Occupied Palestinian Territories

Debate between Stephen Timms and Stephen Kinnock

Thursday 24th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I agree entirely. This country has a unique place in history and a unique responsibility, particularly if we trace this back to the Balfour declaration. It is vital that everything this Government say and do honours the commitments in that declaration.

The Foreign Secretary and Ministers also say that the Palestinian side should make a counter-offer. Well, they have: a two-state solution, as already set out in countless UN resolutions and based on 1967 lines. That is the counter-offer. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition had agreed that Israel would begin de jure annexation from 1 July. Thankfully, the Israeli Government have rowed back on that for now, but what we are instead witnessing is more annexation by stealth. Netanyahu announced approval of preliminary plans for 3,500 new housing units in a new settlement in the E1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, thus severing East Jerusalem’s contiguity with the rest of the west bank.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that the developments he is now describing pose a threat to the feasibility of a two-state solution, because there will not be enough left for a viable state in Palestine to be established?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I agree entirely with right hon. Friend. If one looks at the map, one sees it is not really a viable geographical area anymore; it is an archipelago of patches of land that are no longer connected to each other. E1 and E2 would in many ways represent the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution in my view.

Building on E1 is more of a danger to the two-state outcome than the formal annexation of parts of the west bank. It has long been seen by the UK, France and Germany as a red line. Another huge settlement plan of 7,000 units has been approved at Efrat to the south of Bethlehem, often labelled E2. In both cases, the reality is that the Israeli Government hold all the cards, while the Palestinian Authority have limited power and must rely on international solidarity.

Those who take a more sympathetic view of the actions of the Israeli Government will no doubt point to the so-called Abraham accords, which were signed by UAE and Bahrain at the White House on 13 August, and which commit those states to the normalisation of relations with Israel. Yet the reality is that the Abraham accords are simply the formalisation of pre-existing and well-established relations between the signatories. Those states have been working together for years on joint military operations, coups and counter-revolutions. For the Palestinian people, nothing has changed. The reality is the creeping annexation of their land continuing and accelerating.

Actions speak louder than words. The question we must therefore address today is how the British Government can use their position as a leading member of the international community to press the Israeli Government to pull back from creeping annexation and to re-engage in talks on the basis of a viable two-state solution. The problem we face is that the deadlock will continue as long as Israel rejects any deal that includes Jerusalem and does not mean Israel keeps the Jordan valley, rejects a sovereign viable Palestinian state, and will negotiate only on the basis of a plan that annexes occupied territory and includes total security control on any Palestinian entity, including control of all borders. Israel must drop those preconditions. There have already been some attempts by European states to assert their influence. For instance, 11 states, including the UK, Germany and France, joined in a démarche to the Israeli Foreign Ministry on 1 May opposing Netanyahu’s annexation plans. But together the international community must go further.

Statutory Sick Pay and Protection for Workers

Debate between Stephen Timms and Stephen Kinnock

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) mentioned in passing that the Work and Pensions Committee met this morning. We took evidence from five organisations: the Royal National Institute of Blind People, Mind, Scope, Citizens Advice and the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust representing the Disability Benefits Consortium. The main purpose was to take evidence about disability benefit assessments, but of course we took the opportunity to raise some of the current issues that we are discussing in this debate. I thank the members and staff of the Committee, and the witnesses from all those organisations, for being willing to take part in that useful session this morning, despite the current difficult circumstances.

I welcome the announcements that the Government have made. As the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), has recognised, there is going to be a good deal more to do to protect individuals through this very difficult time; that is underlined by the examples from other countries that we have heard today. I very much hope, with others, that those additional announcements will happen very soon because we need them very fast.

I want to raise a couple of issues about universal credit. I put the point to the Chancellor yesterday that somebody who is self-employed and who self-isolates very often will have to forgo their income as a result. The advice is to apply for benefits, but if people apply for universal credit, they do not get any help for the first five weeks other than a loan that has to be repaid. It seems to me that people in that position are not going to be willing to give up their income if all they are going to get is a loan.

In answering my question, the Chancellor correctly said that people can apply for the new contributory employment and support allowance. I welcome the fact that that is now available not only to people who are sick, but to people who are having to self-isolate because others in their household are sick. However, as the Minister will recognise, there are going to be quite a lot of people in that position who do not meet the contribution criteria for ESA because they have not paid 26 weeks’ worth of contributions, having earned above the lower earnings limit, within the last two years. The only opportunity those people will have is to apply for universal credit. However, if they only get a loan, many will feel that they have no alternative but to carry on working—even though they know that they really ought to self-isolate.

The attraction of the proposal made by the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts—and which has been made by Citizens Advice and others—is that these advances should be made as non-repayable grants for the duration of this crisis. That is something that the Department could readily do. I recognise that expecting the Department very quickly to make big changes to its IT systems for supporting universal credit may not be practical, but it could quickly make the advances non-repayable.

