Westminster Hall

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 7 February 2024

[Hannah Bardell in the Chair]

Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the relationship between the UK and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. The relationship between Iraqi Kurdistanis and the UK—people and Governments—goes back many decades but has emerged as a more enduring and vital alliance in the last third of a century, for great mutual benefit. Before that, Kurdistanis, as they prefer to be called, were long demonised in Iraq as second-class citizens. That developed into genocide in the 1980s, which was formally recognised by the House of Commons on the 25th anniversary of the tragic gassing in 1988 by Saddam Hussein’s air force of the town of Halabja, with the instant death of 5,000 people and many maimed for life. Overall, nearly 200,000 people were murdered in a systematic genocide that also razed thousands of villages to the ground and destroyed the backbone of the rural economy.

Many Kurdistanis were exiled here before returning. That drives a great affinity with the UK and the widespread use of English. That living link was boosted when Saddam, defeated in Kuwait in 1991, turned on the Kurdistanis with genocidal intent. They revolted, and about 2 million people fled to the freezing mountains to escape Saddam’s revenge. I am immensely proud that Sir John Major showed fantastic leadership and moral courage by establishing with America and France a no-fly zone. I am delighted that the Kurdistan Regional Government agreed to name a major thoroughfare in Irbil after Sir John, and very much hope that they do the same for Sir Tony Blair.

The creation of the safe haven, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) participated as an RAF officer, averted further genocide and helped to usher in an autonomous region. Kurdistanis elected their first Parliament in 1992 and, despite harsh Iraq and UN sanctions, laid the basis of a new society that bettered Saddam’s Iraq in, for instance, one key area: infant mortality. Sadly, civil war marred that fresh start.

Iraqi Kurdistan won a place at the forefront of our foreign policy, which was a great advantage when Iraq was liberated in 2003. Kurdistani leaders stabilised the new Iraq with peaceful elections and a landmark constitution in 2005, based on federalism and rights for the officially recognised autonomous region. Kurdistan enjoyed a golden decade in which new oil, long denied by Saddam, boosted living standards and infrastructure in “the Other Iraq”. However, there were difficult challenges; most important was Baghdad’s refusal to implement a settlement by 2007 in which the people of Kirkuk and other disputed territories could choose to join Iraq or the autonomous region. That is unfinished business and requires greater attention, and I ask the Minister to comment on it in his remarks.

Worse was to come with the complete and unilateral suspension of budget payments from Baghdad to Irbil in early 2014, the sudden seizure by ISIS of Mosul in June 2014 and its broader attack on Kurdistan. The Kurdistanis took the brunt of the defence of Iraq by saving Kirkuk and, with a refreshed Iraqi army and coalition forces, by helping to liberate Mosul in 2017. I saw the Kurdistani army—the peshmerga, which means “those who defy death”—in action in Kirkuk and Mosul. The peshmerga were valiant allies in fighting a foul fascism, with British help, especially from the RAF. Kurdistani action reduced a serious threat to our own people in the United Kingdom.

It was deeply disappointing that the Iraqi Prime Minister “forgot” to thank the peshmerga at the UN, and that his reaction to a peaceful referendum in 2017 on the principle of independence, which I observed in three cities, was to violently seize Kirkuk, killing peshmerga. Baghdad closed international flights and even tried, unsuccessfully, to invade the autonomous region. All of that was a tragic indictment and demonstration of the very dysfunctional nature of the relationship between Baghdad and the KRG at the time, to say the least.

The all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq returned in 2018 to Kurdistan and for the first time visited Baghdad, where there was a stated desire to seek reconciliation. Sadly, the momentum has stalled due to the undue influence of Iran and its proxy militias and terrorist organisations.

Warfare and lawfare via a supreme court that has not been constitutionally established is destabilising and suffocating Kurdistan, and Shi’a militia attacks have targeted British and American military facilities at the main airport in Irbil.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we must not allow those elements, particularly in Iraq and in other locations, to replace what most of us want to see, which is democratic accountability in each of these regions and nations? They try to make it seem as though these are western values, thereby devaluing the independence of regions such as Kurdistan.

[Jack Lopresti]

I absolutely agree. We have to look only across the broader middle east, where we have seen in recent and historical events the malign influence of Iran, with its wish to diminish and extinguish any country or region that exemplifies the western values of freedom and democracy.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman’s expertise in and knowledge of the area of Kurdistan is always a joy to listen to. He has mentioned Iran and recent attacks. Does he agree that we, as a House, should show full solidarity with the Kurdish people against those attacks from Iran? Does he also agree that we need to start showing solidarity with a people who did more than anything else and had boots on the ground to take on Daesh and roll it back?

[Jack Lopresti]

Again, I completely agree. As we speak, we are seeing action being taken against Iran and its proxies. I will continue to elaborate on the fact that we must continue to support our Kurdish friends and allies.

Iran has attacked Iranian Kurdish camps and, more recently, the houses of two prominent businessmen on the laughable grounds that they were Mossad bases. In January, Iranian missiles killed Peshraw Dizayee, whose skyscrapers in Irbil symbolise his ambition to emulate Dubai. His baby daughter was killed, and more than two dozen were killed or injured. Iran is the main menace, so let us hope for regime change from below in Iran. I will come back to Iran at the end.

It does not help that the PKK terror group is taking actions to kill peshmerga, scupper good governance in key areas and attract Turkish military action. It would be better—and I think this is crucial—if British, American and other international allies stayed in Iraq with a military footprint of some measure, with Baghdad’s agreement, clearly, which would help to counter and deter ISIS and stabilise the country. We could also further train the peshmerga, as we are doing, and underpin the confidence of external investors. Negotiations on that began last year.

Baghdad is also drip-feeding budget payments to Kurdistan below the amounts stipulated by a clear political agreement. Its vital oil pipeline to Turkey remains closed after nearly a year, with the loss of billions. Teachers, police officers, nurses and the peshmerga are not being paid.

The UK supports a strong KRG within Iraq. Our excellent diplomatic mission has gone from strength to strength, with senior appointments and more staff, which makes it bigger than in many sovereign countries. Our Army and others are seeking to professionalise and unify the peshmerga so that it is completely controlled by the KRG and not by the two main political parties, which is a hangover from the civil war. Government control over the military and security apparatus is essential.

Bilateral relationships depend on people who are active over many years. Kurdistan’s high representatives in London, Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman and now Karwan Jamal Tahir, who is here today, have helped to inform us. Our now-voluntary APPG secretary Gary Kent has been active on this for nearly 20 years, and I pay tribute to his excellent work and fantastic contribution to UK-Kurdistan relations.

The diaspora is an asset, as are Anglo-Kurdistani activities such as those of the Gulan charity on culture. Trade bodies have encouraged investments in areas where our companies can add niche value. The University of London is set to establish a campus in Irbil and join three universities that teach in English, in a testament to the soft power of our language, history and higher education.

The Kurdistan region is only 32 years old and has further to go in overcoming the economic and political pathologies of its past and of the wider middle east. For more than half its existence, we have closely observed the ebbs and flows in Kurdistan’s fortune. It is too small to go it alone and too big to be ignored, but it operates in what its leaders call a tough neighbourhood, and even as a landlocked nation surrounded by sharks. It has previously overcome chauvinism towards it as a square peg in the round hole of Iraq, many of whose leaders do not accept the concept of a binational and federal state but prefer centralisation. For now, the centralisers, buttressed and supported by the malign Iranian regime, have the upper hand, but they need not triumph. That depends on Kurdistani diplomacy, crucial western support and internal reforms so that Kurdistan can be a subject rather than an object of history. However, we should not, and must not, put Kurdistan on an impossible pedestal where vice and virtue do not co-exist; we should be candid friends.

I will start with the pros. First, given its experience of exile and oppression, Kurdistan is open to those who flee from neighbouring areas. In 2014, its population soared by a third to accommodate 2 million displaced people from Mosul as well as Syrian refugees. One million remain in Kurdistan, whose generous care is exemplary. Secondly, Kurdistan upholds peaceful co-existence for people of all faiths, including Muslims, Christians, Yazidis and others. Its state institutions are secular and its religious faith moderate. Thirdly, Kurdistan is in the vanguard of women’s rights in the middle east. Firm action was taken to stamp out female genital mutilation and domestic violence, but it still often looks like a man’s world, which should change faster if Kurdistan is to unleash its fantastic potential. Fourthly, there is its modernised road network and digital highway. A railway from the Gulf to Turkey could one day boost jobs, trade and peacebuilding.

The cons apply across the middle east, where Kurdistan fares better in reality, but these defects are drag anchors on making Kurdistan match fit. First, the youth, as a majority of the population, seem disaffected, judging by falling electoral turnout. They have to be part of a patriotic renewal. Better higher and vocational education can prepare them for jobs that do not currently exist and opportunities that are coming. Secondly, the economy is dangerously dependent, for more than 80% of revenues, on oil and gas reserves and a bloated and unproductive public sector. The energy reserves are of strategic interest to the UK and the west generally, and I hope the Minister will comment on that. Thirdly, reliance on a volatile commodity crowds out a dynamic private sector, which can complement democracy and a thriving civil society. Fourthly, the scourge of corruption, in a region less industrial than the south, must be eliminated. The judicial system and dispute resolution—important for foreign investors—are immature, and there is an authoritarian approach to dissent and the media. That needs to be more professional and reliable. Britain could provide Kurdistan with more judicial, media, policing and commercial training.

The crisis in relations with Baghdad and the material basis of public services are driving more determined reform. The KRG seek to diversify their economy through more agriculture, tourism and light industry. Visitors marvel at the beautiful vast plains, rivers and mountains in the Iraqi breadbasket, plus the vibrant, growing cities. Kurdistanis say that they have “no friends but the mountains”. The APPG has sought to disprove that through 15 delegations with 50 parliamentarians and others. This is about not just solidarity, but a pragmatic calculation of the allies we need and who share our values. Kurdistan could have sided with Iran but has stuck with us in these very difficult and dangerous times.

Reform requires peace and stability, which Kurdistan lacks. I must end with a blunt warning about its current perilous plight. Kurdistan is completely defenceless, with no means of detecting or deterring missile and drone attacks or even of evacuating target areas. Iran and its proxies are victimising and attacking Kurdistan. The UK should help to stand up for and protect our dear friends, so that we have a strong KRG within a peaceful, stable, federal Iraq.

[Hannah Bardell (in the Chair)]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate.

09:44

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

We are here as friends of Kurdistan, but candid friends of Kurdistan. Over the years, I have worked with the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees—Dashty Jamal, in particular, as we are naming people. In my area, the Kurdish community stems from the 1980s, and particularly a group of Kurdish students who were at Brunel University when Halabja was gassed and we lost thousands of lives. Many remained and settled in the local community, making a major contribution to it. I have to say that, at the time that Halabja occurred, my Conservative predecessor supported Saddam Hussein—a disgrace to this Parliament.

As a candid friend and as a trade unionist, I raise two issues. The first relates to the teachers’ strike that is taking place. The second, because I am the secretary of the NUJ—National Union of Journalists—group in Parliament, is the treatment of journalists. The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) was straightforward about the suppression of dissent, the corruption and the lack of adequate judicial enforcement of the law at the moment, and we have to be straight with people.

I will briefly read from the letter that has come out from the Nationwide Council of Protesting Teachers in Kurdistan. The dispute has gone on for months and is causing immense concern and suffering for teachers and their families. The first paragraph is this:

“We, the Nationwide Council of Protesting Teachers, comprised of representatives from the 13 protesting border cities and towns, wish to inform you that after 130 days of civil struggle, boycotts, demonstrations, and the loss of an academic season, the KRG authorities, instead of meeting our basic demands…which include”

the return of fair

“promotion, recruitment of teachers, payment of salaries every 30 days, determining the fate of”

what they describe as “44 stolen” salary months

“are currently engaging in illegal, inhuman, and violent pressure and threats against teachers in general, and members leading protests in particular.”

What is happening in this dispute? It is a straightforward dispute about payment of wages. The teachers have not been paid for four months and, as a result, their families are on the edge of destitution in many instances. All they are asking for is payment of salaries on a monthly basis, resumption of the promotion of teachers and other employees in the education sector, and an end to the casual contracts that many have been forced to take recently.

I also have to comment on the politics—we have to be straight about that, too. The teachers want to stop what they describe as the meddling by the dominant parties in the affairs and work of Government institutions and particularly in the education system. Those are fair demands, which we should support, and I urge the authorities to come to a speedy resolution of the dispute, because it is infecting other areas of civil society and political life.

I raise the second issue on behalf of journalists. I am afraid that, for a long period—over the past five years in particular—there has been an issue with the treatment of journalists who have sought to report accurately and fairly on not only the activities of political institutions within Kurdistan but civil society affairs generally. According to the reports we are getting back, the crackdown has been fairly ruthless since 2020. It intensified about then because protests were taking place and journalists were trying to report those protests. We received reports through the union about arbitrary arrests and the forcible disappearing of a number of journalists.

