Bahrain

Debate between Tom Brake and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Andy Slaughter]

I am grateful for that intervention because it goes to the heart of my argument. The hon. Gentleman’s point is one that we often hear, but my argument is that exactly the reverse is true and that the intervention by the UK at a time when the human rights situation has worsened in Bahrain gives cover to those abuses.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

If the UK has a strong relationship with Bahrain, should it not use it? For instance, I hope that we will hear from the Minister today a strong condemnation of the detention of Nabeel Rajab, which is a clear abuse of human rights that many organisations, including the United Nations, have recognised.

[Andy Slaughter]

The right hon. Gentleman is, as always, ahead of me—he is on to the next page of my speech.

Since Britain’s reform assistance programme in Bahrain began, that country’s human rights record has deteriorated. Detainees held in Bahraini detention facilities have made frequent and sustained allegations of torture and forced or coerced confession, and courts have routinely convicted defendants on the basis of such confessions. Meanwhile, Bahrain refuses to allow the UN’s torture experts to enter the country.

The Bahraini Government have also persecuted and imprisoned peaceful human rights defenders, not least Nabeel Rajab, the founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights and a shortlisted candidate for this year’s Václav Havel human rights prize, awarded by the Council of Europe, who was recently sentenced to five years in prison for tweeting. Sayed Alwadaei, the director of the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy—BIRD—has watched as his family members in Bahrain have been tortured and imprisoned in retaliation for his human rights advocacy in the UK. I note that Mr Alwadaei is here today. I thank him for his bravery and tenacity, and for continuing his laudable work in the face of such persecution, and I hope that the Minister does the same.

Hassan Mushaima, now 70 years old and a founding Bahraini opposition leader, was arrested alongside 12 other political leaders in 2011, and then tortured and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is being denied access to his most basic rights, including medical assistance, while in Jau prison, a detention centre that in July 2018 was criticised by the UN for its inhumane conditions. Hassan’s son, Ali, escaped arrest because he was in the UK in 2011. Fourteen days ago he started a hunger strike outside the Bahrain embassy in London, asking that his father be given access to adequate medical treatment, family visitations and books. Ali Mushaima is here today. I hope the Minister will also join his call for more humane treatment for his father and all other political prisoners in Bahrain.

Worst of all, as my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) pointed out in his intervention, during the UK’s current assistance to Bahrain, Bahrain broke a seven-year moratorium on capital punishment, with the execution of three torture victims by a secret firing squad in January 2017. The UN special rapporteur on summary executions swiftly declared the executions of Abbas al-Samea, Sami Mushaima and Ali al-Singace to be extrajudicial killings. After those unlawful executions, the size of Bahrain’s death row tripled in less than a year, and 21 individuals now await execution. It is a particular concern that specific Bahraini institutions trained by the UK have been responsible for serious violations of international human rights law, either while receiving UK training or shortly thereafter. Those violations have been especially severe, with catastrophic consequences in the case of death row inmates.

I want to spend a little more time talking about some of the people who have directly suffered violations and about the grave abuses they have experienced at the hands of Bahraini bodies supported by the UK. Al-Samea, Mushaima and al-Singace were executed in January 2017. Mushaima and al-Singace were the nephews of prominent peaceful opposition political activists in Bahrain, which their families believe is the real reason they were falsely accused of terrorism offences. All three men were tortured by police and forced to confess. Methods of torture included beatings, electric shocks and sodomy with metal objects. Al-Samea was tortured and al-Singace was raped by prison guards at a facility at which the UK was training 400 members of staff.

Al-Samea and Mushaima filed complaints about their torture with UK-trained torture investigators: the ombudsman for the Ministry of Interior and the Special Investigation Unit, the SIU. Those institutions, which are mandated to conduct inquiries into torture complaints lodged by detainees in Bahrain, failed to properly investigate any of the complaints made by the men. Mushaima’s lawyer submitted complaints about his client’s torture and false confession to both bodies, neither of which ever conducted an investigation. The SIU later rejected al-Samea’s torture allegations without interviewing him or commissioning an independent medical examination. The three men were never allowed to meet with lawyers and were eventually convicted and sentenced to death in trials that relied almost entirely on their torture-tainted confessions.

