Proxy Voting and Presence of Babies in the Chamber and Westminster Hall

Debate between Tim Loughton and Karen Bradley

Thursday 30th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments and her warm welcome for the report. The Committee considered these matters carefully; they are extremely sensitive. Members were not always willing to speak in public about these issues, because a lot of issues on social media and elsewhere made it difficult for them. This report reflects the views of the Committee and the views of the House that were expressed to us. As I have said, I would hope that we could have a debate and a vote on this before the summer recess, so that we could bring in a pilot scheme for proxy voting before the autumn, which we could start running in the autumn to see how it works. I do not think it would affect many Members; a very small number would wish to avail themselves of it. However, for those who would, it is important that they have it in place. The Leader of the House did indicate in his evidence that he was considering the options.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend on the eminently sensible and proportionate recommendations she is making. On the issue of bringing children to the Chamber, we are trying to make ourselves more in contact with the working practices of our constituents and having a “bring your child to work day” in a 365 day a year phenomenon does not seem to be a sensible thing to do. On proxy voting, I very much welcome what is proposed. We have made slow progress, at last getting there for female Members on maternity leave. Are there any measures to look at whether Members with a serious illness preventing them from coming to this place should be allowed to contribute to debates by a television link, as happened during the pandemic? I raise the example of our late colleague Dame Cheryl Gillan, who was able to participate in parliamentary proceedings within weeks of her last day, not physically but by video link, with that being of great value to her and to this Chamber. Could we not, in special circumstances, make that available, so as not to disenfranchise those Members from being able to participate in the debate as well as vote?

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. The issue of whether this was an appropriate workplace to bring children into was raised time and again. Overwhelmingly, the evidence and the views were that people did not think this was a place suitable for children. It is a very confrontational place at times and it can be noisy, although not at the moment, and it was felt that it was not suitable. I must make the point that proxy votes are available to fathers as well as to mothers, and that we recommended in previous reports that there should be equality for male Members who are fathers and eligible for the scheme, in line with the Women and Equalities Committee report and recommendations. We also recommend a decoupling of attendance in the Chamber from the proxy vote. At the moment, if one is on a proxy vote, one is not able to attend the Chamber. We think that that needs to be removed, but we do not want anybody to feel under any pressure to attend the Chamber if they are spending time with their newborn or having treatment for sickness. On his point about virtual participation, there is not, so far as I can tell at the moment, an appetite in this place to reintroduce any form of hybrid proceedings. If and when there is, I am sure the House would want to have its say on that matter.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Tim Loughton and Karen Bradley

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 19th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

It is often said that these are older children aged 14, 15 or 16. I have a 14-year-old, and if my 14-year-old did not have me, I would want to know that they could go to one of my family, be that my brothers or my in-laws. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is right. I have met many of these children in camps in Calais, in Zaatari in Jordan and in some of the less well-run camps in Greece. These are real children, bereft of parents in many cases, with just a link in the UK. Without this amendment—without a replacement for Dublin III—those children have no obvious safe and legal route to get to the UK.

The Minister rightly says that we have been very generous in this country through various other schemes, and I agree. Some 7,400 family reunion visas were issued in the year to March, and there is also the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme and the hugely successful Dubs scheme, under which 480 children have come here. Like everybody, I pay tribute to Saint Alf Dubs for the fantastic work he does for this cause. It was a privilege to go to the United Nations and the Zaatari camp in Jordan with him. Of course, the Dubs scheme is full, and none of those other schemes is currently operating. From 1 January, there will be no effective mandatory family reunion scheme either, and there will be no safe and legal route for these children to come to the UK.

I am tough on the illegal migrant channel crossings. I think many of those people who can afford to pay people smugglers are effectively jumping the queue ahead of those who are in refugee camps, who are going through due process and who are abiding by the rules. If we are going to be tough—and, gosh, we need to be tougher on those routes, which line the pockets of people smugglers—we need to make sure we have alternative safe and legal routes for those genuine vulnerable refugees, particularly children, to whom we have a duty of care and can offer a safe haven in this country.

Of course, this has come at the worst time, as we heard from the Labour Front Bencher, after the fires in Lesbos at the beginning of September, in camps that were already five times over capacity, with over 13,000 people residing in a centre built for 2,757. There are now more than 1,600 unaccompanied children on the Greek islands, many whose basic needs are not being met, and many of these children have chronic illnesses. As of last week, there were more than 300 covid cases on Lesbos alone, with a hospital that has capacity for just 50 people. These are deeply vulnerable children, dangerously exposed to people traffickers and other exploitation.

Some 7% of these children are under the age of 14, yet we have no scheme to deal with them, despite having taken many reunification cases earlier in the year for such children. France has taken 350, Portugal 500, and Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia are taking these children. What are we doing about it, Minister? The Government have said we do not have places for them, but more than 30 local authorities have identified 1,400 places if the Government will make the scheme work and will pay the cost of it.

We need a Dubs 2, and we need a family reunion scheme, regardless of Brexit. We need it. We have a great tradition of saving these children; if we do not have it in this Bill, come 1 January, we will have no safe and legal route for very, very vulnerable children.