It was not just the union; Amnesty did a report as well, and I found it deeply worrying. At the time, Amnesty said:

“The authorities in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq have launched a chilling crackdown in their efforts to silence critics over the past year”—

this was 2020. The report went on to say:

“They have rounded up activists and journalists, prosecuting them on trumped-up charges in unfair trials and harassing or intimidating family members who were kept in the dark about the status of their loved ones.”

That was from the then deputy director of Amnesty International for the middle east and north Africa.

These things have gone on. Amnesty investigated the case of 14 people from Badinan who were arbitrarily arrested between March and October 2020 by the KRG security and intelligence and Kurdish Democratic Party intelligence. That case was specifically connected to their reporting of the protests and to criticism from local authorities of their journalistic work. At that point—I am afraid that further evidence has now come to light—there was evidence of torture and ill treatment during detention in cells and of a number of confessions being extracted under duress. In fact, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders published the world press freedom index on World Press Freedom Day—which is on 3 May each year—and Iraq is ranked 167th for press freedom out of 180 countries. That is worrying in itself, but Iraq also ranks fifth out of those 180 countries for countries where journalists are killed and the killers escape punishment—that was from the renowned and respected report of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Iraq, including Kurdistan, is still one of the most dangerous areas for journalists to work in. Recently, alarms have been sounded about the renewal of the sentencing of journalists—with some sentences of up to six years in prison—and the renewal of sentences. I want briefly to highlight the cases of a number of individuals. Reporters Without Borders sounded the alarm about increased violations of press freedom and particularly about the renewal of the sentence of Sherwan Sherwani, which was described in the media in this country as being cruel and outrageous punishment. On 1 October 2023, the Irbil court sentenced journalist Gohdar Zibari to another six months in prison. The practice seems to be that six-month sentences are renewed fairly regularly; for him, that was the third time that his sentence had been renewed. Roj News reporter, Sulaiman Ahmad, whose lawyer and relatives are still not allowed to see him, was arrested in late October last year on charges of having links with the Kurdistan Workers Party—the PKK. That case was brought forward without any evidence. The relatives are asking for access and greater transparency about what evidence is being used to justify the arrest.

Arrests of journalists peak when demonstrations are taking place or when there are industrial disputes, such as the teachers’ dispute that is taking place at the moment. The targeting of journalists who are campaigning around those issues has been interpreted, by people locally and within the journalistic community globally, as another regime seeking to silence the voice of the people, as reported by those journalists.

There appears to be a lack of accountability through the judicial system. The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke made reference to the improvements that are needed to ensure that there is a fair and independent judicial system. I am afraid that, when it comes to journalists and trade unionists, there is a feeling that the judicial system is not independent or fair and that, in fact, it becomes a tool of politicians aiming to silence critics of their activities.

As has been said, the British Government have a particular relationship with Kurdistan and the Kurdish people because of our history and the activities that have taken place, particularly over recent years, to establish some form of Kurdistan and encourage its development as a democratic state that is accountable to its people. Unfortunately, some of the foundation stones of the democratic state we are hoping for, particularly with regard to the freedom of trade unions and journalists, are being undermined by the current regimes. As a result, I think the UK Government have a responsibility—in fact, I think it behoves us all—to make sure that we voice our concerns to the current Administrations and do all we can to put pressure on them to abide by certain basic democratic standards: the recognition of the freedom of trade unions and of the freedom of journalists to report without hazard, particularly to their physical security.

I urge the Government to make an honest reproach to the Kurdistan Administrations—to express our support for Kurds and for Kurdistan, but also to say very clearly that the standards at the moment are not good enough. One action that could be taken fairly quickly to reassure people that there is faith in the democratic process is the settlement of the teachers’ dispute and the protection of journalists.

09:55

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Yesterday, Ms Bardell, you and I were side by side in Westminster Hall supporting a cause we both have great interest in—funnily enough, the same Minister is in his place today. It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship now, and I give special thanks to the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) for highlighting the concerns he so rightly holds. It is also a real pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who always speaks up for journalists and freedom of expression in these debates, for which we commend him.

The discussion about the UK’s relationship with the Kurdistan region of Iraq is of great importance. The importance of our relationship with that region cannot be overstated, either diplomatically or—this will probably not be a surprise to many—in terms of freedom of religion or belief, and I will give some examples of that, because it is the core issue of my speech.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Iraq with Aid to the Church in Need. I did not go to Kurdistan, but I did go to Irbil and other parts. I have some understanding of what happens there, but I have a fairly big understanding of freedom of religious belief. I very much look forward to the contributions from the Minister, who is always helpful, and from the SNP spokesperson, my good friend the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), who I know is on the same page as me on this subject. I also very much look forward to the shadow Minister’s contribution.

With the current military strikes in the region by both Turkey and Iran-backed groups, UK support grows in importance. The area is unfortunately not new to armed conflicts, but it has also been a safe haven for religious minorities fleeing armed conflict in nearby areas and countries. Christians, Yazidis and Sunni Muslims have arrived in the region for protection from persecution in their previous homelands, but these minorities still lack legal protections and face persecution from authorities and society at large in the region. For instance, the Kurdistan Regional Government failed to substantially carry out the provisions of the 2020 United Nations-brokered Sinjar agreement to help stabilise the area and enable the return of Yazidis displaced by the ISIS genocide—it was genocide, and the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute has spoken about that many times through his all-party parliamentary group for the prevention of genocide.

There continue to be territorial and jurisdictional disputes between the Iraqi federal Government and the KRG, which has resulted in the seizure of land and businesses from Christians, but there seems to be no action whatever to address that. Additionally, targeted harassment has deterred many displaced Christians from returning to the area and has increased emigration. My question to the Minister is, how has the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland attempted to broach these displacements of religious minorities in Kurdistan? Over the past few years, Iraqi military forces have targeted religious minorities, displacing some 3,000 Yazidis who had already been displaced by recurrent Turkey airstrikes. Wherever they go, the Yazidis seem to be persecuted or under pressure, and I have to speak up for them today.

Have the United Kingdom Government or the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office attempted to broach discussions between Turkey and the KRG? If not, how will the Minister do that? Have the Government had further discussions with the Iraqi federal Government regarding the protection of religious minorities from rising conflicts and territorial disputes? We would all be keen to understand what has taken place and what more could be done.

The KRG has rightfully attempted to promote religious cohesion for more than 2 million members of religious minorities displaced from Iraq and Syria by conflicts with ISIS. However, some Christian groups indigenous to the plains of Nineveh—which I had the pleasure and privilege to visit some years ago—raised concerns over the KRG’s failure to resolve long-standing grievances, such as lack of KRG funding and other support for Assyrian-run schools; discrimination in employment and municipal services; and unresolved KRG-tolerated or initiated misappropriation of Christians’ land, businesses and other property. I say that again because it is important, and my job in this House is to raise these matters, to which I hope our Minister and Government can respond.

This issue must be addressed. Christian residents have cited their lack of security and threats from ISIS, the popular mobilisation forces and the KRG as the main drivers of emigration from the area, bringing their ancient communities almost to the point of extinction. This cannot go on.

What efforts has the UK has made to provide to the KRG aid and other support specifically for religious minorities? If we have not provided such aid, we need to. In August 2023, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan region, Masrour Barzani, reaffirmed the KRG’s commitment to supporting the rights of the Yazidis and emphasised the importance of the Sinjar agreement, so there is a willingness among some in Iraq and the area, and I encourage more of that. He also stressed that the Iraq federal Government need to meet the Kurdistan region’s financial entitlements. For instance, disputes over oil and gas are one way that religious minorities are suffering. Is aid going to the KRG to help with internally displaced people, and is it equally distributed among religious minorities? If it is not, it needs to be and should be. That is my plea on behalf of those people.

The Israeli-Hamas war has begun to spill over into the Kurdistan region because of Iranian missiles, and the individuals most vulnerable to increased violence and attacks are displaced religious minorities, as many Yazidis remain in internally displaced people’s camps. We have to reach out and help those people. I am proud of our representative Lord Ahmad and what he does around the world. He is a great spokesperson for the United Kingdom Government, because he believes in these things in his heart. On a recent visit, he emphasised the need to protect freedom of religion or belief and the importance of inter-faith dialogue. That is important anywhere in the world, but even more so here. I ask the Minister, how do we accomplish that in reality?

The United Kingdom has supported Kurdistan autonomy, and perhaps that is still the best route to ensuring the protection of religious individuals and the right to FORB. In February 2021, an early-day motion on FORB in the Kurdistan region of Iraq was tabled. It stated that

“religious leaders are frequently consulted by ministers and government officials”

of the KRG, but have those actions continued? I would appreciate the Minister’s response, if not today then in the usual fashion.

The KRG’s Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs focuses on:

“Establishing, managing and supervising mosques and religious sites and meeting their needs…Supervising, monitoring and investing in Waqf properties to grow their revenues…Supervising annual pilgrimages…to Mecca for citizens of the Kurdistan Region… Preparing a new generation of religious scholars with a modern, national education…Supporting and reviving various religious events”.

That is what the Ministry committed to back in 2021, and that is what it needs to re-commit to now. What communications has the UK had with the Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs about developing UK policies and relations in the area and protecting the rights of religious minorities? This is my plea on behalf of those who are subjected to persecution because of their beliefs—those with Christian faiths, with other faiths and, indeed, with no faith: they should all have equal opportunities, fair and equitable treatment, and opportunities in the region.

The UK’s close ties with the Kurdistan region place us in a unique position to help religious minorities, and we can and must do more diplomatically and practically. There is a twin goal: we can help them practically and physically with aid, but we need also to help them diplomatically and ensure that there is a core focus on human rights and the right of religious expression. I look to the Minister to outline how we can better engage and support minorities who are most at risk and most in need. I know the Minister is open to the idea of additional support, so I look forward to his response.

In conclusion, we have a responsibility. I believe there is scope for enhancing our success in achieving the aim of providing help and support. Perhaps we can look to the movement today as another step in the journey we are all on together. We might have different opinions, but we are all on the same journey of life. In this world we have a responsibility to speak up for others around the world. We have a great platform as elected representatives, so let us speak up on behalf of all those people. I know the Minister is always accommodating; we all appreciate that. When it comes to moving forward together, we can do good to all men and women across the region.

10:05

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Bardell. I, too, thank the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) for securing the debate and for the way he opened it. I also thank the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for contributing to what has been a well-informed and thoughtful debate on an important strategic relationship.

Although I reply on behalf of the SNP, I should point out that since 2016 I have been chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the Yazidis. Like many others, I have had the privilege of visiting the region. Indeed, it was exactly a year ago that I flew into Irbil and visited Duhok, Shekhan, the holy site of Lalish and several of the Yazidi IDP camps—a subject I will return to later. I put on the record my sincere thanks to the hon. Member for Strangford for raising the plight of Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in Kurdistan. As soon as I saw him in his place this morning, I never doubted for a moment that he would.

The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke spoke movingly of the hideous genocide of the 1980s in which tens of thousands died at the hands of Saddam Hussein. He was right to highlight the crucial role played by Sir John Major. Since 1992 the Kurdish people have enjoyed a democratically elected Government of their own, giving freedoms and rights to people that would have been unimaginable under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

Notwithstanding the very real concerns raised by the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington about the current situation in respect of journalistic freedom and the freedom of trade unions, rights and freedoms have been strengthened through the emergence of a raft of civic society organisations, non-governmental organisations and women’s groups, alongside an institutionalised tolerance for religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities. Following the fall of Saddam Hussein, the first independence referendum in 2005 saw 99% support for the creation of an independent Kurdish state.

[Chris Stephens]

As the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned, it was the actions of the Saddam Hussein regime that allowed a thriving Kurdish community to develop in Scotland—in Glasgow and Edinburgh, for example—and that is best celebrated by the election of Councillor Roza Salih, Scotland’s first refugee councillor and a woman of very proud Kurdish roots, and we are equally as proud of her.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I thank and agree with my hon. Friend. Councillor Salih is a shining example of a young refugee woman who has recognised that she has a contribution to make. We are very grateful that she has made and continues to make that contribution to Scotland.

Of course, the 2005 referendum did not lead to an independent Kurdistan, because of threats from neighbouring countries, but it did enshrine the autonomy of the Kurdistan region in the new Iraqi constitution, which promised the protections of autonomy and citizenship based on a federal, ethnically diverse and inclusive model with strong minority rights and guarantees against discrimination.

It will come as no surprise to anyone present that, like the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke, the SNP supports Kurds’ right to self-determination and to decide their own constitutional future. We fully understand why, despite having a degree of autonomy, the people of Kurdistan still want their independence. That desire was expressed again in no uncertain terms in 2017, with another referendum, in which 92% backed independence on a turnout of 72%. It would be foolish in the extreme for anyone to assume that that desire has gone away.

To quote the words of the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke ahead of the 2017 referendum, he sympathised with the Kurdish position and understood

“why the Kurds feel that federalism has failed and their belief that it cannot be revived.”