Mohammed Ramadan and Husain Moosa face imminent execution for alleged terrorism offences while they insist on their innocence. Both men were arrested and tortured by Bahraini police. Ramadan, a policeman and father of three, was blindfolded, stripped and beaten with iron rods and threatened with the rape of his family members. Moosa was hung from a ceiling by his wrists for three days and beaten with batons. Both men eventually signed false confessions and have since been tortured further by prison guards in a facility where the UK has trained staff. Despite receiving complaints about their torture and forced confession shortly after arrest, the ombudsman refused to investigate for two years, during which time the men were sentenced to death on the basis of their coerced confessions. Neither man has ever been allowed to meet with a lawyer. After their trial, the ombudsman and the SIU both agreed to finally investigate their torture allegations. The investigations have now been closed, but neither institution has released its findings. Both the ombudsman and the SIU refuse to tell the men or their lawyers whether the investigations confirmed their torture allegations. The SIU eventually recommended a retrial for both men, but their forced confessions, extracted through torture, may now be reintroduced as evidence.

Maher Abbas al-Khabbaz faces imminent execution for alleged terrorism offences, despite insisting on his innocence. He was disappeared by Bahraini police for a week and tortured so severely that he had to be transferred to a military hospital. Police forced Maher to sign a false confession, which was used to secure his death sentence in a patently unfair trial. Despite official complaints from his family and lawyer, the ombudsman has never investigated his torture. The SIU has also yet to investigate his torture, despite receiving a formal complaint from the human rights advocacy group Reprieve, which is assisting him, in late July.

Those defendants were failed every step of the way by Bahraini bodies the UK sees as reform partners. They were tortured by police and prison guards until they made false confessions, and their torture and ill treatment were covered up by torture investigators. Three of them have been illegally executed; the other three could be killed at any time. It is deeply concerning that the UK’s Bahraini partners are responsible for human rights violations as serious as torture and obscuring acts of torture in furtherance of unlawful death sentences. This is a poor result for a reform programme that aimed to improve Bahrain’s human rights record.

Of equal concern is the British Government’s reluctance to issue strong criticism of Bahrain’s human rights abuses, in spite of the growing human rights crisis there. In 2017, after the executions, the Foreign Office’s response was to state that Bahrain was aware of the UK’s opposition to the death penalty. It raised no public concern about the torture or unfair trials. Shortly thereafter the Foreign Office stated that it would not support a joint statement on Bahrain’s human rights record at the next UN Human Rights Council session because the statement would

“not recognise some of the genuine progress Bahrain has made.”

Indeed, the Government have maintained that, while Bahrain

“is by no means perfect and...has...a long way to go in delivering on its human rights commitments...it is a country that is travelling in the right direction. It is making significant reform.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2015; Vol. 591, c. 66.]

The British Government count the advent of the ombudsman and the SIU among the “reforms”. The Foreign Office continues to describe the ombudsman and the SIU as

“independent human rights oversight bodies”

that enjoy “increasing public confidence”, and it has not acknowledged their wrongdoing in the cases of prisoners facing imminent execution. That stands in stark contrast with UN human rights experts, including the special rapporteurs on torture and summary execution and the Committee Against Torture, which have expressed concern that the ombudsman and the SIU are “not independent” and “not effective”, and that their activities result in “little or no outcome.”

There is real concern that the UK’s defence of Bahrain on the global stage has served to deflect international scrutiny of Bahrain’s human rights record at a time when such scrutiny is sorely needed. There is now a false perception among many in the international community that Bahrain’s human rights record has improved thanks to British assistance. Bahrain aggressively promotes that idea. Government-affiliated newspapers there now refer to a supposed British belief that

“Bahrain’s human rights record is flawless.”

Meanwhile, despite mounting violations, states have failed to agree to a single joint statement criticising Bahrain’s human rights record at the UN Human Rights Council in the past three years, and Britain has been unwilling to support such statements.

UK reform assistance programmes are too often cloaked in secrecy. That is particularly true when it comes to the human rights risk assessments that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is obliged to carry out in approving assistance of that nature. The Government’s policy on overseas security and justice assistance—OSJA—is designed to prevent UK involvement in human rights abuses such as the death penalty or torture. The policy sets out a human rights risk assessment process that British officials must follow before approving UK assistance to overseas bodies that might be involved in such abuses.

When the OSJA policy was introduced, the then Foreign Secretary, William Hague, claimed that it would demonstrate the UK’s commitment to

“tackling issues related to human rights in an open and transparent way”.

In practice, however, the Government have adopted a blanket policy of refusing to disclose OSJA assessments, which have been used to approve UK assistance to human rights abusers. Bahrain serves as an example of this. The Foreign Office has refused to disclose any of the OSJA assessments completed in respect of its work in Bahrain, leaving Parliament and the public unable to determine whether the risks of such close co-operation with Bahrain’s security apparatus have been properly considered. It is also unclear whether the assessments, which the Foreign Office initially performed in 2011, have been repeated or reconsidered in the wake of serious and documented violations of international human rights law by the Bahraini Government since then.