Domestic Abuse Bill

Debate between Tim Loughton and Karen Bradley

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), but I am also rather daunted—daunted because I am not a woman, because I am not Welsh and because whatever I say I am fated, along with everybody else, to be in the shadow of the outstanding contribution from the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield). If ever anyone needed evidence that domestic abuse takes on many guises, puts on many faces and can insidiously target anyone in any place, it was her emotional, harrowing and brave contribution.

I agree with everything that has been said, and I very much welcome the Bill. I want to comment on a few things that are not in it, however, rather than on what is. As we have heard, this is not just about changing legislation; it is about changing culture and the way we look at domestic abuse. We must demonise it wherever it rears its ugly head.

I want to concentrate on the impact on children. As we heard from the former Prime Minister, that is often overlooked. When I was Children’s Minister, I was shocked to find that over three quarters of safeguarding cases had domestic violence at their heart. Incredibly, one third of domestic violence cases start during the pregnancy of the woman victim. When women are abused in the home, the impact can traumatise the children. When they are forced to flee, the disruption to the lives of those children, particularly if they are of school age, is immense. Refuges tell us that around half of their residents are children, while 770,000 children live with an adult who has experienced domestic abuse in the previous year, according to the Children’s Commissioner. It is the most prevalent risk affecting children in need.

I was very proud, along with the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), to be part of the “On the Sidelines” report by the London domestic abuse charity Hestia, in collaboration with Pro Bono Economics and the “UK Says No More” campaign. It highlighted that one in four women and one in six men experience domestic abuse in their lifetime, but that the millions of children exposed to it in their homes are too often considered merely witnesses to the abuse, rather than victims themselves. When children are exposed, they can suffer in the short, medium and longer term, and it is also intergenerational, as we have heard in so many cases. Over half of people suffering domestic abuse as an adult experienced it as a child: “Well, it happened to my mum when I was growing up, so inevitably it’s going to happen to me, isn’t it?” That is an extraordinary culture that we absolutely must dispel.

Children need to feature more prominently in the Bill. Domestic abuse is the single most common factor that leads to children requiring support from local authority children’s services—and we know the pressure they are under. I have spent a lot of time on the doorstep with social workers. I spent a week being a social worker in Stockport. I met a fantastic and very experienced domestic violence specialist social worker who was the linchpin of that safeguarding team, a great authority who joined together various agencies. It is, however, a postcode lottery whether that experience is available in local authorities.

We need to embed in local authority delivery domestic abuse specialists able to draw together all the agencies involved to ensure an effective and comprehensive local offer. I welcome the national Domestic Abuse Commissioner, who started two weeks ago, but there is also a case for local domestic abuse commissioners—high-profile figures who can ensure that local authorities are living up to their duties to provide a local service. I believe that can be done only by including in the Bill a statutory duty on funding. By working with this cohort of expert frontline providers, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner could have a stronger role in strengthening planning at local and national levels to ensure that all are protected from abuse. That would help to embed the impact of domestic abuse on children in local safeguarding teams as well.

As an aside, I believe that health visitors have an important role to play, too, as an early warning system of trusted professionals going into houses to meet new parents. I reiterate, therefore, that it is a false economy to have reduced the number of health visitors by 30% since the excellent work the coalition Government did in building up their numbers by more than 4,000 by 2015.

[Karen Bradley]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend. He was an excellent Children’s Minister and speaks with great authority on these matters. I was struck in the briefing document by the cost of domestic abuse and the fact that just a 0.1% decrease in the prevalence of domestic abuse would pay for the measures in the Bill. As he says, it is a false economy to stint on this.

[Tim Loughton]

As with so much to do with child safeguarding, getting it wrong is the most expensive thing.

We need to do much more work on prevention. We should task the Domestic Abuse Commissioner with looking at not just how we respond and making sure that perpetrators are locked up, but how we can prevent it in the first place, and better education in schools about what constitutes an appropriate relationship is an important part of that.

I want to make a few other quick points. Proper funding of refuge places, which has been promised by the Government, is essential. There was still a shortage of refuge places last year. It is not just a question of money, though; technical factors are also impeding the availability of urgently required beds. Women without children who are fleeing violence and who seek safety in refuges are not automatically considered to be in priority need of housing. I have been told by refuges that in some cases women are staying in hostels for several years, which is again a false economy, when they could be in independent housing, living safely with their children. We also need to give children who are living in refuges priority access to schools, as we have done for children in care and adopted children.

We have to look holistically at the issue. It is not just about better funding for refuges; it is also about making sure that we have better services across the board, including specialist domestic abuse service providers, child support workers, outreach workers and especially better joined-up working for women fleeing local authority areas when they have to go to a refuge. We need a network of refuges across the country.

This is a fantastic Bill. It can be improved. It is long overdue. Let us not ruin it by making it too complicated.

National Citizen Service Bill [Lords]

Debate between Tim Loughton and Karen Bradley

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 16th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am very supportive of the Bill. Will the Secretary of State define how value for money will be gauged?

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend will know that the National Audit Office is responsible for looking at value for money. Of course we will look at the findings of each year’s report to make an assessment of value for money.

