed people, by contrast, on to an arrangement where they do not get a substantive payment for five weeks.

[Mr Dhesi]

Does my right hon. Friend not agree that many of the individuals on universal credit and jobseeker’s allowance are having to go to food banks, and at the very time that we need support for food banks, many food banks are unfortunately having to close because of the age demographic of the volunteers, who are normally a lot more mature? That is why, within this package, we need more support for food banks and the charitable sector.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I very much agree about the need for more support for charitable organisations. I spoke yesterday to the chief executive of the Trussell Trust, who told me that of its 1,250 food banks, two have closed so far. One of them is reopening and some other arrangement is being put in place for the other one instead. It is a remarkable tribute to exactly the people that my hon. Friend refers to, who are running those food banks, that despite the potential risks to them, they are carrying on. The whole House will be grateful to them for their extraordinary effort.

[Catherine West]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. One of the constituency inquiries coming into inboxes at the moment is about the availability of certain food products to elderly people. Even those who do not need to go to a food bank but who are trying to get food from supermarkets find that the things that they want are not being fulfilled on their lists. Therefore, that is creating a situation of food insecurity, whether people have the money or are on universal credit. In general, the food supply is a really tricky situation, which the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs could look into.

[Stephen Timms]

That is one of quite a number of anxieties that are around at present.

What should happen with universal credit is that the advances that are payable to people up front—about a quarter of those who have been applying over the last few days have applied for an advance—should be converted to grants for the duration of the current crisis. We were told this morning that it is very difficult to change the IT so that the advances are not automatically clawed back from subsequent payments, but I really cannot believe, even with this extraordinary IT system that appears to be in place, that that is beyond the wit of those who are running it to manage. It is a very simple thing: just do not claw back the advances from subsequent payments, because otherwise, people will ask how the Government can treat self-employed people so badly by comparison with the package for employees.

I also think that the current savings limit for eligibility for universal credit needs to be lifted, if it is going to do the job of supporting self-employed people. At the moment, if someone has more than £16,000 in savings, they get nothing at all from universal credit. If someone has more than £6,000 in savings, the amount that they get in universal credit starts to be reduced. If we are going to support adequately self-employed people over the next few months, that needs to change.

I hope as well that during this crisis, there will be a long and careful look at the rules around sanctions for universal credit. People will not be required to go into jobcentres for the time being, which is welcome—I am glad that that has been announced—but I hope the opportunity is taken to ensure that sanctions are not applied, because people will not be required to look for work in the normal way. As for the handling of deductions for past debts—tax credit overpayments and that kind of thing—I hope that there will be some easements in the application of terms.

I very much welcome the increase in the local housing allowance, which is back up to the 30th percentile. I hope that it will stay at that level so that it can adequately support rent in the future. However, there is a problem in London of the interaction between that new higher level of the local housing allowance and the separate housing support cap, which means that many renters in London will not be able to benefit from the increase in the local housing allowance. I hope that the cap will be addressed. I was disappointed this morning to hear that there will not be any change in the overall benefit cap level, and I think that that may well need to be looked at again as things develop over the next few months.

My final point has been referred to already a number of times in this debate. There is a large group of people in my constituency, and in many others, who are hard-working, law abiding, and permitted to work in the UK, but they do not have indefinite leave to remain and they do not have recourse to public funds. That means that if they have to stop working because they have to self-isolate, or because their business has collapsed, they will get no help at all as things stand. We do need people in that position to be able to support themselves, because, otherwise, they will have no alternative but to carry on working at risk to themselves and to wider public health. I want to end with a plea that the Government should, at least temporarily, lift the restriction of no recourse to public funds to those who have leave to remain but not yet indefinite leave to remain.