The funding of such programmes also lacks transparency. Technical assistance to Bahrain was initially funded largely from the conflict, security and stability fund—the CSSF—a £1.13 billion cross-departmental fund that has received parliamentary criticism for its lack of transparency and accountability. In 2017, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy described it as “opaque”. This year, both the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and the International Development Committee criticised the fund. ICAI noted that, owing to serious problems with the Government’s human rights risk assessments,

“we do not know if CSSF programming is causing harm”,

as working with security forces accused of human rights violations

“risks legitimising them and their actions, or even becoming complicit in violations.”

The IDC noted that cross-departmental funds of that kind risk being slush funds, the lack of transparency and accountability of which “undermines trust” in their use and

“risks undermining faith in the UK aid brand.”

That is an alarming message, which is very much repeated in the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report, published this morning.

The Foreign Office has shifted the funding stream for those programmes away from the CSSF and to the global Britain fund and the integrated activity fund, about which even less is known. When asked, Ministers have refused to provide details of those funds, including their objectives, safeguards or assessment frameworks, so Parliament has been unable to provide scrutiny or oversight.

It should also be noted that after several years of disclosing basic information about its Bahrain reform projects, the Foreign Office now refuses to disclose such details about its current and future work in Bahrain. In response to freedom of information requests and parliamentary questions, the Foreign Office has refused to tell the public and MPs the true scope of its current and future technical assistance activities in Bahrain, including who the Bahraini recipients are, how much is spent on each programme and which programmes are funded by which funds. It is unclear why human rights reform programmes should be subject to that level of secrecy. By formally shielding the details of such assistance from public view, the Government risk creating the impression that they are unwilling to accept scrutiny or criticism of their activities in Bahrain. That hardly reflects the values of good governance and openness that the Government apparently seek to advance in that country.

The efficacy of the British Government’s reform efforts in Bahrain are in serious doubt. Bahrain, already a repressive autocracy in 2012, has grown only more so since. The country’s only two opposition political societies have been forcibly dissolved. The only independent newspaper in the country has been forcibly closed. A recent constitutional amendment paved the way for military trials of civilians. The UN has described

“a clear pattern of criminalizing dissent”

and abhorrent cases of intimidation and reprisals against human rights defenders. Freedom House ranks Bahrain as less free and more repressive of civil and political liberties today than it did in 2012. In terms of press freedom, Bahrain ranks l66th of 180 countries, and the past six years have been marked by torture in detention, unlawful death sentences resulting from unfair trials, and illegal executions. Deprivation of nationality—so-called statelessness—is also now routine. That cannot be the result for which the Foreign Office hoped.

Rather than safeguarding human rights and democracy, the UK’s reform programme has coincided with a brutal assault by the Bahraini Government on the basic rights and freedoms of their citizens. The UK has shielded Bahrain from international censure and avoided criticising arms of the Bahraini Government that have received UK training. That problem is exacerbated by insufficient transparency related to the reform programme’s risk assessments, funding streams, and other details as basic as which arms of Bahrain’s Government will receive UK assistance in future. Given the violations carried out during the course of UK assistance to Bahrain, the British Government cannot keep UK taxpayers in the dark regarding what their money is doing in Bahrain.

The Foreign Office has urgent questions to answer. The UK’s reform efforts in Bahrain have been described as a failure on the basis of the deterioration of Bahrain’s overall human rights records, as well as human rights violations committed by the UK’s reform partners in Bahrain. Does the Minister disagree with that characterisation? If so, on what basis would the Minister describe the UK reform programme in Bahrain as a success? All the violations committed by the UK’s Bahraini reform partners in the cases I have raised have been put to the Foreign Office in writing on several occasions. Does the Minister dispute that those violations took place?

The UN special rapporteur on summary executions deemed the executions of Abbas al-Samea, Sami Mushaima and Ali al-Singace unlawful and an arbitrary deprivation of the right to life. Does the Foreign Office agree with that assessment? If not, why not? Does the Foreign Office accept that confessions extracted through torture must be excluded from criminal proceedings? If so, what steps is the Foreign Office taking to ensure that the special investigations unit and the ombudsman disclose the yet unreleased findings of their investigation into the torture of Mohammed Ramadan and Husain Moosa?

Does the Foreign Office accept the international position that no death sentence can be handed down without strict adherence to fair trial and due process rights, among other safeguards? What assurances has the Foreign Office received from the Bahraini Government that the retrial of Mohammed Ramadan and Husain Moosa will comply with such standards, in particular so that they will not risk a conviction and death sentence on the basis of confessions extracted through torture?