It is therefore essential that, in building a healthy, co-operative, mutually respectful relationship with the Kurdistan region of Iraq, the United Kingdom never loses sight of Kurds’ fierce desire for their own independent nation state. There is no doubt that today the UK Government have a key role in facilitating the development of a good relationship between the Kurdistan region and the rest of Iraq—one that helps to realise the economic potential of both and strengthens security and democratic Governments not just in Iraq but in the region as a whole.

We have seen in recent weeks that these are extremely worrying and volatile times for the whole region. Tension between the KRG and the federal Government in Baghdad has not gone away, and is currently being exacerbated by a fiercely contested dispute over the status of the province of Kirkuk and control of its oil fields. The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke was right when he said that against that backdrop, and the unfolding catastrophe in Gaza, there was a missile attack last month by an Iran-affiliated group that claimed to have hit an Israeli spy base near Irbil. It was a blatant and flagrant breach of sovereignty, which was rightly condemned by both the KRG and the federal Government. Of course, Iran has form, having already attacked Kurdistan in 2022 in response to protests following the death of a young Iranian Kurdish women, Mahsa Amini. Those attacks killed 20 people, including civilian women, refugees and children.

The long-running conflict between Turkey and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, which has seen tens of thousands killed in the last four decades, has never been resolved. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford again for raising the question of what exactly the UK can do to help to facilitate a deal between the PKK and Turkey. Anything the UK and its partners can do to bring stability, dial down tension, and crucially avoid any escalation would be extremely welcome right now.

Of course, Kurdistan is not just having to cope with external pressures. Internally, it is having to cope with the consequences of the war on Daesh and a mass influx of people fleeing that barbaric onslaught. In the attack on Sinjar and the appalling genocide of the Yazidis that followed, Daesh fighters killed thousands of men and boys, abducted male children to fight as child soldiers, and kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery Yazidi women and girls, 2,700 of whom are still missing today and whose fate we cannot ever allow to be forgotten.

Those who could fled, many to Kurdistan. They never expected to stay and have always yearned to return to their home in Sinjar to rebuild their lives, but that has not happened because of a lack of security and an all too real fear that although Daesh has been defeated militarily, the ideology that fuelled them is still very much alive. That has resulted in a refugee crisis in Kurdistan, with more than 120,000 Yazidis still living in dire poverty and makeshift camps almost a decade after fleeing their homes in Sinjar when Daesh attacked.

Just this time last year, I visited several of the internally displaced people’s camps with the humanitarian NGO Bellwether International, to see the conditions in which the Yazidi people are forced to live. It was a harrowing experience to see thousands of families living in row after row of plastic-sheet tents, and to see children born into those camps who know nothing else but growing up in those conditions—where their parents, and particularly their mothers, still live through the trauma they went through at the hands of Daesh.

The camps are desperate places in which people who want to return home are losing hope. I cannot escape the conclusion that the international community has completely abandoned these poor people and no longer regards their situation as an emergency, leaving it to the Kurdish Regional Government, NGOs and charities to look after them. In addition to all the other issues that have been raised by right hon. and hon. Members, I ask this of the Government: please do not forget or turn your back on the Yazidis stuck in IDP camps, and please be part of the search for a long-term solution that will allow them to return home, to rebuild their lives in security and safety.

10:14

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Ms Bardell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) on securing this debate. He has been to Kurdistan on a number of occasions and is chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq. I am one of the vice-chairs of the APPG, and I know that its members have a great deal of knowledge about the region and have visited Kurdistan several times. I hope to go there before too long. As I would expect, the hon. Member gave a truly comprehensive overview of the region, referring to its recent history and the good things that have occurred in Kurdistan, as well as outlining what needs to be addressed in the future.

We have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about the situation for teachers and journalists. I am certain that the Minister will have taken note of his comments and will respond to them.

We have also heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who spoke eloquently about the importance of religious toleration and freedom, and spoke in particular about the situation facing Christians and Yazidis, which was also referred to by the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara).

Although I have not been to Kurdistan, as the Member for a south Wales constituency, I have felt on occasions that I know Kurdistan quite well. I say that not because of its spectacular scenery, including its wonderful mountains, but because I was a good friend of the late Anne Clwyd, the former Member for Cynon Valley, who passed away last year. I knew Anne very well and I know she had a great affection for Kurdistan, and was well respected in the region. Indeed, her memorial service in Aberdare last autumn, which I attended, was also attended by Karwan Jamal Tahir and a senior Minister from the Iraqi Government. It was really important to have such a high representative of Kurdistan as well as a member of the Iraqi Government present at Anne’s memorial service.

The Kurdistan region in Iraq is known as the beloved north, because of its spectacular landscapes and relatively temperate climate. The region has tremendous potential, and the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke correctly highlighted the importance of developing the bilateral relationship between our two countries. Indeed, that was a common theme throughout all the contributions this morning.

There are around 200 British companies currently operating in the Kurdistan region, and I know that the British Government are keen to promote UK investment as best they can. As the hon. Member said in introducing the debate, educational links are also vitally important. The University of London is in the process of establishing a campus in Irbil, the capital of Kurdistan, which will join three other universities that already teach in English.

However, that is not to suggest that Kurdistan does not face significant challenges, because it does. The relationship with Baghdad could be much better. Oil exports from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey have been paused since late March 2023, and arbitration on this issue has been taking place. This is a vital issue, as oil accounts for 80% of the region’s income, and it is part of an ongoing dispute about finance. The constitutional position linked to it needs to be clarified as a matter of urgency.

A crucial part of the Irbil-Baghdad argument concerns disputed territories such as Kirkuk. The Kurdish governor of Kirkuk called on Kurdish forces to urgently reinforce their military presence, to save Kirkuk from ISIS in 2014, and then control its oil fields. After the disputed 2017 independence referendum in Kurdistan, those disputed regions and oil fields were retaken by Iraqi Government forces. I understand that there were violent protests in Kirkuk in the autumn of only last year, but the dispute is unresolved.

Another large and important issue is corruption. Corruption in the regional government’s administration and elsewhere in the county is a huge problem, although that must be kept in perspective, because it is suggested that corruption in other parts of Iraq is far more deep-seated. Nevertheless, corruption needs to be addressed and rooted out in a determined way.

As we have heard this morning, security is also an issue. Since the 1980s, Turkey has been engaged in military action against the PKK, formerly the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK. In October last year, Turkey launched a number of attacks, which have continued into this year. Although I appreciate that the Government recognise Turkey’s legitimate security interests in Iraq, I am concerned about regional instability. I ask to Minister to say a few words about the Government’s position on that.

There is also the issue of recent Iranian missile attacks. Only last month, Iran launched a missile attack targeting what it called an “Israeli spy base”. At least four civilians were killed and six injured in the strikes, according to the Kurdistan Government. Among the dead were a multimillionaire Kurdish businessman, members of his family and a senior Kurdish intelligence officer. I would appreciate it if the Minister provided us with an update on that attack and on relations with Iran.

In conclusion, I think we all agree that links between the UK and Kurdistan are strong and positive. We have a large Kurdish diaspora in the United Kingdom that makes a huge and positive contribution to our economy and culture. We also have an important relationship with the autonomous region of Kurdistan, as we have heard this morning. The important thing now is to develop and take forward that relationship, which will certainly be to our mutual benefit. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government intend to develop that relationship further, in line with their stated policy of supporting a strong Kurdistan region in a strong and unified Iraq.

10:23

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Leo Docherty)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) for securing this important debate. All colleagues will pay tribute to his long-standing interest in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and his work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group. I am here in place of the noble Lord Ahmad, who is the lead Minister, but who, being in the other place, cannot be here this morning, although he will take note of this debate.

I am grateful for the points raised across the House. We are all pleased to have in the Gallery His Excellency Karwan Jamal Tahir, who does such energetic and effective work to foster relations between the Kurdistan region and the UK. My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke rightly paid tribute to the excellent work over two decades of Gary Kent, who also joins us here. He has tirelessly promoted relations between the Kurdistan region and the UK over that time. It is very good to see him here.

Of course, the UK’s connection to the Kurdistan region dates back more than a century. It is of both tremendous historical weight and modern relevance. We continue to work closely together towards our shared aspiration for a secure, stable and thriving Kurdistan region of Iraq within a peaceful and prosperous Iraq. To respond to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke, I must start by extending my deepest condolences to those affected by the outrageous strikes on Irbil on 15 January, including the family of Karam Mikhael, a UK-Iraqi dual national. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the Foreign Secretary condemned it as callous and reckless. This was a callous and reckless attack by the Iranian regime; we are very clear about that. There is no justification for targeting innocent civilians, and these strikes were an unacceptable violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Foreign Secretary made this very clear to his Iranian counterpart when they spoke.

The Khor Mor gas field was also attacked on 25 January. The attack undermined efforts to build a more stable and prosperous future for the people of the KRI. As my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke laid out, we have seen an increase in regional attacks in recent months. Iran-aligned militia groups have targeted coalition forces across Iraq and Syria more than 160 times since 7 October. This is a trend that we are very concerned about and focused on. Iran bears responsibility for the actions of groups that it has long supported, and it must use its influence to curb these attacks and de-escalate regional tensions.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, democracy in the Kurdistan region of Iraq has been hard won in the face of adversity, and it should be celebrated and protected. Elections are a vital part of a thriving democratic process, and it is therefore disappointing that they have been delayed. We hope that everyone, including the relevant institutions in Baghdad, will work hard to ensure they can happen as soon as possible—indeed, before the Independent High Electoral Commission mandate expires on 7 July. The KRI’s semi-autonomy has been eroded since the unilateral referendum in 2017 failed to progress the region towards independence. The breakdown in relations between the two main political parties in the KRI, the Kurdistan Democratic party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, has had a negative impact on the region’s prosperity, security and stability. We therefore believe that Iraq is stronger and more stable when the Kurdish parties work together to play a constructive role in broader Iraqi politics.

The points that the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made about media freedom are well received. I can confirm to him that the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Middle East have raised our concerns about restrictions on media freedom with the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government. During Lord Ahmad’s visit to the KRI in March, he raised concerns about restrictions on media freedom with senior figures in the KRG. Our ambassador in Baghdad and our consul general in Irbil regularly meet Kurdish journalists, human rights activists and members of civil society to discuss their concerns and continue to underline the UK’s enduring commitment to human rights and freedom of expression. We are aware of the context, and we will continue to advocate for greater media freedom in the KRI in the context of Iraq as a whole.

Let me turn to oil exports—which the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) raised—and in particular exports through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline. We hope to see a sustainable and satisfactory resolution. The political and economic implications are grave and significant, and are therefore a source of deep concern to us. We hope to see things improve in the context of an improvement in Turkish-Kurdistan relations, and that is something that we will continue to advocate for in our diplomacy with both sides. We continue to encourage co-operation between Baghdad and Irbil, and to emphasise both to the Federal Government and regional government the importance of a stable constitutional arrangement that preserves the level of autonomy for the KRI that is laid out in the Iraqi constitution. We are clear about the constitutional obligations of the Federal Government.

As a leading member of the global coalition against Daesh, we have continued to support the Iraqi security forces and the Peshmerga, which was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke. We have worked with the Peshmerga to help it to tackle the threat from Daesh and build its institutional capacity. The coalition’s platform in Iraq is vital for its operations against Daesh in Syria as well, and as the threat evolves, it remains committed to ensuring the group’s enduring defeat, with an expanded NATO mission in Iraq and increasingly capable Iraqi security forces conducting effective and independent counter-Daesh operations. That independence is so very important. The UK welcomes the start of the higher military commission process, led by the US and Iraq, and we look forward to contributing meaningfully to it.

Our support for the development of the Iraqi security forces is in addition to the UK’s contribution to the NATO mission in Iraq. The training we provide to more than 110,000 members of the Iraqi security forces, including more than 20,000 members of the peshmerga, is hugely important. We should rightly be proud of that. The UK, alongside the US, Germany and the Netherlands, continues to support and advise the KRI’s Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs on its reform agenda. That agenda and the generation of an apolitical peshmerga are important and visible symbols of Kurdish unity, and it was encouraging that Minister Shoresh returned to office to lead the Ministry in November. We value that relationship.

Daesh atrocities over the past decade have left a grave and lasting legacy right across Iraq and in the KRI. The UK played a leading role in the establishment of the UN investigative team to promote accountability for crimes committed by Daesh, and we are committed to working closely with the Government of Iraq and the UN to support its work. Last year the UK formally recognised that Daesh committed acts of genocide against the Yazidis, an indigenous Kurdish minority mentioned at length by the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara)—that mention was welcome. Following that recognition, we continue to advocate for the full implementation of the Yazidi survivors’ law, which is crucial in securing justice for survivors and helping them to rebuild their lives. We are providing a further £100,000 this year to support the implementation of the law and a total of £300,000 over three years.

The funding will provide survivors with access to mental health and psychological support through local NGOs, so I am pleased to confirm for the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute that HMG have not forgotten about the Yazidis and will continue on that path. That is also important in the context of religious freedom, which I am grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for raising. It is important that Christians have the freedom of worship that is their constitutional right, and I am pleased to confirm that I will ask my noble friend Lord Ahmad to write with a full update, because he continues to advance that agenda actively and, as the hon. Gentleman knows, has a deep and sincere interest in the subject.