Following an amendment in the House of Lords, the trust must also notify the Government of any police investigation into an allegation of criminal activity that could have serious consequences for the NCS. The trust will be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Records Act 1958. Together, the measures will ensure that the NCS Trust works efficiently, effectively and transparently.

The Bill has one other purpose: to advertise NCS. The Bill allows Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to pass on information about the NCS to the young people, parents and carers whose addresses it holds. Receiving a national insurance number at the age of 16 is a rite of passage, and we want that letter to arrive with an invitation to participate in the NCS, too.

As the Government continue to work to build a shared society that works for every one of our constituents, the NCS has already transformed hundreds of thousands of lives. The Bill can ensure that it transforms millions more.

Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Tim Loughton and Karen Bradley

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I do not think that that will happen, and it is certainly not the Bill’s intention, but I am happy, together with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, to speak to colleagues and to spend time with officials to make sure that we are all satisfied. We all want The Hague convention to be brought into UK law—62 years is too long. We want to get on with it, but also to make sure that we do so in a way that satisfies parliamentarians and means they are happy that it will deliver the desired effect.

Although dealers will need to satisfy themselves through due diligence that there is no reasonable cause to suspect that objects presented for sale have been unlawfully exported from an occupied territory, existing codes of conduct already oblige dealers not to import, export or transfer the ownership of objects where they have reasonable cause to believe that the object has been exported in violation of another country’s laws. Dealers will not be required to carry out any further due diligence beyond that which they should already be conducting. In order to commit an offence, a dealer must deal in an object knowing, or having reason to suspect, as the hon. Member for Rhondda has pointed out, that it has been unlawfully exported. If a dealer takes temporary possession of an object for the purposes of carrying out due diligence or providing valuations, they will not be dealing in that object, because they will not be acquiring the object.

The rest of part 4 outlines the circumstances in which unlawfully exported cultural property would be liable to forfeiture, and creates the necessary new powers of entry, search, seizure and forfeiture. Part 5 provides immunity from seizure or forfeiture for cultural property that is being transported to the UK, or through the UK to another destination, for safekeeping during an armed conflict.

Finally, part 6 ensures that if an offence under the Bill is committed with the consent or connivance of an officer of a company or Scottish partnership—for example, directors of private military contractors—that officer will be guilty of an offence, as well as the company or partnership.

There is already a legal framework in place that is designed to tackle the illicit trade in cultural property. The Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, the Theft Act 1968 and the Syria and Iraq sanctions orders enable the UK to take action where authorities suspect that individuals might be engaged in illicit trade. The Bill helps to strengthen that framework in relation to cultural property that has been taken illegally from occupied territories.

In addition to enabling prosecution, the existing legislation also has an important deterrent effect, sending out the message that the UK will not tolerate any illicit trade in cultural property. As well as providing teeth that can be used when required, the Bill will strengthen that deterrent effect.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend knows that I greatly support this Bill. She is talking about enforcement and greater teeth for the legislation. Why does she think there has been only one prosecution in this country since the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003? Should we not have done better by now?

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend helps to make the point about the deterrent effect of the legislation. It is deterring dealers from taking cultural property that has been stolen from occupied territory. Clearly, law enforcement and others need to understand the legislation, the offences and the action that can be taken in order that prosecutions can be brought if there is evidence that a crime has been committed.

On passing the Bill, the UK will be the first permanent member of the UN Security Council to become a party to the convention and its two protocols. Given with the other initiatives we have set in motion in this area, we will have ensured, in the strongest terms possible, that the UK will be a champion for cultural protection in times of peace and war alike. I commend the Bill to the House.

Poppi Worthington

Debate between Tim Loughton and Karen Bradley

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

This sounds like a depressingly familiar catalogue of failure and cover-up. At the time of this tragic death, a report would routinely have been given to the children’s Minister, and the Home Office pathologist, Dr Alison Armour, presumably also reported her suspicions to the Home Office. What action was jointly taken by Ministers in the Home Office and the Department for Education, particularly given the ongoing danger to siblings involved? What has happened to the serious case review that, since 2010, has been routinely published to reveal where failures have been made and to enable lessons to be learned, which is so crucial in this case?

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He did an incredible amount of work as children’s Minister to deal with the failures in the system that we have seen here and he raises some very important points, many of which I, too, have raised with officials today. If he will forgive me, I will write to him on the specific points. May I also—I failed to do this earlier—offer to meet the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), because I think that there are many things that it is important we discuss face to face?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Loughton and Karen Bradley

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I do not recognise the length of time the hon. Lady suggests the process takes. We work very closely with the French authorities, but let us bear it in mind that those children are in camps in France, which is part of the European Union. It is important that they are processed properly in that sovereign state.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Some 15 years ago, Victoria Climbié came into this country from west Africa and was placed with a so-called aunt in a private fostering arrangement. The Government no longer collect figures about private fostering, so what measures are they taking to ensure that children who come to this country do not have their welfare compromised in the way that she did?

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. Friend has great expertise in this area, particularly given his time as a Minister. He knows that I take the welfare of children extremely seriously, as does the Home Secretary. We make sure that we have the information we need to protect those children.