Maher Abbas al-Khabbaz faces imminent execution, and his torture leading to the procurement of a coerced confession has not been investigated by the ombudsman or the SIU, despite official complaints submitted on his behalf. Do the Government accept that they should be extremely concerned that Bahrain may carry out yet another round of unlawful executions without any steps being taken by the relevant authorities or bodies to investigate whether torture was used to secure a death sentence?

Sayed Alwadaei’s family continue to be the subject of reprisals by the Bahraini authorities, not only for his work as a human rights defender but for complaints against the very bodies that have failed adequately to investigate the ill treatment of his loved ones. Do the Government accept that Bahrain’s treatment of Mr Alwadaei and his family amounts to reprisals? Also, what steps are the Government taking to secure the release of Nabeel Rajab and Hassan Mushaima?

The Foreign Office has refused to release any of the OSJA assessments that it has performed in respect of its work in Bahrain. Given the obviously grave concerns about violations of human rights by the UK’s partners in Bahrain, and given the intention of openness and transparency underpinning the OSJA policy, will the Minister commit to releasing those assessments?

The Foreign Office has also refused to release any information on its continuing assistance programmes in Bahrain, or information related to the funds by which the assistance is carried out: the global Britain fund and the integrated activity fund. Will the Minister commit to providing sufficient information about those programmes and funds to ensure proper oversight by the public and by this House?

I am grateful for the assistance I have received from Reprieve and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy in preparing my remarks, and to their representatives for attending today’s debate. I gave some indication of the areas I would cover in my speech to the Minister’s officials. I understand that it might not be possible to cover all of them in his response today, so I hope he can write to me with answers to any remaining questions.

I know that the Minister cares personally, as I do, about the human rights of people in the Gulf and the UK’s record as a defender of human rights around the world. I fear that both of those are under threat and deserve proper scrutiny and investigation. I am grateful to many colleagues for attending today’s debate. I look forward to their comments and to the responses from the Front Benches.

UK Nationals Imprisoned Abroad

Debate between Tom Brake and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the case of Andy Tsege and other UK nationals imprisoned abroad.

It is a pleasure to see so many hon. Members here today. I will try to limit my remarks to 20 minutes. I was informed yesterday that only three Members had put their names in to speak, so I do not know how many Members present intend to do so. Clearly, I welcome the opportunity for the debate and thank the Backbench Business Committee for providing time for it.

During this festive period, hundreds of thousands of British citizens will be travelling home to their families or going on holiday for a break. People would expect such a trip to be uneventful. Why would anything go wrong? However, for some British citizens, what happened while they were travelling abroad has turned their lives upside down in a way that many of us could not begin to comprehend.

Two prominent examples of that are Andy Tsege and Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Both are British—Nazanin is a dual national—and were arrested by foreign authorities and imprisoned without access to a fair trial. Andy was kidnapped by Ethiopian agents at Sana’a International airport in Yemen, with the Yemeni authorities stating that his detention had not occurred pursuant to any judicial process. Nazanin, whose two-year-old daughter was with her, was arrested while leaving Iran. The ordeal that both Andy and Nazanin have since faced is truly shocking, and on top of the injustice of their detention, their daily lives have been subjected to gross human rights violations.

In the time permitted, I will concentrate on the cases of Andy and Nazanin. A longer debate would of course have allowed the cases of prisoners of conscience of all nationalities, held around the world, to be raised, and many organisations have contacted me since this debate was allowed in order to draw attention to such cases. For instance, Ali al-Nimr is spending his 22nd birthday in prison in Saudi Arabia. His crimes were participating in a demonstration,

“explaining how to give first aid to protestors”

and using his BlackBerry to invite others to join him at the protest.

There is also the case of Nabeel Rajab, whose trial has been delayed for the fifth time and who is expected now to be sentenced on 28th December. That is perhaps a diversionary tactic because there may be less attention on his case as festive celebrations get under way. He is a Bahraini human rights activist and opposition leader. That case is of particular interest to the UK, because of the funding from the UK that is going into training and supporting the security and justice systems in Bahrain.

There is also the case, drawn to my attention just yesterday, of a dual UK-Lebanese citizen detained in Israel. The release of Mr Faiz Mahmoud Ahmed Sherari has been ordered by a military court in Israel, but as far as I am aware he has not been released.

I would also like to use this opportunity to raise the case of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community. I know that many hon. Members here today have raised concerns about the pressures that that community are under in different countries around the world—perhaps most prominently in Pakistan, but also, I understand, in Algeria.