Coronavirus: Employment Support

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

My hon. and gallant Friend is right to raise that. We have changed the rules on access to employment support allowance and sick pay. It will depend on individual circumstances. We have also released funds to local authorities for hardship relief. Further advice on that will be given tomorrow by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I very much agree with the proposals just made by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). It is particularly important that the advances paid to people claiming universal credit become non-repayable for those affected by the crisis. The Minister mentioned the suspension of the minimum income floor for self-employed people—a welcome announcement made by the Chancellor in the Budget—but it appears to relate only to people who are directly affected by covid-19, whereas many of those suffering at the moment are not themselves ill but are affected by the wider changes in the economy. Will the Economic Secretary confirm that the lifting of the minimum income floor will apply also to those who are not directly affected? Will we know the details of the employment support package—I am glad the Government are working on that—before this weekend?

[John Glen]

The right hon. Gentleman makes some specific points essentially about the consequential effects on different groups of employees who are affected. I cannot comment on the details of that. As for the timing of the employment support announcement, we are working on it as quickly as we can. There is no timetable or specific date because we have got to get it right. We are working as urgently as possible, but I cannot tell him the precise moment at this point.

Economic Update

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is always a champion of his commuting constituents. I am happy to have that conversation with the Transport Secretary to see what we can do to encourage companies—whether mortgage companies or others—to help people through this difficult time.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

For somebody who is self-employed, self-isolation will often mean giving up their income. The advice is to claim benefit, but all someone gets with universal credit in the first five weeks, as has been pointed out, is a loan. People are not going to give up their incomes for that. Will the Chancellor replace those advances with non-repayable grants for those who lose their income because of this crisis?

[Rishi Sunak]

Depending on the particular circumstances of the person who is self-employed, they may well qualify for ESA, which is also available from day one now, rather than day eight.

HMRC Impact Analysis: Customs

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady has managed to pull off the trick of saying almost exactly what I said, but in slightly fewer words. As I pointed out, 150,000 businesses registered for VAT, and a further 100,000 that are not registered for VAT, may be affected. That makes 250,000, which is not a million miles away from the 245,000 that she described. If she looks at the impact assessment, she will see that the declaration cost will vary from between £15 for an export declaration for fast parcel operators, to £56 for traders operating below the VAT threshold and outsourcing their declarations, so there is a range of impacts. This was scouted, as she will know, in previous discussions with HMRC officials and in past impact assessments.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

What has become of the Tory party? If the Minister really believes that a £15 billion additional burden on business is acceptable, can he tell us how large a burden would be unacceptable?

[Jesse Norman]

I would have expected the right hon. Gentleman, as a man of great assiduity who is widely respected across the House, to differentiate between the £7.5 billion that we are talking about and the overall impact on the EU as well as the UK of £15 billion, which is one of the things that will bring both sides together into what we hope would be, in these extreme circumstances, a deal. Of course, no impact on business is something that we want. That is why we are pressing the House for a deal, and I hope he will support us in doing that.

Customs Safety and Security Procedures (EU Exit) (No. 2) Regulations 2019

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 General Committees

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I have a question for the Minister that builds on those that have been asked. I understand that safety and security information will be required on all goods transiting between the UK and the European Union. That has not been necessary before; it is onerous, difficult and complex, and both entry summary and exit summary declarations would normally be required. I can well see the sense of the UK authorities deciding that they do not want those declarations for the first 12 months, or six months in some cases.

What I do not think the Minister has told us is whether the EU side will still require those declarations. When there is an entry declaration required of the EU, presumably the EU would require an exit summary declaration. Similarly, when the UK would require an exit summary declaration, the EU would require an entry summary declaration. It is a good thing that, at least for a period, the UK will not require all those difficult and costly declarations, but can the Minister tell us whether the EU will issue a similar waiver for the first 12 months, or will all that information still have to be compiled in order to satisfy the needs of the EU authorities, even if HMRC will not require it? That strikes me as yet another very damaging burden that is being imposed on UK firms—perhaps not for the first 12 months but certainly thereafter—if we leave the EU without a deal. Under these proposals, in a year, that damaging burden will be imposed anyway. That strikes me as another good reason why Parliament has determined that if we do not have a deal by the end of this month, the Government need to apply to the EU for an extension—precisely so we do not have to impose those costly and difficult burdens on UK firms.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I think the hon. Gentleman is making my point for me. The instrument introduces a 12-month transitional period until 1 November 2020, during which there is no requirement for entry summary declarations for goods imported from territories where the UK does not currently require them. That is precisely in order to allow people to adopt guidance as necessary.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for explaining that the UK authority is not going to require these declarations, but what about the EU side? Will the EU still require them? He makes the point that businesses need 12 months to prepare. Are they going to be ready to meet the EU’s requirements, which obviously are not covered by the SI?