On aid, the UK has committed more than £400 million to Iraq since 2014, including supporting displaced communities in the KRI. It has provided food for more than 200,000 people and healthcare services for more than 6 million, so it is significant. Our flagship “Women’s Voices First” programme is helping to promote and support the role of women in preventing and resolving conflicts as well as playing more powerful roles in their communities in Iraq. There are terrific examples of female leadership in the political and civic space, particularly in Kurdistan.

The UK will build the capacity of the Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change, such as increasing water scarcity. That is of keen interest to the agricultural sector in Kurdistan. Over the past 12 months, high-profile visits by my colleague Lord Ahmad, the Minister of State for the Middle East, by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Edinburgh and by my right hon. Friend the Security Minister have helped to strengthen our partnerships and advance that important work.

The UK’s deep connection to the Kurdistan region means that we continue to argue for Kurdish unity and democracy. We call on Iran to use its influence to curb regional attacks and de-escalate tensions that risk further destabilising the KRI. Meanwhile, we continue to encourage co-operation between Baghdad and Irbil. We continue to support efforts to counter terrorism and to hold Daesh accountable for its atrocities, and we continue to build our efforts to advance progress towards a more secure, peaceful and prosperous future for the KRI, including through support for women, for peace and security and for measures to counter climate change, as I mentioned. It is clear from the tone of the debate and my comments we can be proud that the UK is committed to continuing our strong relationship with the KRI to ensure that its people can look forward to a more stable and prosperous future. I am grateful for the contributions to the debate.

10:36

[Jack Lopresti]

I thank all colleagues who made thoughtful, well-informed contributions. I am also grateful to both Front Benchers, the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) and my hon. Friend the Minister, and for the Government’s continued reiteration of their support for the Kurdish region of Iraq, our bilateral relationship and all the assistance in the fields mentioned by the Minister.

We have been candid friends and we are hugely supportive of and loyal to our Kurdish friends. Somebody once said to me, “Your best friends are not always the people who tell you what you want to hear”—people have said that to me more than once—but, in fairness to the Kurdish Government and the Kurdish people in northern Iraq, they are aware of the issues that they have and of where development and work are needed. We not only point that out, but we help and continue to provide help and support.

Finally, I implore the Government to maintain and enhance our military and security presence in the region. Too often in recent years, we have seen what happens when security and stability are not maintained through the rise of ISIS in 2014 and the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which, I believe, encouraged Putin to attack Ukraine.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the relationship between the UK and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

10:37

Sitting suspended.

Thames Water: Oxfordshire

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Relevant document: Oral evidence taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on 12 December 2023, on Thames Water, HC 402]

10:59

[Hannah Bardell (in the Chair)]

I will call Layla Moran to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of Thames Water in Oxfordshire.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I thank the Minister for being here to listen to my constituents’ concerns.

The River Thames is an integral part of life in Oxfordshire. Whether they are rowing, swimming, punting or walking, Oxfordshire residents love spending time outdoors and around our precious waterways. But our local environment is under threat, thanks in part to the shoddy performance of Thames Water. One constituent described Thames Water as a “disaster of a company”, and I am afraid to say that I completely agree. It dumps sewage in our rivers, fails to unblock drains, fails to fill reservoirs and does not deliver value for money.

It will come as no surprise that I start with the issue of sewage dumping. The statistics speak for themselves: across the network, Thames Water spilled sewage for 6,500 hours in the last nine months of 2023. Right now, sewage is flowing from treatment works at Combe, Church Hanborough, South Leigh, Stanton Harcourt, Standlake, Appleton, Oxford, Kingston Bagpuize, Drayton, Clanfield, Faringdon, Wantage and Didcot. There are 28—I will not go through all of them. It is like this every day. Sewage pollutes our waterways, damages the natural environment, and poses serious health risks to wildlife, pets and humans.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making a remarkably important speech and delivering it very well. We know about the issue because of testing, yet the testing in her area and mine is done by the water companies themselves—in my area, the north-west of England, by United Utilities—so there is a lack of confidence in my constituency, and I suspect in hers, about its reliability. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is wrong for the water companies to mark their own homework, that instead the water companies should be charged the full cost of that testing, that that money should be given to the Environment Agency, and that testing should be done independently, so that we can rely on it?

[Layla Moran]

I thank my hon. Friend for his campaigning on the issue at the national level; my constituents are grateful to him. I could not agree with him more. I will talk about bathing water status in a moment.

Residents set up a huge citizen science group so they could do the testing themselves. They worked with Thames Water at the time, but they wanted the Environment Agency to be properly funded so that it could do the testing and they could have that reassurance. It is not right to ask residents to do that work, and I share my hon. Friend’s scepticism about the water companies sticking to their word and doing the testing 100% correctly, given that it is in their interests to make it look like the issue is getting better.

A mother got in touch with me after her son was admitted to hospital with a water-based bacterial infection on his hand. He is a keen rower, and a blister became infected by dirty river water from the Thames in Abingdon. It is not just about humans: a number of constituents also got in touch to say that they are worried about their pets. Matthew recently contacted me after his much-loved greyhound, Roy, sadly passed away. Matthew is convinced that that happened as a result of Roy going into raw sewage as he was frolicking along on his normal walk, and the vet said that contaminated water cannot be ruled out as the cause of death. There has been a spate of such deaths in Oxfordshire, including in Eynsham and Wolvercote, and I wonder whether there have been any elsewhere in the country. We have tried to interrogate the Department and Thames Water about the issue, but they do not monitor how many animals—that is, pets—are getting ill. Thames Water has biodiversity targets, but to the best of my knowledge the Department does not look at the issue at all. I urge the Minister to do so.

Just beyond Oxfordshire, in the village of Charvil, in Wokingham, a local fisherman described seeing raw sewage float past the end of his fishing rod. It is just disgusting. When we think of frolicking about in boats and the classic English countryside, we do not want that image. Rowers should be worried only about freezing temperatures at this time of year, dog walkers should be worried only about how muddy their pets are when they get home and fishermen should be worried only about their catch. No one should have to endure raw sewage floating past them or risk getting seriously ill by doing an activity that they love. The Government, despite their frequent protestations, are not doing enough.

In Oxford, local campaigners and I fought hard for Wolvercote mill stream at Port Meadow to gain bathing water status. I know the Minister has a keen interest in this, because the River Wharfe in Ilkley, which was the first to gain that status, is in his constituency. We were very proud to follow his constituents and become the second. Indeed, the then Minister with responsibility for water, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), came to wade in it herself when the announcement was made in 2022.

However, at every single data collection point so far, Wolvercote mill stream has been classed as poor. If the water quality does not improve in the next three years, we will lose bathing water status. Despite bathing water status placing a legal duty on water companies to clean up their act, Thames Water continues to discharge sewage from the treatment works at Cassington and Witney, just upstream of Port Meadow. That means that the levels of harmful bacteria, including E. coli, are dangerously high.

The regulations clearly are not working. In April last year, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs promised legally binding targets on sewage dumping, yet nothing has come to fruition. The Government talk about progress in monitoring, but it is not good enough just to monitor the sewage that is flowing into our rivers; we need to stop it altogether. Areas such as Port Meadow simply cannot afford to wait. If it loses bathing water status, the blame will lie squarely with this Government. Has the Minister considered tougher targets for water companies, specifically in areas such as his and mine that have bathing water status? Will he look at introducing a targeted plan for bathing waters that are rated as poor?

This is not the first time that I have raised the issue, or raised it with the Minister. I asked to meet him back in December, after Port Meadow was first rated as poor. I thank his office, and I am sure we will find a time in the near future to discuss it in more detail. However, I am afraid to say that sewage dumping is not the only thing that I would love to chew his ear off about, because it is not the only area in which Thames Water is failing. Almost no part of Oxford West and Abingdon was unaffected by the flooding after Storm Henk in January. It is one thing to see floodwaters lapping at the door, to be scared and to have to decide what to take up to higher levels while trying to get the water out. That is scary enough, but for the residents of Lower Radley, blocked drains meant that they were not looking just at floodwater but at floodwater and sewage in their homes. That was a direct result of Thames Water failing to clear drains that we had been alerting them to for months because they were blocked; in fact, it had been three years since Thames Water had cleaned them. One resident wrote to me:

“This has been going on for some years with zero remedial action from Thames Water…utterly appalling!”

One couple who are suffering are in their nineties. They simply should not have to go through that misery time and time again. Fields, gardens and homes were flooded with water; meanwhile, residents in Farmoor noticed that the levels of the reservoir were low. Thames Water claimed that the level was normal for this time of year, but residents were confused because it seemed that the whole of Oxfordshire was under water except the reservoir. Thames Water said that “dirt and debris” in the rivers prevented abstraction, but one resident described the situation as the water company

“pooing in their own nest”.

Filling reservoirs in periods of heavy rainfall is vital for drought preparedness, but Thames Water’s refusal to invest in infrastructure and fix leaky pipes is putting that at risk. In the south-east, we regularly endure hosepipe bans in the summer; in the summer of 2022, the village of Northend in south Oxfordshire was forced to survive on emergency rations after its water supply stopped entirely. Yet Thames Water loses an estimated 630 million litres of water to leaks every single day—the highest it has been in five years. Thames Water cannot seem to put anything in the right place: there is sewage not in the rivers but in people’s homes, and water is leaking out of pipes while the reservoir’s level drops. It is not just gross; it is gross incompetence across the board.

My constituents are incredibly concerned that, despite that litany of errors, Thames Water is planning to embark on an enormous infrastructure project called the south east strategic reservoir option—known locally as the Abingdon reservoir. It is vast. It will cover an area of 7 sq km and have a volume of 150 million cubic metres. Local campaigners, such as the Group Against Reservoir Development, have raised a number of questions about the water demand projections used to justify this project, the environmental impact of the project and the safety measures that are in place to mitigate any risk of a dam breach. So far, Thames Water has failed to answer those questions. More importantly, however, my constituents simply have no faith that Thames Water has the wherewithal to undertake such a significant infrastructure project. In December, its auditors even warned that the water company would run out of money by April of this year without a serious cash injection from shareholders. Thames Water has been horrifically mismanaged, and there is no sign of that turning around. That is why I am calling for a public inquiry into its super-reservoir plans, to ensure rigorous scrutiny and transparency in their decision making.

It is all the more galling, in the middle of this cost of living crisis, that Thames Water announced late last year that water bills were set to rise by a whopping 60% over the next six years. That increase is to allow water companies to invest in infrastructure, which is something that they should already have been doing, and that they are now asking bill payers to do in their stead. The average household water bill will go up from £456 a year to an expected £735 a year by 2030. The price hikes are going to hit this year: water bills will increase by 6% above inflation in April.

People cannot afford it. They are already struggling; they are on their last 50p, if they even have that. They cannot cope with this. That is why Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats have started a petition calling on Thames Water to scrap this unfair price hike. What conversations has the Minister had with his departmental colleagues and the water company about the fairness of this hike? Is support in place for people who will simply not be able to afford the increase? We are not just talking about people who are on universal credit anymore. We are talking about people who go to work every day. They are in work, but they are in poverty, and this will just make the situation worse.

Do the Government seriously think that it is acceptable for taxpayers to foot the bill for the historical failings of Thames Water? Well, the Liberal Democrats do not. That does not just go for Thames Water; the whole system needs to be fixed. We need radical action. We need to protect our environment and bring down people’s bills. The Liberal Democrats are calling for England’s water companies to be transformed into public benefit companies. That is a new thing for the UK: it is not a social enterprise, as such, and it would mean a complete shake-up of the boards. Public policy benefits would explicitly be considered in the running of the water companies, putting a stop to the prioritisation of profit over our waterways, without the distraction of renationalisation. We want to see environmental experts and local community groups on the boards to ensure proper scrutiny and transparency. The concept is radical and new, and I would like to know whether the Minister has looked into it seriously because, if not, I would urge him to do so. We are also calling for a ban on water executive bonuses until sewage dumping stops, a sewage tax to fund the clean-up of the most polluted lakes, rivers and coastlines, and, ultimately, an end to sewage dumping altogether.

In our view, the Government have acted far too slowly and limply, as our rivers get dirtier and our water bills get higher. Knowing that it is happening is not enough; it is time for radical improvement. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s remarks about what the Government are going to do about it.

11:14

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Robbie Moore)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for bringing this incredibly important debate on the performance of Thames Water before the House.

Let me be clear: Thames Water’s performance is completely unacceptable, and it must take urgent steps to turn this around. Its customers deserve better, and I want to begin by assuring this House that improving the performance of all water companies, including Thames Water, and ensuring that they deliver for customers and the environment, are top priorities for this Government.

As has been raised in this debate, the performance data for Thames Water is stark. According to Ofwat, Thames Water is failing to meet its commitments to customers on eight of the 12 common performance metrics, particularly on ensuring a consistent supply of water and on its pollution instances, as the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon laid out for all to see. The Environment Agency’s findings tell a similar story, with Thames Water’s environmental performance at the worst levels since 2013, with 17 serious pollution instances in 2022.