Today, however, I will concentrate on Andy and Nazanin. This will be the third Christmas that Andy has spent alone in a prison—he is now in a prison notorious for being Ethiopia’s gulag. He has not been able to speak to his partner and children in London for two years and has had no private access to British consular officials, leaving him unable to describe freely the treatment that he has received at the hands of his jailers.

Nazanin has been held, mostly in solitary confinement, for more than nine months. Her husband has campaigned tirelessly back in London for the UK Government to call for her release. It is still unclear whether the Government have done that. I hope that when the Minister responds, he will be able to clarify that. Have the Government actually called for her release? Her husband says that she has been at breaking point. She is currently allowed to see her daughter only for one hour each week in prison. Her daughter remains trapped in Iran, unable to see her father. Furthermore, representatives of both Andy and Nazanin have repeatedly raised serious concerns about their health.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. He raises the point about what our Government have done. In the case of Andy Tsege, I do not think it is in dispute that he was rendered unlawfully and was tried in absentia, and we would not recognise those processes. Does the right hon. Gentleman not think it extraordinary, therefore, that the Government have not even requested his release?

[Tom Brake]

I do indeed. What the Government are trying to initiate, which I will come on to shortly, is providing Andy Tsege with a lawyer, but as I understand it, he has no right of appeal in Ethiopia, and therefore providing him with a lawyer does not seem to be of great use.

The mistreatment of British citizens imprisoned abroad is unacceptable in all cases, regardless of what crime has been committed, yet in these cases the astounding truth is that it is clear that Andy and Nazanin are being held unlawfully. Attached to Andy’s name was a conviction and death sentence, after a trial in absentia, which was condemned throughout the world. Although Andy was previously prominent in Ethiopian politics, no country other than Ethiopia had found evidence, at the time of his kidnapping, that the political organisation with which he was involved had conspired to commit acts of terrorism.

Nazanin was recently sentenced on charges that remain secret, despite her previous employment in Iran as an aid worker. The simple fact is that if these British citizens are not going to be charged with an offence recognised internationally, they should be released immediately so that they can spend Christmas at home, safe with their families, who want nothing more than for them to be at home and for their lives to return to normality.

Yesterday, a representative of Reprieve and I met the Ethiopian ambassador about Andy’s case. We are grateful to His Excellency and the Minister responsible for public diplomacy for their time. We are aware that last Thursday—15 December—Andy received a consular visit. However, like all the other consular visits, that visit was supervised by the prison authorities. As I stated, Andy has never met consular officials in private. We understand that during the visit the UK ambassador told Andy that the UK may have found a lawyer to help him to

“assess his options under the Ethiopian legal system.”

Unfortunately, that does not, in my view, demonstrate progress on his case. First, the UK Government’s approach to this case appears to ignore the fact that Andy is the victim of a series of crimes and is not a criminal. The UK Government’s failure to condemn the series of abuses that Andy has suffered and continues to suffer at the hands of the Ethiopian regime signals that foreign Governments can ignore international law and kidnap British citizens at will.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Tom Brake and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

I am sure that my hon. Friend was listening carefully. I said that the Secretary of State would have to give consent. The Government are not proposing that local authorities should be allowed to decide unilaterally which areas are in and which are out. We want to facilitate something that is already clearly happening on a large scale in London—as far as I am aware, it happens elsewhere in the country without significant problems—to give individuals the flexibility to allow their properties to be rented on a short-term basis if there is an event, such as Wimbledon, during which they want to absent themselves.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The Minister mentions Wimbledon and I have no doubt that he is also thinking about things such as holiday lets. How many prosecutions have there been in respect of Wimbledon and holiday lets? The proposal is just about commercial lets. Is it not impossible to regulate such things in the way the Government intend? It is over-regulation to say that councils must apply for a waiver. Why does he not let localism take charge and allow local authorities decide for themselves?

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Tom Brake and Andy Slaughter

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

There has not been much consensus in the Chamber, but I suspect that there is broad agreement on that point.

[Mr Slaughter]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Liberty briefing paper states that the

“Community Links advice service records that…73% of the benefits related cases handled by their staff arose as a result of errors on the part of the Department of Work and Pensions.”

The Opposition agree with him, but we are where we are, and particularly at this time of change, we need certainty that those people will be properly represented. I think he said that he would not support new clause 17, but will he support amendment 116 and, later, the new clause in his name or the new clause relating to the Dowlers, which is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)? He has given assurances outside the House and said that he supports those positions, but he now seems to be resiling from them. Will he and his hon. Friends support those measures? Will he answer that question now?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which is in the tradition of his speeches—lengthy. He should perhaps have waited until I had finished my comments before jumping to any conclusions.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Tom Brake and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Slaughter]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I am sure that some companies have been driven out of business, but the everyday experience of hon. Members, and certainly of our constituents, is that the industry is not properly regulated, which is why corrective action must be taken. However, the proposals in the Government’s new clauses are, I fear, insufficient. They are riddled with inconsistencies and loopholes, which is another symptom of the haste with which they were prepared.