I am pleased to see both the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), on the Front Bench. They are very familiar with the Select Committee’s concerns about the five-week delay in universal credit anyway. There is growing evidence—including a striking article published in The Lancet this month—that people are being pushed into clinical depression due to being on universal credit rather than on legacy benefits. The Trussell Trust has found that many more people on universal credit need to go to a food bank compared with those on the predecessor benefits. Looking at what it is about universal credit that is causing those problems, the only big structural issue is the five-week delay. As the Ministers know, the Work and Pensions Committee will shortly begin an inquiry on that particular topic. That is a broader issue but, for the duration of the crisis, there is a powerful case for making the advances non-repayable.

I appreciate that this will not be the case everywhere, but it is the case in constituencies like mine. There are many working families who have leave to remain in the UK but do not yet have indefinite leave to remain. They are on what is called the 10-year pathway to securing indefinite leave, which means that every two and a half years they have to apply again for leave to remain. If they are working, they obtain leave to remain, but—I do not know whether this is universal, but it is certainly the case for a lot of my constituents—the card they receive making it clear they have leave to remain and are permitted to work in the UK also says they have no recourse to public funds. They are not allowed to claim any benefits at all, which in the current circumstance puts them in an extraordinarily difficult position. They are not allowed to claim ESA or universal credit at all. If they are in a position where they should self-isolate in accordance with the Government’s guidance, they will find that they suddenly have no income at all if they self-isolate.

There is a related issue with the habitual residence test, which is often applied, perfectly properly, to make sure people are habitually resident in the UK and are therefore entitled to benefits. I wonder whether there is a case for suspending the test, at least in some circumstances, because we want those who are working to be able to self-isolate when it is important that they do so. If they do not have access to public funds for one of those two reasons, they will find it practically impossible to self-isolate. I hope the Ministers and their Home Office colleagues will look at that.

Citizens Advice has argued that there should be a temporary repayment pause for claimants, which is a strong point in the current crisis. People currently have to repay their universal credit advances, or perhaps their past tax credit overpayments, through their universal credit, so there is a case for suspending those repayments.

The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work said in his opening speech that “Everybody will be supported to do the right thing.” He is right to underline the importance of that but, as things stand, those who do not have recourse to public funds, because they do not meet the requirements of the habitual residence test, will not be supported to do the right thing, and it is very important that they should be.

In his Budget statement, the Chancellor said he is

“temporarily removing the minimum income floor in universal credit.”—[Official Report, 11 March 2020; Vol. 673, c. 280.]

When we came to read the Budget documents, we found that the position, as the Minister set out a few minutes ago, is that the removal applies only to those directly affected by covid-19 or by self-isolation according to Government advice. I think the Government should stick with what the Chancellor of the Exchequer actually said, which is that the minimum income floor will be suspended altogether, because a lot of self-employed people—my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) gave us such an example—will see a big fall in their income because of what is happening in the wider economy, not because they are directly affected, as yet, by covid-19. Universal credit provides an opportunity to increase support where their income from self-employment falls. That could work very well, I think, if the minimum income floor was suspended altogether, as the Chancellor of Exchequer appeared to indicate would be the case in his Budget speech last week. I do hope that that will be looked at again, that the caveats that have been added to that commitment since might be taken away, and that the minimum income floor will be suspended altogether for self-employed people for the duration of this crisis.

I echo the point that was made a few moments ago by the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) about the tax credit disregard. As things stand at the moment, if someone’s income falls by less than £2,500, their tax credits do not increase at all. There is, in the tax credit system, a mechanism that can be used to provide people with help when their income falls, but to get the full benefit of that we would need to remove that £2,500 disregard. I appreciate that that is a matter for the Treasury, rather than for the Department for Work and Pensions, but I hope that it will be done.

Statutory sick pay is a big focus for this debate. The Government consulted last summer on extending statutory sick pay to those who are lower paid—to those who are earning below the current threshold—but the Government have not yet responded to that consultation, which was carried out several months ago. Surely now is the time to act. It was proposed then that statutory sick pay should be paid to people earning less than the lower earnings limit at 80% of their wage. That, I think, was the proposal on which the Government consulted. This is surely the time to fast-track that proposal—to bring it forward and put it in place. I appreciate that it will need legislation to do that, but it is very important that it is done, and I hope that it can be picked up in the legislation that will be published tomorrow.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

On this point about statutory sick pay, there are two additional points on which the Government really do need to act. One is that this should be done in advance, up front, rather than making businesses reclaim, which is putting massive pressure on them. The other is that it is vital for the self- employed. Businesses in my Aberavon constituency are really under the cosh and they need both of these measures to be included in the rethink on statutory sick pay.