The Government and regulators do not take underperformance lightly. As a result of failing to meet its performance commitments, Ofwat has directed Thames Water to return over £73 million to customers during the financial year of 2024-25, which is in addition to £51 million returned to customers during 2022-23. There are also ongoing investigations into compliance at sewage treatment works under way by both Ofwat and the Environment Agency. While it would inappropriate for me to comment further on the specifics of those proceedings, as they are currently under way, they are a clear example of robust regulatory action to hold water companies to account by not only Ofwat but the Environment Agency.

Ofwat has directed Thames Water to produce a service commitment plan. That will require Thames Water to publicly commit to a plan for how it will start to turn its performance around. Please be assured that regulators and the Government will scrutinise those plans in detail to ensure that everything possible is being done to get the company back on track with its service delivery, environmental performance, and ensuring that customers rightly get the good supply they deserve.

[Layla Moran]

I have been meeting with Thames Water on this issue for years now, and every time we meet, it has a plan. Every time we meet, there is a new bit to the plan or the plan has progressed a little bit. I hear now that there is a new plan: what will be different about it? It is everyone’s interest in this House to get this to work. Can the Minister assure us that this plan will actually deliver what people want?

[Robbie Moore]

I want to reassure not only the hon. Lady but every Member who has customers of Thames Water that the Government will hold the water company to account through the use of the regulators—the Environment Agency and Ofwat. I will shortly meet again with the new chief executive of Thames Water, which follows a meeting that the Secretary of State and I had with the CEOs of Thames Water and other water companies very recently. It also follows on from a meeting that the previous water Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), had back in November. We want to take all these concerns seriously and deal with surge discharges, supply interruptions and internal sewer flooding, which was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon.

I know that Thames Water is under no illusions as to the scale of the challenge. It has recently published its revised three-year turnaround plan to address some of the concerns raised today, and while we all understand that it will take time to turn performance around, I want to be clear that I expect to see clear and measurable progress being made by the company as swiftly as possible.

[Tim Farron]

I want to press the Minister on the point I raised with my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) a moment ago. The Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), said something encouraging the other week. He said it was not right that the water companies were marking their own homework in assessing the scale of the problem. Does the Minister agree with that? More importantly, will he give us some details on the testing? There are more than a dozen water company assets around Windermere, many of which are failing, but we only know that they are failing when the water companies actually do the testing. Should it not be the case that the water companies pay for the testing but leave the Environment Agency to actually do it, so that we can have confidence that the data is independent?

[Robbie Moore]

I will come on to that point as part of my speech. I also want to clarify that we only have to turn the clock back to 2010 to see that only 7% of storm overflows were monitored. For a Government and a regulator to hold water companies to account, they need 100% monitoring, which we achieved at the end of December last year. That is 100% monitoring of storm overflow discharges compared with only 7% in 2010.

I want to pick up on some of the specific points made by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon on bathing water status. I know how important this issue is, having campaigned in my constituency for a bathing water designation on the River Wharfe in Ilkley. The hon. Lady rightly raised the issue of the “poor” classification on her bathing water designation. I know the challenges of that, since my local bathing water designation is still classed as poor. As we both recognise, that is why it is incredibly important to have a specific plan to tackle improving the designations poor, sufficient, or even good, to bring them to an excellent rating.

At Wolvercote, the Environment Agency is currently undertaking a nationally funded joint bathing water investigation, both in Yorkshire and in the Thames region, including enhanced monitoring and DNA sampling. That will help the Environment Agency find the sources of bacterial pollution and develop plans specifically on a local catchment area approach to address them.

Thames Water also has a role to play in fixing the problem. That is why, as part of its business plan from 2025 onwards, it will identify and address additional actions needed to improve the quality of the bathing water site, which the hon. Member referred to. Although those business plans are subject to scrutiny by Ofwat, to ensure value for money for customers, I welcome those positive steps to protect people and the environment.

I want to pick up on some points made about data. We must remember that bathing water quality in England has improved significantly due to robust regulation and strong investment. In 2023, almost 90% of designated bathing waters in England met good or excellent standards. That was up from 76% in 2010, despite stricter standards being introduced in 2015.

To address the point on storm overflows: the frequency and duration of storm overflow discharges in the Thames region is completely unacceptable, though it would be unrealistic to suggest that the issue can be simply turned around overnight. Independent estimates show that eliminating all discharges nationally would cost between £120 billion and £600 billion, increasing water bills between £271 and £817 per annum by 2049.

Our storm overflows discharge reduction plan is the most ambitious plan to address storm overflow discharges in water company history, delivering £60 billion of capital investment by 2050. The Government have also driven water companies to ensure that 100% of storm overflows, of which there are about 15,000, have been monitored. Furthermore, our plan for water, which is delivering more investment, stronger regulation and tougher enforcement to clean up our water, makes a step change in how we will manage our waters, delivering for customer bill payers and for our environment.

I also want to pick up on supply interruptions, which the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon referred to. I know that customers in Oxfordshire and the wider Thames region have experienced multiple supply interruptions, largely as a result of adverse weather, in the past 18 months. I understand how frustrating that can be for customers. Water companies must by law ensure a continuation of water supply throughout an emergency. Plans must cover a range of risks and include the provision of alternative water supplies. Those requirements are set out in the security and emergency measures direction 2022.

I wish to assure hon. Members and the House that, during any incident, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs engages closely with water companies to obtain accurate and timely updates on the scale, impact and response, to ensure incidents are being resolved as swiftly as possible, and that impacted customers—particularly vulnerable customers—have access to alternative sources of water, such as bottled water, when a supply interruption takes place.

I understand how pressing a problem this is for affected customers, particularly in the Thames region. For that reason, this is another issue I will raise directly with the chief executive when I meet him shortly, as we have done in relation to recent supply interruptions in the Reading area.

The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon mentioned storm Henk. Extreme weather can also lead to sewer flooding, such as that experienced during storm Henk in January. I understand how difficult and distressing it can be for the public when sewage gets into their gardens and properties. Indeed, recently I spoke to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris); although her constituency is not in Oxfordshire, she has constituents who are part of the Thames Water region. We specifically talked about Lambourn in her constituency, where again Thames Water’s response to an incident has not been sufficiently robust. I expect the chief executive of Thames Water to update me on what it is doing in Lambourn when it is dealing with surface water flooding.

I want to be very clear that any sewer flooding is unacceptable and that Thames Water has reassured me that it plans to invest £1.12 billion in 250 sewage treatment works between 2025 and 2030, including those in Oxfordshire, to increase capacity to prevent sewer flooding from happening again. Ofwat will also assess internal sewage flooding inside people’s homes as a core performance commitment and where companies fall short of that metric they will be required to return money to customers under Ofwat’s outcome delivery incentives.

The hon. Member mentioned Abingdon reservoir. There is obviously a clear need for the water industry to improve the resilience of water supplies through new water resources infrastructure. Abingdon reservoir is subject to ongoing assessments, which will continue in the future, to develop the design and to understand the impacts of the scheme. Thames Water will need to ensure that any scheme that it builds will not only possess the resilience that we expect within its supply systems but has proper environmental benefits that can be demonstrated to its customers. Of course, any new development of this nature must also provide at least 10% biodiversity net gain, which again must be capable of being demonstrated.

Although the hon. Member did not mention it, I am also aware, from speaking to Members with constituencies that neighbour hers, about Witney sewage treatment works, so I will just use this opportunity, given that time permits, to provide an update on that. I am aware of the discharges from Witney sewage treatment works and the impact they have had on local communities. I share Members’ concerns about that and I want to reassure them that the Government and the regulator will take robust action on pollution incidents.

A criminal investigation into sewage discharges at Witney is currently being conducted by the Environment Agency, regarding significant sewage pollution incidents impacting the Colwell Brook and Emma’s Dyke downstream of Witney sewage treatment works. This was brought to my attention by the Solicitor General, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts). Although it would be inappropriate for me to comment in any detail, because this is an active investigation, there are significant consequences when water companies pollute the environment. For example, in July 2023, following an Environment Agency prosecution Thames Water was fined £3.3 million for discharging sewage that caused significant environmental impacts.

I also wish to assure the House that the Environment Agency is ensuring that treatment capacity at Witney sewage treatment works is increasing, meaning that the site will be able to treat more sewage before using its storm tanks, which will reduce the risk of pollution in the future. That work is due to be completed by 31 March 2025.

Furthermore, the Government are strengthening regulation. The Environment Agency can now use new powers to impose unlimited penalties, raising the previous cap from £250,000. This change came into effect at the end of last year and it will apply to water companies for a wider range of offences, following the Government’s changes to broaden the scope of the existing civil sanctions regime to remove the previous cap on penalties.

We are also increasing funding for the Environment Agency. Its funding was raised by both Members who have spoken today. We are providing £2.2 million per year specifically for water company enforcement activity, so that robust action is taken against illegal breaches of storm overflow permits. Both hon. Members said that the Environment Agency was not being given enough money, but I can reassure both of them and the House that, as I say, an additional £2.2 million per year is being given specifically to the Environment Agency to carry out enforcement action.

I have tried to go through all the points that have been raised, but I want to be as robust as I can. For the reasons that I have set out, it is therefore critical that all water companies, including Thames Water, clean up their act, behave transparently and take urgent action to improve their performance when they fall short. If they do not do these things, the Government will not hesitate to hold them to account.

Question put and agreed to.

11:30

Sitting suspended.

Mindfulness in Schools

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[James Gray in the Chair]

14:30

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered mindfulness in schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray. Hon. and right hon. Members present today will no doubt be aware of the tragic case of the 16-year-old schoolgirl, Brianna Ghey, who was murdered in my constituency a year ago this coming Sunday. What they may be less aware of, and this is something I hope to remedy today, is the campaign that was set up in the wake of one of Warrington’s darkest days by her mother, Esther Ghey. The Peace in Mind campaign, working with the Warrington Guardian and with the support of our community, has fundraised over £50,000 since September to bring mindfulness into schools in Warrington. Today, our ask is that the Government commit to bringing that into all schools.

That ask sits within the wider national context of a mental health crisis facing our young people, and an NHS ill-equipped to meet the demand. Alongside that, schools are seeing a crisis in recruitment and retention, with a record number of teachers leaving the profession last year, and more than 3 million working days of sick leave taken last year—a rise of more than 50% compared with pre-pandemic levels. Teachers and school staff are struggling, just like their pupils. While I do not claim that mindfulness is a panacea, I think we can clearly demonstrate that, first, it can be part of the solution to these twin crises, and secondly, the necessity of the Government to act.

Mindfulness programmes are becoming increasingly popular in schools and educational settings worldwide, with a growing quantitative evidence base emerging from research studies. Mindfulness in schools is about introducing children to skills as early as possible to support their lifelong wellbeing. It has benefits for educators, too, including stress regulation and reduction, increased self-compassion and teaching efficacy. Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, who is considered to be the godfather of modern mindfulness, said:

“Mindfulness means intentionally paying attention to present-moment experience, inside ourselves, our minds and bodies, and in our environment, with an attitude of openness, curiosity, kindness and care.”

That has never been more needed. Emma Mills, headteacher at Birchwood Community High School in Warrington North, wrote in the Times Educational Supplement:

“Lockdown has had a profound effect on our young people: significant social and educational milestones missed; an increased reliance on social media and the online world. We had already seen the challenges and negative influences of social media in schools long before Covid, but lockdown has exacerbated these ten-fold.

Attendance in schools is shockingly low, and safeguarding concerns are through the roof, as are mental health concerns. We are seeing a generation of children who lack empathy, lack resilience and for whom mental health problems have become part of everyday life.

Anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation have become part of our teenagers’ vocabulary…It is an unforgiving world full of trolls, hate and vitriol. It is a world we cannot remove or escape, so we need to make sure—

our young people—

“are equipped to deal with it.”

The Mindfulness Initiative’s 2021 report, “Implementing Mindfulness in Schools: An Evidence-Based Guide”, draws on earlier research, including the 2015 “Mindful Nation UK” report from the all-party group on mindfulness, and lays out a robust framework for mindfulness-based interventions in education. I am happy to provide a copy of that report to all interested Members and the Minister. It notes:

“Positive outcomes for children and young people include improved psycho-social and physical health and wellbeing, reduced mental health problems (including stress and depression), and improved social and emotional skills, behaviour, cognition and learning and academic performance.”

Mindfulness trains students to understand and direct their attention with greater awareness and skill, which can improve the capacity of children to focus and concentrate, with less distractions, and develop their working memory and ability to plan. It can help them to recognise worry, manage difficulties and cope with stresses like exams. Self-regulation can help to manage impulsivity and reduce conflict and oppositional behaviour. Although it should not be used as a disciplinary tool, it can help to take the heat out of a situation by providing greater space between stimulus and reaction, and helping a student to understand their feelings, behaviours and the choices they are making.

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

I declare an interest as co-chair of the all-party group on mindfulness, who wrote part of the report, which I am delighted she is reciting. More than 300 parliamentarians have been on mindfulness courses in this place, to great benefit. The hon. Lady is very welcome to come on the one that is starting in a couple of weeks’ time, as indeed are you, Mr Gray—I am sure it will do you a lot of good.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. You must be brief.