I will deal with the point that the Minister dealt with. New clause 19(8) states that a payment is

“to be treated as a referral fee unless”

it can be shown

“that the payment was made…as consideration for the provision of services, or…for another reason”.

The Minister’s impact assessment explains what that means. Claims management companies may adapt their business models so that they are not reliant on referral fees paid by lawyers, or they may move into alternative types of business such as marketing or advertising. That is staggering to those of us who recognise that it is precisely that marketing and advertising, whether on daytime TV adverts or via spam messages, that lead to perceptions of a compensation culture.

What is the point of the new clauses? The truth is that they are an afterthought to a package of changes in the Bill, some of which we will debate tomorrow, that have far more bite but a different purpose. The changes to conditional fee agreements mean that losing defendants—wrongdoers—and their insurers will benefit at the expense of winning claimants—victims—and that is the real objective of the Government’s legislation. Tomorrow, we will seek to overturn those provisions.

As Bob and Sally Dowler have told us; as the lawyers that brought Trafigura to justice have told us; as victims of asbestosis, who have been fighting insurers that simply do not want to pay out to hard-working and long-suffering people; as those who have been unfairly dismissed or subject to harassment in the workplace have told us; and as Christopher Jeffries, who was persecuted by the media last Christmas, as he wrote in The Guardian this very day, has told us, the changes are unacceptable. The Government’s proposed changes, which they had thought about and on which they had taken instructions from the insurance industry, are in the Bill, but very little thought has gone into the new clauses before us today, and none would have gone into them had it not been for my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn.

In summary, we believe that there is merit in a ban on referral fees as part of a package to stop the abuses that I have talked about. That is why I tabled amendments not just to clamp down on those fees, but to make the payment and solicitation of referral fees in road traffic accident personal injury cases a criminal offence. My right hon. Friend has tabled amendments to new clause 18, and I hope that he will press them to a vote. If he does so, I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will join him in the Lobby if the Government still refuse to accept the criminalisation of referral fees.

We sought to make unsolicited text messages and phone calls regarding personal injuries a criminal offence. We would have strengthened the rules against the sale of personal data. We would have restricted whiplash claims by placing a lower limit on the speed at which a vehicle must be travelling before damages may be paid. We would have outlawed third-party capture, another dirty secret of the insurance industry. I freely acknowledge that we plagiarised some of that from my right hon. Friend’s private Member’s Bill.

If the Government had had the courage of the conviction in the Minister’s speeches earlier in the year, we would have got to the heart of the perception of a compensation culture. In doing so, we would have done what the Government are now failing to do. The new clause alone will have little effect. We believe that it deserves further scrutiny, and we hope that amendments in another place will toughen it up, if that does not happen tonight. We also hope that amendments to make these practices criminal offences will be accepted. We therefore have no intention of voting against the new clauses; we simply regard them as not going far enough.

The Minister’s incompetence in getting to grips with claims farmers who engage in unscrupulous practices and his Department’s failure even to recognise the scale of their failure to regulate effectively have got us here. These are symptoms not of a litigation culture, as he would have us believe, and of the rhetoric that goes along with the cuts in legal aid to the poorest, as well the neutering of no win, no fee agreements which will affect almost everyone except the super-rich and will prevent access to justice, but of regulatory incompetence by the Minister’s Department. Indeed, he has now surrendered responsibility for that regulation.

I commend my right hon. Friend’s amendments to the House. We accept the new clauses as far as they go, but it is about time the Government stopped using their rhetoric as a mask for preventing victims from obtaining justice and used it to ensure that the abuses that we all put up with day to day from fraudulent and criminal practices are stamped out.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I shall be brief. I welcome the Government’s action to address referral fees. There is no doubt that consumers have paid a significant price. I hope that we can clamp down heavily on other things, such as unsolicited text messages and spam, which we have all experienced, through other measures such as those on data protection.

I would like the Minister to deal with just one point. The industry has been pressing for these changes, and consumers in particular want to understand what guarantees, if any, they will have that when the changes have taken effect they will see a difference in the prices they pay for services.

Social Housing in London

Debate between Tom Brake and Andy Slaughter

Thursday 5th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake]

That might well be among the solutions that the hon. Member for Westminster North will list later. I should point out, however, that over the course of this Parliament, we will raise at least an extra £10 billion from the banks through the taxation measures that we have already introduced, and that there might be a limit to how much one can draw on that source of funding.