[Jesse Norman]

That is true. The right hon. Gentleman raises the question he asked in his speech, so let me take that point out of order. The EU has indicated that it will still require declarations, and of course declarations are required already on goods imported from outside the EU. That structure is not changed as regards imports; as regards exports, exporters will need to adjust.

[Stephen Timms]

I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, but if the information and declarations are still required by the EU side, what is the benefit in not requiring them on the UK side?

[Jesse Norman]

The benefit is that we require, for imports, declarations of safety and security that are reasonably full and cover a whole variety of different elements, and we will need to assure ourselves in due course, if and when we introduce declarations following a no-deal scenario, that that data is being provided. Of course, not to have to provide that, and to give oneself the opportunity to put in arrangements that allow it, is a considerable benefit.

[Stephen Timms]

I think the Minister is telling us that businesses need 12 months to prepare for providing these declarations, but he is also telling us that, from day one of a no-deal Brexit, the EU is going to require those declarations from our businesses. How are they expected to cope with that?

[Jesse Norman]

It has always been built into the situation that we cannot control what EU countries may insist or demand. There have been plenty of other areas in which the EU has sought to give reliefs or allow easements for the first period. It has chosen not to do so in this case, but that does not bear on the question of what we require as a matter of import security declarations from our own hauliers and others. That is what the statutory instrument seeks to address.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North asked about the timing and the process by which the statutory instrument was laid before Parliament. As she will be aware, it was laid on 4 September, which was in plenty of time before 31 October. It should be understood that it was thought at that point that Parliament was going to be prorogued, and that there would have been time to assess the instrument after that, but the timing reflects the reality.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North asked how the SI relates to the earlier SI introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon. Being in front of him is like being a young priest being pushed up for ordination with the Pope sitting behind him in St Peter’s. It is a great privilege and honour to have him behind me. He will know better than anyone that the SI replaces the earlier one and will come into effect from day one if we have a no-deal scenario.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North raises an important question about whether too much power has been given to HMRC. She will know that, more widely, I have asked HMRC, alongside Her Majesty’s Treasury, to conduct a serious investigation into the balance of its powers, and to make recommendations on how those can be adjusted. In this case, the power is relatively limited. To remind the Committee, it is a discretionary power, lasting for a year, that allows businesses to submit safety and security declarations for certain exports after the goods have left the UK. It is subject to HMRC’s discretion, but it is required to be exercised according to a public notice.

The broad point is that this is designed to be an intervention that allows HMRC discretion to give additional easements. HMRC does not believe that it needs to do that at the moment; it wishes to have the power to make those easements, conceivably for a 12-month period. In order to do that, it will have to consult Ministers and publish a public notice. It would be a matter of intense public interest if there was any suggestion that those easements picked out a particular subsection in a discriminatory or unfair way, so there are implicit constraints, both of time and of public pressure, on how those powers can be exercised.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Simon Clarke]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is a tireless champion of the motor industry, which we all take very seriously. The Government have made a commitment to delivering net zero emissions by mid-century; that is hugely important and has cross-party support across the House. We will not be making any precipitate moves that would concern him without proper consultation fully across Government about the ramifications of any change in that date.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

T7. In June, HMRC said that at least 20% of the 10,000 trucks reaching Dover on day one of a no-deal Brexit will not comply with French customs, leading to very long delays and causing shortages of fresh food and medicines. How many non-compliant trucks does HMRC currently project at Dover on day one?

[Jesse Norman]

I do not have the number to hand, but I would be glad to write to the right hon. Gentleman with it.