[Tim Loughton]

On this specific point—and it is good that something constructive is coming out of this whole ghastly episode of Brianna Ghey, with the great work that her mother is doing—does the hon. Lady agree that, in schools, it is important that mindfulness is an all-school approach and that it is not used just for certain young people with problems? It is important that mindfulness in schools is enjoyed entirely as a whole-school approach and that it is non-judgmental. That is what makes it so popular.

[Charlotte Nichols]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Indeed, he wrote a fantastic foreword to the report to which I drew the House’s attention. He is right about the whole-school approach, which I will come to later. I am sure that Mr Gray and I, and other hon. Members present, will be pleased to learn more about the sessions that the APPG on mindfulness is running.

Warrington North is only a short drive from the Welsh border. This policy has already been introduced by the Welsh Government as part of the curriculum for wellbeing. Although that is a long-term strategy, early indications from Wales and the schools in Warrington have been positive in the short and medium term.

Beth, a reception teacher trained through Mindfulness for learning, said:

“Mindfulness has become part of the children’s daily routine and we teach children breathing techniques to support their regulation but I was not aware how the course would impact my own well-being. I now have an understanding of the importance of mindfulness and how it allows and teaches me to respond rather than react to different aspects of my day. Now having personally experienced mindfulness as a practice, it has had a positive influence on my teaching.”

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

As the hon. Member’s constituency neighbour, it is great to see Esther in the Public Gallery today, as well as Tom from the Warrington Guardian, when we are discussing this issue in Parliament. When Esther and I met Dr Jain at the Appleton medical centre, we talked about the overall benefits of mindfulness for the general health of the population. Although we are talking about this in schools, there are real benefits beyond schools. Training young people for these skills for the future will benefit many people over many years. Does the hon. Member agree?

[Charlotte Nichols]

I thank the hon. Member, my next-door constituency neighbour, for that intervention, and I completely agree. That is why this practice should start in primary school. Developing those skills very early on in a person’s life can set them up to have those skills through their life, and I think we will see the benefits of these mindfulness-based interventions throughout people’s lives. This is a long-term plan and strategy. We will not necessarily see many of the benefits right away, but we know we are storing up positive outcomes for the future in a range of areas.

A headteacher from one of my secondary schools told me that embedding a culture of mindfulness was

“changing the way we deal with behaviour incidents, taking away reactivity and helping students and staff to calm down to the point we can better engage about what’s going on. When kids are in isolation, it’s a really useful tool for helping them to reflect and taking the heat out of situations, and guiding them to make better choices”.

Research shows that three features are particularly important to effectiveness and sustainability: the quality and experience of the teacher’s mindfulness practice, how a programme is implemented, and the use of a whole-school approach. Mindfulness is not just about discrete lessons, but should be in the form of a mindfulness thread that runs throughout the day—the way we respond to each other, the way we move around and the way we build relationships, eat food, exercise, and so on.

Sessions on mindfulness in the curriculum are a way to build and develop the skills needed to take it into the rest of the school day and the school’s ethos. It is about giving teachers and school leaders the training and support they need through the postgraduate certificate in education curriculum and in continuing professional development, to be able take it and adapt it to best suit the needs of their school community, which is vital. While we believe the cost implications would be modest, the evidence supports our view that this would pay for itself over time by reducing some of the burden on mental health services, freeing up capacity for more acute cases and providing dividends on the associated costs of unmet mental health need over the long term. This is an investment worth making for the future.

I want to put on the record my thanks to the community in Warrington who, during a cost of living crisis, have dug deep to support this campaign, working with the Mindfulness in Schools Project. I thank the Warrington Guardian and Tom Bedworth in particular; Warrington Wolves; the Warrington Wolves Charitable Foundation, Warrington Borough Council; the business community, including the EngineRooms, Sam Small Ink and Twinkle Time Melts; and all those who have fundraised, including on Wear Pink for Peace Day in November on what would have been Brianna’s 17th birthday. I thank the schools in Warrington, which have gone into this with open minds and hearts, and, in particular, Brianna’s school, Birchwood Community High School.

Above all, I want to thank Esther. Brianna Ghey was sassy, beautiful, kind, courageous and authentically herself. She was loved fiercely, and her death was unspeakably tragic. No parent should ever have to bury their child, but to have gone through what Esther has and to have the drive to seek positive change in the wake of that takes extraordinary courage and compassion. Esther is perhaps the most remarkable person I have ever met. She does not want the sympathy or pity of those here today, but a commitment to stand alongside her and our community in Warrington to deliver a lasting legacy for her daughter. We want to promote empathy, compassion and kindness throughout society, and I hope today’s debate brings us one step closer to achieving that, with a modest, evidence-based ask to put mindfulness on to the national curriculum for the benefit of pupils, staff and our country.

14:42

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Gray, and a genuine pleasure to follow the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols). I too am deeply moved by the response of Esther Ghey to the outrageous murder of her daughter. Her example of compassion and the determination to see the good in others and to demonstrate forgiveness to others is a sobering rebuke and a deeply moving thing, which will do vast amounts of good—it has certainly affected me.

I want to address the issue before us because the issue of wellbeing among our young people is at crisis levels. In the time I have been in Parliament, I have recognised emerging issues through the volumes of casework I receive on particular issues over time. Undoubtably, the biggest spike in issues raised, casework correspondence and conversations I have with people in my constituency is around young people’s mental health. The word “crisis” is bandied about too freely, but it feels like we have a crisis. We could say with some accuracy that people feel more free to talk about mental health and wellbeing these days, whereas perhaps they were more buttoned up a generation or two ago. That is a good thing, but it is also blindingly obvious that we are in an era where our society and culture breed shockingly bad mental health, for a variety of reasons.

It is easy to point the finger at social media and the internet, but I think it has a lot to do with it. In the 1960s, Andy Warhol famously declared that in the future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes, but he didn’t know the half of it. Every kid is famous all the time now, if they want to be, and scrutinised, and observed, and feeling judged and maybe being judged at every moment. To put it slightly trivially, when I was 15, if I made a prat of myself over a girl, eight people knew about it and I got over it. Now, however, that sense of shame, for something that is perhaps very minor, can end up being multiplied and can even cause people lasting and sometimes fatal damage. So, I am deeply concerned about the situation within our culture today and I want to look for solutions that I think will have an impact and make a difference by building resilience for our young people—not only the young people of tomorrow, but the young people of today—as they grow into adults.

Being a Member of Parliament for a constituency with something like 25 outdoor education centres has given me a real sense of the impact of the outdoors on people’s wellbeing and mental health. Outdoor education can take place in so many different ways, but there is no doubt that being active and being outside, which should be common sense for a happy childhood, is unfortunately missing from many if not most young people’s experiences, especially those living in the more deprived communities in our country. It is integral to physical and mental health, and to happiness and wellbeing—we can call it mindfulness. But however we decide to describe it, access to the outdoors is absolutely crucial.

Two years ago, an NHS report found that fewer than half of our young people in the UK met the Chief Medical Officer’s recommendation that young people should engage in 60 minutes of physical activity each day. So it is perhaps no surprise that over 20% of children between eight and 16 have a probable mental health disorder, so described, and that nearly a quarter of year 6 children are considered to be obese. Our physical and mental wellbeing are hugely impacted by the amount of outdoor activity that we are able to engage in.

Outdoor activity can be delivered through forest schools, or through the decision of a school in an urban or rural setting to make use of outdoor learning opportunities, or it can be in a much more specific, out-of-school residential outdoor experience. Such interventions are greatly significant and the evidence base for their value is huge—so much so that we need to make outdoor activity a priority for children. I will come back to that point in a moment.

It is often said, is it not, that it would be great if we stopped fishing people out of the river and stopped them falling in the water in the first place. If we are able to build young people’s resilience, we will hopefully tackle the number of people who are in crisis.

In our part of the world—south Cumbria—child and adult mental health services are run by wonderful people but far too few of them, so they are in desperate circumstances. I know of young people who suffer from eating disorders who were basically told, “Go away and come back when you’re skinnier, or thinner, or more ill, because we haven’t got the resources to help you at this point.” That would never be said to someone with cancer—“Come back when you’re more sick.” We need to help people at the point that they need us.

A constituent in the know told me just last week that autism assessment in south Cumbria has a waiting list of two years. We have shortages of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, specialist nurses and appropriate beds. In south Cumbria, we have no dedicated separate crisis team for young people within CAMHS. We have people who are therapists and who have been drawn into the crisis work, but doing that means they are dropping or reducing the number of people they see on their regular lists.

All these things need to be fixed, but this debate is a reminder that we would put less pressure on CAMHS if we were able to develop people’s resilience and stop them from getting into a mental health crisis in the first place.

I hope that people will forgive me for taking advantage of this debate in this way, but I also hope that what I am saying is relevant to it. By the way, the Minister’s friends are also friends of mine—Sam Rowlands, a Member of the Senedd, who I think I am right in saying represents north Wales, and Liz Smith, a Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament. Sam, Liz and I have teamed up to present separately in each of our three Parliaments, Bills that call for outdoor education to be put more front and centre. In particular, my Bill asks that every child, at primary school and at high school, should be given a guaranteed week-long funded residential outdoor experience.

I am not saying that such trips are the answer to everything, but research shows that at the end of five days on an outdoor residential trip with their teacher, a child has built up more rapport with that teacher than they would in an entire 12-month period in the classroom. It is not just about the experience of being away in the lakes or north Wales or wherever it might be; it means that, when that child goes back to school for boring old maths—sorry—on Monday, they are much more likely to listen, learn and be happy at school. They will develop a sense of teamwork, build resilience and learn things about themselves that they did not know. They will gain an understanding of how, when they are in an uncomfortable position, to get themselves out of it, and build skills that will be of lifelong value and give them lifelong comfort with and enjoyment of the outdoors. That will mean that they will choose to spend time in the outdoors throughout their childhood, as they grow older and into adulthood.

It is a relatively inexpensive ask, so I would ask the Minister for Schools, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), to seriously consider adopting my Bill—it is all his; he can take credit for it. Also, I would ask both Labour and Conservative colleagues present to please have a word with their colleagues in the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament to back Sam and Liz’s Bills in those places, too.

[Andy Carter]

I have listened very carefully to what the hon. Member has said, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. We think of schools as places that will set our children up academically and prepare them for the jobs that they will face in the future, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that schools, along with input from parents, are great places to think about the digital world that young people will live in. Mindfulness and the way that we challenge and think about how young people respond to the pressures that will sit on them should form part of the curriculum.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be short.

[Andy Carter]

I very much agree with the hon. Member about time spent outside, but it is when you are inside the classroom that some of the techniques picked up outside can really be beneficial.

[Tim Farron]

I do not want to go off topic too much, but I think that that is very important. One issue with youth provision of all kinds is the question of who draws it up and plans it—old people. The problem is, for people from my generation, the internet did not come along until their mid-20s. We are writing plans and looking at a world that we do not experience in quite the same way as young people, so it is crucial that young people are integral in the co-design of such programmes. These are their challenges, and we need them to lead on them.

I want to make a really practical point. If we want more young people spending time outdoors, engaging with outdoor activities, building their resilience and a love of the outdoors—if we want to tackle mental health issues at source—there is a really simple thing we could do. It might sound particularly odd, but this came up when I was at the Institute for Outdoor Learning conference two weeks ago in Ambleside in my constituency, where I had the privilege of speaking and, more importantly, of meeting lots of professionals. One of the key barriers to people making use of outdoor learning is that teachers can drive a 17-seater minibus, under 3.5 tonnes, with a section 19 permit and MiDAS training, but if teachers are required to gain a full D1 licence —this is really crucial; it is a linchpin—the cost and time involved and the pressures of the school environment create a huge barrier. Therefore, people do not take their kids on those trips. If we can tackle some of the barriers that stop people experiencing outdoor education, that would be a big step forward.

I will put one final point to the Minister before I finish. We are having this debate, in part, because of an appalling, unspeakable act of hate. I want us to do things with our young people that instil a sense of understanding difference and loving others, and that will lead them to seek to put themselves in other people’s shoes and genuinely love their neighbours. The Minister will know this because I am in communication with him and am delighted to say that we will soon, I think, meet representatives of the Lakes School and the ’45 Aid Society. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, the ’45 Aid Society is made up of the families of the holocaust survivors who were brought to Windermere in 1945. Half of the children who escaped the death camps in Europe came to Windermere—to Troutbeck Bridge, to be precise—where they were rehabilitated and began a new life.

I freely admit that my communities are in one of the least diverse bits of Britain, but the fact is that we have the legacy, between Windermere and Ambleside, of those boys who came from such a hideous experience to be rehabilitated, welcomed, loved here and sent off to do good things in the world. The prospect of a school rebuild and a lasting memorial on the site of the Lakes School is now within touching distance, so I hope the Minister would be prepared to meet—I think he said he would be—with myself, the school leaders and the representatives of the ’45 Aid Society so that we can have something at the centre of our community that helps to teach people around the country of the importance of loving people, even if they are not the same as we are.