I want to move on to the specific points that Centrepoint raised in its briefing. I am sure that the coalition Government will want to monitor those issues, and to assess whether our proposals have had any unintended consequences. If that is the case, there might be a need to show flexibility further down the line. On social housing tenancies, there are clearly different views in different organisations on the idea of minimum fixed terms. I know that some Conservative and Liberal Democrat local authorities are reluctant to introduce them. Centrepoint says that, while it does not oppose them, it is crucial to have a degree of flexibility in the system, in particular for young people who might need more stability as they start out, and that tenancies should reflect people’s individual circumstances rather than acting as a straitjacket that constrains everyone in the same way.

Centrepoint also raised concerns, as have Members in previous debates, about the shared room rate, particularly the risk that as this applies to people up to 35, even more pressure might be put on properties currently going to younger people. There might be a tendency to give priority to the older person seeking a shared room, perhaps because they are more settled, which might have a displacement effect on younger people seeking shared accommodation. I hope the Minister will respond to that particular point.

[Mr Slaughter]

Moving on from the Centrepoint briefing, does the hon. Gentleman support the removal of security of tenure for social tenants or only for some types of social tenants? If so, what types—older people or families, for example? He mentions young people, who might have insecure lifestyles, but what advantages does the hon. Gentleman see in taking away the security that social tenants have been used to for the past 50 years?

[Tom Brake]

I am happy to give local authorities and others the powers to change the terms of tenure and I hope the hon. Gentleman would agree with me that there is an issue with some people having security of tenure who, from a financial point of view, could afford to live in their own accommodation or in the private sector. Perhaps Bob Crow springs to mind as one such example. By continuing to occupy council or social housing, those people are not making that accommodation available to others in greater need. The hon. Gentleman might not want to draw the line in the same place as me, but I hope he will acknowledge that it could be argued with considerable justification that people at the extremes should not have security of tenure in premises that could be more appropriately given to people in far greater need.

A further point raised in the Centrepoint briefing was the issue of the uprating of the local housing allowance and the move towards basing it on the consumer prices index. It is argued that using the CPI figure could cost the Government money if there has been a drop in the rental markets locally. The Minister might want to look at that from a Government spending point of view.

The final point in the briefing is the issue of direct payments. I fully support the concept that people should take more responsibility for their expenditure, so I have some reservations about paying money directly to landlords. Centrepoint’s view is that there are circumstances—this might be particularly true for young people—where people might prefer to have the money paid directly to their landlord because they do not feel they are ready to take on that financial responsibility. Some flexibility there might help.

My final point is not one that Centrepoint raised; it is about arm’s length management organisations and I would like the Minister to update us on his view of them. Other Members in their places may well, like me, be members of the all-party ALMOs group. Members will recall that when tenants were given an option to transfer to an ALMO, a consultation process had to be gone through. The concern of the all-party group is that the travel nowadays is in the opposite direction and that some local authorities are seeking, perhaps precipitately, to bring ALMOs or social housing back under their control without going through the anticipated process of consultation. I hope that when the Minister responds—or, if necessary, in writing—he will pick up on that point and let us know whether he has heard those concerns and raised them with local authorities, as it is important to ensure that tenants are given a fair outline of their options and are fully consulted about the process. They can then make a decision with the full facts in hand on whether they want the responsibility for the management of their properties brought back in house or to retain the ALMO.

This is an important debate. I have been a Member for 14 years and I have spoken in about 25 debates on this subject during that time. It is a particularly critical issue in London. I do not believe that there is much difference between us about the need to tackle the problem, although there are big differences in approach. I hope that in the months and years to come, my Government will demonstrate by the measures we are introducing that we are tackling the problem, growing the amount of social housing available and starting to address what has proved to be a real dilemma for Londoners for the last 30 or 40 years.

Housing (London)

Debate between Tom Brake and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is difficult, at a time when attacks are being made on the national health service and on state education at every level—from Sure Start to tuition fees—and when we are having to deal with the big society cuts to the voluntary and advice sectors, for housing to be given sufficient attention for us to see exactly what is happening as a result of Government policy; but what is happening in housing is as disastrous in its own way as it is in those other areas. I am therefore grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for securing this morning’s debate, as it gives us an opportunity to talk at greater length than usual in Westminster Hall about the Government’s housing policy and its effect on London.

I shall not repeat what my hon. Friend said; he has many more years’ experience as a constituency MP and in dealing with housing problems in London than I do, but I adopt entirely the arguments he put forward, in particular regarding the pernicious effects he spoke of—the bad, insecure, inadequate and overcrowded housing that all London MPs must see every week in their surgeries. Those effects go far beyond housing conditions; they cover health, education and quality of life. It is a national scandal that they have been allowed to develop over far too many years.

I shall deal briefly with four aspects of housing. The first is the private rented sector; the second is the effect of housing benefit changes; the third is the Government’s policy on social rented housing; and the last is planning policy. One of the early decisions taken by the coalition Government was to abandon the previous Government’s proposals that resulted from the Rugg review—a national register of landlords, regulation of letting and management agents, and compulsory written tenancy agreements. When the Government made that announcement, the Association of Residential Letting Agents said that it was extremely disappointed. It said:

“This move risks seriously hampering the improvement of standards in the private rented sector, the sector's reputation, and the fundamental role it plays in the wider housing market as well as failing to protect the consumer who has nowhere to go when there is service failure or fraud”.

That is the view of the industry. My view, as a constituency MP, is that we are seeing a return to Rachmanism in parts of London, with appalling conditions of social rented housing. Perhaps the difference this time is that local authorities are colluding with bad private landlords, with things such as direct letting schemes and, now, the ability to discharge their obligation to the private sector permanently rather than temporarily.

I hear what was said by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes). He is no longer in his place; he tends to pop in and out of these debates. I hope that Members on both sides will try to mitigate the effects of the housing benefit changes that his Government are introducing. It would be better if the Government were to withdraw and review those changes than to give a sop to those who, in their thousands, will be forced to move out of their homes from April onwards. I do not know how we are going to find adequate replacement housing for those hundreds of families in areas with property prices at the levels of Islington and Hammersmith—unless it is in more overcrowded, less salubrious streets and flats. There are few of those, however, because gentrification in inner London has meant that there really are no places where cheap property is available to rent.

It is social engineering. It is gerrymandering. It will force out poorer families who have made their homes in wealthier areas, perhaps over generations; gentrification has crept up on them, and they are now being told that they are not welcome in those areas but must move further out. I hear what the right hon. Gentleman had to say, but they are crocodile tears and warm words from the Liberal Democrats.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

On the subject of crocodile tears, does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that it was his party’s policy to consider the level of housing benefit? I presume that that review was intended not to increase housing benefit but to decrease it.

[Mr Slaughter]

I have heard the hon. Gentleman many times try to cling to the Labour party as a way of excluding his lamentable failure in supporting a Government who are systemically attacking poorer constituents.

[Tom Brake]

Is it true?

[Mr Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman must have some poorer constituents, even in Carshalton and Wallington, but perhaps not as many as I do. It would be better if he kept quiet in these debates rather than making such inane points.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Slaughter]

I see the coalition in action.

[Tom Brake]

He’s not going to answer.

Housing Need (London)

Debate between Tom Brake and Andy Slaughter

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Howarth. I shall follow your stricture and keep my remarks to 10 minutes or thereabouts.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) on securing this debate. He is right: many of the usual suspects are present for it. They include some ex-Ministers who share responsibility for the housing situation that we have in London.

It is fair to say that housing has been neglected by successive Governments and that the problem in London has not emerged in the past couple of months. There are different figures for how many households in London are looking for or waiting for social housing, but 350,000 has been quoted to me. Whichever figure one takes, a substantial number of people need social housing.

Clearly, as a result of demographic changes in London, pressure on housing will increase as the population increases. Demand might rise further if the coalition proposal to safeguard housing rights for people who are looking for work and perhaps coming to London has an impact, which it could. The proposal has some merit, but for it to work, we need some spare capacity in housing in London. I would not want such a proposal to displace people who are waiting for housing in London and who, in many cases, are being advised that they could wait for seven, eight, nine or 10 years. Such waiting times are being quoted to some people in my borough.

Clearly, too, the housing benefit changes, to which many hon. Members have already referred, will have an impact. There is some evidence, certainly in the commercial sector, that some landlords are responding to the present financial situation and, if not knocking down prices, holding prices for leases that run for four or five years.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The situation may or may not have changed but the policy certainly has, so does the hon. Gentleman support what the Housing Minister said about looking at having no secure tenancies for new lettings in the future? Does he support the £250 to £400 cap on housing benefit, which must affect his constituents as well as mine?

[Tom Brake]

Some valid points have already been made in the debate and, perhaps surprisingly, one of the reasons for my being here today is to listen to the Minister, who is a sound and honourable man, explaining—hopefully, explaining away—some of the apparent contradictions in a number of the proposals. I know from his background in local authorities that he believes, contrary to what the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) said, that council and social housing in this country has a strong and sound future. I am sure that he will defend that principle.