To finish, I pay tribute to Esther Ghey for what she has said—particularly in recent times—and to the hon. Member for Warrington North for securing this debate. I would encourage us all to think about practical ways to ensure that we prepare our young people for the world ahead of them—building resilience and doing those things that we know in advance will work and make a difference.

14:55

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for raising this massively important issue, and for finding what I felt was the right way to deliver a difficult speech to this House that encompassed all the thoughts we have. I commiserate with the Ghey family here today, who I spoke to beforehand. The interview on Sunday was incredibly emotional, and I said to the shadow Minister on the way into this debate that it was compulsive viewing—when it came on TV, I could not let it go. It was hard for me to watch, but it was harder for the family here today. They are very much in our thoughts and our prayers, and I commend them.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) mentioned the Windermere Children. We had some of them come to my constituency in Strangford; they went to McGill’s farm, down the Drumfad Road. Some of those people married and continued to live and express themselves in my area. I know the McGills who own the farm, and I have been there many times. The old stone buildings are still there where those young Jewish children stayed and were given an opportunity to live a new life in Northern Ireland. Many of those children’s families—including probably their parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts—were murdered by the Nazis.

The pressure that children are under today is immense. I have said to my wife, Sandra, many times, “I wouldn’t like to be a young child growing up today.” I say that honestly, because I see pressures that young people have on them today that I know I did not have growing up—and I say that as a father of three sons and a grandfather of six grandchildren. I am conscious that my sons’ generation faced different pressures, and my grandchildren’s generation face even more pressures, which I find incredibly difficult. Exam pressure and social media expectations are two of those pressures. The mental load that is being carried by our children is absolutely incredible, and for some it is unbearable. Therefore, the support available to them must be equally incredible to match that load and help young people get past the problems they are confronted with.

No longer do we deal with bullies in the schoolyard or on the way home, although in some instances that does still happen; now bullies invade the home through social media—from beyond the keyboard. It is little wonder that we find ourselves in the position we are in, with adult burdens lying heavily on children’s shoulders. That is what is happening in many cases.

I look forward to the shadow Minister’s contribution, because I believe the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) is someone who will encapsulate our thoughts. I also look forward to the speech of our very understanding Minister, who I know grasps the depth of the concerns that we have as elected representatives about how we express ourselves. As you know, Mr Gray, I always try to give a Northern Ireland perspective to these debates, because what is happening in Northern Ireland is replicated across the United Kingdom—the problems we have about mindfulness in schools, and some of the things we are doing. I must say, there are some things that we could probably do better back home.

In October 2020, the Health and Social Care Board in Northern Ireland released the results of its youth wellbeing survey into children and young people’s mental health, which found that the rates of mental health disorders in Northern Ireland are broadly in line with the countries in mainland UK, so what we are talking about can be replicated in all our constituencies. It also outlined that the rates for anxiety and mood disorders were slightly higher in Northen Ireland than in the other countries, and I know the Minister and his civil servants will take note of that. For example, one in eight young people met the criteria for a mood or anxiety disorder. Panic disorder was the most common diagnosis, followed by separation anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder. It is hard to find the right words to describe the pressures our young people are under.

One in eight children and young people in Northern Ireland have experienced emotional difficulties. In the five to 10 age group, boys were more likely to have experienced emotional difficulties, whereas in the 16 to 19 age group it was girls. Again, the stats are slightly different, but they show that, regardless of whether somebody is a young boy or a young girl, these pressures are on them.

An adverse childhood experience is a traumatic event that occurs in a child or young person’s life before the age of 18. Incredibly worryingly, the youth wellbeing survey found that close to one in two young people aged 11 to 19—almost 50%—have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience. That could be the experience that affects them most of all. It could be parental separation or parental mental health problems—all these things can contribute. Emotional neglect, domestic violence and parental alcohol or substance abuse problems were the most commonly reported ACEs. It is difficult for me, as an old grandfather, to recognise that one in two children in the United Kingdom has experienced such events. I look at my grandchildren and say to myself, “Well, if those stats are right, three of my six grandchildren will experience that.” That is what we see in the future for our own children and grandchildren.

What can we do to intervene and provide support? In difficult situations I rely heavily on my Christian faith, and in times of near despair I always consider the verses that tell me that I am not alone and that God very clearly has a plan and a purpose for my life. I understand that schools do not feel called to take that role, which is why many have a pastoral team to help with that aspect of development for children who appreciate spiritual help, and they also take a less faith-based approach through mindfulness.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale referred to outdoor centres, and clearly physical exercise lifts the mental pressures. I understand what he is saying. In my constituency, the Scouts, the Girl Guides, the Girls’ Brigade, the Boys’ Brigade and the Campaigners are organisations that can help young people. That does not apply to everyone, but it does to a brave few—there can be that release or support. The hon. Gentleman and I have a similar outlook on life, so we, and others, probably share that opinion.

As an MLA and, in particular, as an MP over the past few years, I have had to deal with people in distressing circumstances. Parents come to me because their daughters —it is always young girls—have bulimia or other eating disorders. I remember a case I dealt with not longer after I was elected in 2010. I spoke with the Health Minister back home, Edwin Poots, about the daughter of two of my constituents who I know very well. He intervened to bring her over here to St Thomas’ Hospital, just across the river. The intervention from my Health Department back home and the Department of Health here saved that young girl’s life. I know that it did, because I know just how difficult it was for that young girl. Now she is married, she has two young children and she is happy. That would never have happened had it not been for the intervention of the Health Minister back home and the Health Minister here, who intervened and helped. I deal with many other such cases, and have dealt with many over the years, and they are always incredibly difficult to understand.

I have come across some parents—I say this very gently, and it is not in any way meant to be critical—for whom mindfulness techniques are sometimes disconnected from their spiritual beliefs. I say that because that is what I find sometimes. For example, schools are increasingly doing a form of yoga to calm classes down. Many parents are happy with that and enjoy it, yet others do not want their children repeating phrases such as “namaste”, which means, “The god in me bows to the god in you.” They ask that their child does not partake in worship poses like the sun god pose. It is essential that parents retain the ability to withdraw children from such classes on the understanding that they can do quiet reading and not expect lessons to be taught at the same time.

Mental health work in schools must always be a partnership with parents, who wish to have some input into how things are presented to their children at school. The latest figures show that we must take that very seriously. We must not ignore parents. Whether we teach our younger children calming breathing, work with older children so that they can deal with what seems to be inevitable social media abuse, or work with social media providers to do a better job of providing a safe online space, work has to be done. In this House, we need to ensure that mental health work in schools is a priority in terms of time and funding. Again, I look to the Minister, and my honest impression is that he has always tried to encapsulate our thoughts and make important changes.

Any child can get lost in emotions at times, and not all children are fortunate enough to have a loving parent who can hold their hand while they try to find their way out. We have to ensure that every child knows there is someone there to help them find their way. That seems a high bar to set, but it is the only acceptable determination, and I am sure that everyone in this Chamber will join me and others in working towards it. If we achieve that, we will have achieved a whole lot.

15:09

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) on bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall and representing her constituents on the issue so powerfully and sincerely. I also recognise the incredible work of Brianna Ghey’s family and, in particular, her mum, Esther, who was in Parliament with us today, for her steadfast campaigning for more mental health and wellbeing support for children and young people, for raising over £50,000 for the Peace in Mind campaign, for being such a dignified and strong advocate for more empathy, compassion and kindness in our society, and for embodying those values in such a visible way in the face of unimaginable grief.

The debate shines a spotlight on a very important issue. We have a huge mental health crisis in our schools, and it is holding children and young people back. It is impacting their learning as well as their health. As we have heard from hon. Members today, children and young people are struggling with stress and anxiety more than ever before. Schools are struggling to meet the needs of young people with mental health challenges. The cost of living crisis is adding to the hardship children are facing. Mindfulness is one tool in the armoury to help people think differently: it helps adults and children feel calmer and kinder and it also helps them cope better with stress and to process difficult thoughts. We recognise the impact in schools of the mindfulness assemblies that Esther has delivered.

We know that many children are struggling in school with a narrow and what has been described to me as a joyless curriculum. That is why Labour has pledged to undertake an expert-led curriculum and assessment review, which will look across the system at our curriculum and the assessment and inspection of schools to ensure that we deliver high, rising standards in our schools without sacrificing the fun things that make children want to come to school and boost their confidence and wellbeing. Part of this review will look at how mental health is taught within schools too.

The importance of mental wellbeing is already on the national curriculum, but we know that teachers are cramming so much into the school day and that subjects such as personal, social, health and economic education often do not get the time and focus that they need. Our review would take expert evidence on how we can improve standards across the board, helping to promote a whole-school approach to mental health, so that teachers, pupils, schools and families all have the tools they need to help young people get the very best start in life.

Beyond the curriculum, the situation is dire. The number of children waiting for support is continuously on the rise, with children waiting on month-long lists to access services that are too often inadequate. In many cases, it is keeping children away from school, causing another problem we see: lack of attendance in classrooms. NHS figures recently analysed by The Independent were damning. Almost half a million children are waiting for treatment for their mental health. Some children in Halton in Cheshire have been waiting four-and-a-half years to be seen by a mental health professional. A child who was referred at the start of secondary school would be about to sit their GCSEs by the time they had their first appointment.

The next Labour Government will prioritise dealing with the mental health crisis. We would put specialist mental health professionals in school, ensuring that every young person can access early support and intervention, aiming to resolve problems before they get worse. We would ensure that every community has an open access mental health hub for children and young people—again, providing that early intervention—in a drop-in format, making it accessible for those who most need it. We also know that child and adolescent mental health services waiting lists are contributing to the problem. We would bring down those lists by recruiting thousands of new staff.

Finally, we recognise that this is not just a problem at school but at home too. It is one that parents are increasingly experiencing as well as children. We would ensure that mental health support is available to parents when they need it to. I want to once again pay tribute to the campaigning work by Esther Ghey, her family and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North in this really important area. I am pleased that the debate has given us the opportunity to think more about mindfulness in schools and the contribution it can make to improving the wellbeing of our children and young people.

It has been helpful to listen to hon. Members talk about the wider issues of mental health. They have been raised very eloquently by Members right across the House, including the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). We need to do more to support our young people. Labour has set out how it would work to achieve that in Government. I hope to hear more from the Minister on what steps will be taken now by the Government to address this crisis, which we know is causing so much harm to our children and young people today.

15:14

[The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)]

It is good to see you in the Chair for today’s debate, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) on bringing this important subject to Westminster Hall today. I thank and commend everybody who has taken part: my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington South (Andy Carter) and for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who speaks for the Opposition.

It is very important to discuss these issues, especially in the light of the tragic death of Brianna Ghey, who was a constituent of the hon. Member for Warrington North, and the outcome of the murder trial. It is a truly heartbreaking case, and our thoughts are with Brianna’s family and friends. Obviously, no one should be subject to any violence, let alone have their young life cut short in this most unspeakable and unthinkable way.

Schools and colleges should be respectful and tolerant places where bullying is never tolerated. I want to specifically recognise the work of Brianna’s mother to create positive action following her most terrible loss. Her ambition to promote empathy, compassion and resilience through the Peace in Mind campaign is one that we all commend.

There are few things more critical than the happiness of our children. The Government actively explore approaches that could improve young people’s mental health and wellbeing, such as mindfulness interventions. We are, of course, in Children’s Mental Health Week, and yesterday was—this is not exactly the same subject, but there is a lot of commonality, as has been explored again today—Safer Internet Day.

There is evidence of the benefits of mindfulness, and many schools will feel a positive impact on their students from programmes such as the one provided by the Mindfulness in Schools Project, but we should remember that it might not be right for everyone, every school or every individual in a school. Schools should retain flexibility to choose the interventions that suit their pupils and their local context, supported by high-quality evidence and guidance.

To help schools decide what support to put in place, we are offering all state schools and colleges a grant to train a senior mental health lead by next year. Over 14,400 have claimed such a grant so far, including four fifths of the schools in Warrington. The training supports the leads to assess and implement interventions that are suitable for their setting, which can include mindfulness. Our recently launched targeted support toolkit builds on that, providing senior mental health leads with further guidance on evidence-based interventions, again including mindfulness.

In addition, schools can look to the Education Endowment Foundation and to Foundations, formerly known as the Early Intervention Foundation, to review the evidence on the various approaches to support their students. We are funding a large-scale programme—I believe it is one of the biggest ever programmes—of randomised controlled trials of approaches to improving pupil mental wellbeing, improving our understanding of what works and providing new evidence for schools to use in planning their approaches. More than 300 schools have been involved, and the findings will help us evaluate the impact of a variety of interventions on mental health and on wider measures, including wellbeing, behavioural issues and teacher relationships.

The programme includes the INSPIRE trial, which is testing three approaches to improving mental wellbeing in school: daily five-minute mindfulness-based exercises, daily five-minute relaxation exercises and a new curriculum programme for mental wellbeing. I reminded myself earlier today that it was this week in 2019 that I had the opportunity of visiting Hayes School in Bromley, which was taking part in the programme, and where I had the chance to join a classroom-based mindfulness session. The trials have gone on for quite some time, although covid, as with so many other things, took a chunk out of the middle. However, the trials will conclude this Easter, and I want the results to be out as soon as possible—I hope by the autumn.

Our senior lead training also promotes tackling mental health and wellbeing through the curriculum, both directly in health education and by integrating the issue into the wider curriculum. In September 2020, we made health education, including mental health education, compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools. That guarantees teaching on how to recognise the early signs of mental wellbeing concerns and where and how to seek support and self-care techniques, which again can include mindfulness.

We should remember that wellbeing-promoting behaviours can be encouraged beyond the classroom, and that has come up a number of times in the debate today. In particular, schools can develop their enrichment offers with an eye to NHS England’s “5 steps to mental wellbeing”, which sets out the steps that we can all take to improve our personal wellbeing. Those are, first, connecting with others; secondly, being active; thirdly, learning new skills; fourthly, giving to others; and, of course, fifthly, paying attention to the present moment—something that colleagues present might recognise as mindfulness.

We have spoken a number of times about the general extracurricular, or co-curricular, set of activities and their importance in developing character and resilience, and I could not agree more with colleagues about the importance of everything outside the classroom. That can be about outdoor learning, as the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said, or about sporting activities, music or voluntary work—all manner of things that help to give us a sense of purpose.

There is also a range of self-regulation and wellbeing techniques, and mindfulness is one. Seeing my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham reminded me of a very good product created by West Sussex CAMHS, which I think is called an A to Z of wellbeing techniques for use with primary school children—of course, issues can sometimes develop from quite an early age.

The hon. Member for Strangford and others are right to talk about the particular pressures that young people today face. In many ways, the world they are growing up into is better, with more opportunities than ever before, but there are also new and different pressures that just did not exist when anybody in this Chamber was young. A lot of that is to do with electronica and social media.

[Andy Carter]

Could the Minister perhaps say a little more about some of the calls made for social media platforms to do more to prevent under-16-year-olds, in particular, from accessing their services? One of the greatest mental health challenges is the incessant presence of a mobile phone and a screen.

[Damian Hinds]

Indeed, but I do not want to try our Chair’s patience too much by moving too far beyond mindfulness, which is of course the subject of the debate. I have taken a very active interest in these matters for a long time, in my time at the Department for Education and at the Home Office, and otherwise in Parliament, and I think social media companies can do more.

Of course, we have just legislated in the Online Safety Act 2023. Most social media companies stipulate a minimum age of 13, but it is not uncommon for people to find a way around that minimum age. With the Online Safety Act, those companies will have to say how they are going to enforce that minimum age and then deliver on it. They are also going to have to ensure that they are protecting children from harmful content and removing, in good time, content that is illegal and identified as such. That is the legislation, but we do not need to wait for a law to do some of those things. I would say to everybody working in the technology field or in social media, most of whom have families themselves, that we all have a shared responsibility to think about the mental health, wellbeing and true interests of children and young people growing up.

I was just talking about the range of extracurricular activities, and I want to mention the range of support across Government for those, including the national youth guarantee and the enrichment partnerships pilot. We are also encouraging children to spend time in nature and to take in their surroundings, which I think the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale will welcome. The natural world has so much to offer in terms of grounding us, and we can see the potential of that through our work on the national education nature park, for example.

We have spoken a couple of times, rightly, about wider mental health provision, particularly for children and adolescents. More resourcing has been and is going into CAMHS; the issue is that the demand has also been growing. An investment of up to a further £2.3 billion a year is going into transforming NHS mental health services, including meeting the aim that over 300,000 more children and young people will have been able to access NHS-funded mental health support by March 2024.

A number of things that colleagues have talked about, including mindfulness—the key subject of the debate—and self-regulation techniques, general wellbeing and building up resilience, have an important role in helping to prevent some of that pressure. One wants to make people resilient and resistant to some of the problems that inevitably come our way in life and able, if there are relatively low-level issues, to deal with them before they become bigger. One also wants, as I said, to relieve some of that pressure.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North rightly mentioned counsellors and mental health professionals in schools. Many schools already provide targeted support to pupils through counsellors, pastoral staff, educational psychologists and other roles. No single intervention works for every pupil; again, I think it is important that settings have the freedom to decide what is the best support in their circumstance and for their cohort of children.

[Charlotte Nichols]

I want to ask a question about the idea of schools having flexibility. Of course, in general terms, I would welcome that, but is there not a worry that we would end up with a postcode lottery of provision in terms of the mental health support woven through schools? Areas such as Warrington would have fantastic things available for our young people, but children in towns in the surrounding area would still have issues that we could really be stepping in to address.

[Damian Hinds]

The senior mental health lead training that I talked about is a nationwide offer—I am talking about England, because, as hon. Members know, education is devolved. I was just about to talk about mental health support teams, which will similarly be a nationwide offer. It is a gradual roll-out. I think it is possible to combine having a nationwide approach with tailoring to one’s particular circumstances. We are continuing to roll out the mental health support teams to schools, and also to colleges. They will deliver evidence-based interventions for mild to moderate mental health issues and will support the mental health leads with their whole-school approach. As of April last year, the support teams covered a little more than a third of our schools, with a little more than a third of pupils in the country. That number continues to grow; the coverage should extend to at least half of pupils by March 2025.

The hon. Member for Warrington North rightly mentioned the wellbeing of staff, which is an important subject, and the Government take it very seriously. At the start of this year, we announced £1.5 million of new investment to deliver a three-year mental health and wellbeing support package for school and college leaders. That was in addition to the just over £1 million already invested in the current support package.

More broadly, we have worked in partnership with the education sector and with mental health experts to develop the education staff wellbeing charter, which sets out commitments from my Department, Ofsted and schools and colleges on actions to improve staff wellbeing. In January, we published an update showing the significant progress made on our pledges. I would simply echo what the hon. Member for Warrington said, which is that taking part in mindfulness in certain circumstances can also have a benefit for teachers and leaders in schools.

I am enormously grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the potential of mindfulness in schools—Mr Gray, you have been gracious and generous in allowing us to move into some adjacent but clearly related areas that it is important to discuss—and the Government agree with her that mindfulness is one of the tools that can support wellbeing in school. Our approach of building the evidence base, including through the extensive trials I talked about, and supporting schools to make effective decisions on their provision will ensure that such opportunities are acted on.

15:30

[Charlotte Nichols]

I thank all the Members who contributed, with four political parties represented in the debate. I particularly thank the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for their thoughtful contributions. The hon. Member for Strangford referred to adult burdens on children’s shoulders—perhaps the most apt way I have heard this issue summed up—in highlighting the need for children to be given greater tools to cope. Dealing with this issue is our responsibility as legislators.

Many of us recall early childhood as a time when we were more fully there and present in mind and body in the moments of our lives. We had heightened senses, we were more open-minded, we were more accepting of new experiences and of others unlike ourselves, and we were more curious and more creative. Sadly, most of us tend to lose that innate capacity as we get older and in the face of growing demands and worries, competing pressures and the daily grind. Introducing mindfulness practice in schools can provide an opportunity to value, preserve, nurture and sustain those life-affirming states of mind in children, while enabling adults to partly reclaim them. I hope we can continue this conversation beyond today and use the example of what we are doing in Warrington to improve mental health for all our young people. I again thank all those who have taken part.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered mindfulness in schools.

15:32

Sitting suspended.

SEND Provision: Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

15:59

[Steve Tuckwell (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered SEND provision in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, in the second Westminster Hall debate that I have secured.

I am incredibly proud to be the Member of Parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where I was born and where I have lived all my life. As I said in my maiden speech, I am determined to use this privileged position to champion all things Uxbridge and South Ruislip. That includes the good things, indeed the amazing things that make our part of the world one of the best places to live. In my first Westminster Hall debate, I championed our fantastic heritage assets, such as the Battle of Britain Bunker and the Crown and Treaty pub. However, I am more than acutely aware that my position affords me the ability not just to shine a light on what is going well locally but to draw Ministers’ attention to the issues that I believe require greater support or attention, in order to make Uxbridge and South Ruislip an even better place to grow up in and live in.

That is why, when I was elected, I draw up six overarching priorities to guide me and my team throughout my time in this place. The provision of special educational needs and disabilities, or SEND, is one of those six priorities and it is an issue that is incredibly close to my heart. As I said in a debate in the main Chamber, Britain has a proud history of universal education—or so we think. That is because even now, and especially for children with SEND, access to education is not as universal as we would like it to be. Education is the foundation of a person’s life. It gives them not just knowledge but skills that can help them throughout their life. Of course we mean reading, writing and other fundamental skills and lessons, including reasoning, critical thinking, discipline and routine. These are things that many of us take for granted, but they are essential for people to become productive members of society. Without them, it is not just the individual who suffers but the wider community, as the individual struggles to adapt and integrate within it. Indeed, although children make up only 20% of our population, they represent 100% of our future. That is why education is fundamental, as is educational provision for all, including for the 1.4 million pupils across England with a diverse range of special educational needs.

As I am sure I do not need to remind the Minister, multiple Governments have spent a huge amount of time and energy on SEND provision. Needless to say, I will continue to welcome any opportunity to work with the Government on this issue long after this speech is concluded.

On unveiling the SEND review in 2022, the then Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), confirmed that despite previous reforms, including those of 2014, which gave critical support to more families, the wider system was not working. However, since the release of that review and through the review itself, the Government have signalled that they are listening to education providers, to parents and, most importantly, to children and young people. It would be incredibly useful if the Minister updated me on the Department’s work to implement the proposals and aims of the 2022 review.

Unfortunately, for too long the system has neglected the importance of SEND provision and has instead fallen back on a blanket one-size-fits-all system that has failed to be effective. What is encouraging, however, is that the Government now understand that—rightly so for the constituents of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

Figures from the 2021 census showed that the borough’s population grew by 11.7% in the previous decade. The under-18 population increased by 12.9%. Of the 71,000 children and young adults up to the age of 25 roughly 7,000, or 10%, have SEND. These figures confirm what we already know—that the need for SEND provision is becoming more and more pressing.

We know that because we are making huge strides in the early identification of SEND. Last week, I had the pleasure of supporting my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) in proposing new legislation to look at early diagnosis of autism. The greater number of children and young adults with SEND being identified means that there is a greater need for all manner of support for local authorities and national Government.

It is important to ensure, as I have mentioned before, that we do not just retreat to a policy of one size fits all. Every child and young person must have their needs, experiences and situations evaluated as an individual. That holistic approach will take more time and resources in manpower and funds, but it is the right thing to do. Case study after case study shows that the earlier SEND is identified, the better that child or young person advances. That in itself can have positive benefits for that individual as well as the society they are part of. I would welcome the Minister going through some of the ways the Department is looking at replicating that “individual first” approach to SEND policy.

In the meantime, I want to spend a few moments touching on how Hillingdon Council, in its SEND and alternative provision strategy, is setting out its own approach. At the heart of that strategy are several ambitions. They are not lofty aspirations, but concrete practical steps that, when delivered together, present a real chance to make change happen for those children and young people with special educational needs in Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

The first is establishing the right support at the right time. To achieve that, the council is reviewing and refining its early intervention offer. That is being done through steps such as increasing awareness of early help, intervention and inclusion across the borough, developing new collaborative agreements and ways of working with associated bodies, and ensuring pathways are clear and easy to navigate.

Secondly, Hillingdon Council wants to ensure a fully inclusive education for all pupils, especially those with SEND. By increasing the uptake in SEND reviews and peer mentoring, giving educational settings the ability properly to play their part in the system, developing training opportunities for all council staff, that ambition can be realised for all pupils.

It is important that once those first two ambitions have been launched, SEND provision is properly equipped so that it can meet the needs of those with SEND across Uxbridge and South Ruislip. It is incredibly important to ensure that all pupils do not just feel part of their communities but have a tangible control and input into their lives, including their education.

Hillingdon Council’s approach will equip children with the support and interventions to re-enter mainstream education where possible. This set of highly achievable ambitions is important because it ensures that children and young people across my constituency can lead happy and fulfilled lives, in which they are included in the community. That is not just a noble cause but a tangible outcome, which we all want for our children and young people. That is why it is one of my top priorities.

Taken with the ambitions that I have already mentioned, while developing further opportunities for those with special educational needs to take part in clubs and activities and developing opportunities with the council’s preparation for adulthood programmes, the council is consistently working with pupils to gather feedback on what is and is not working. Hillingdon Council is committed to ensuring that young people in the borough can live healthy lives and can have access to the best possible educational opportunities. It is also investing in a multimillion-pound project to build new spaces or expand existing buildings in mainstream and special schools, to ensure more availability of good-quality local school places for children with additional needs.

Special educational needs provision is complex, challenging and far from perfect. That is why I am pleased to have secured this debate today. I am looking forward to working with the Minister and his team, to champion further this vital subject. As I go through my list of asks for the Minister, I will also take the opportunity to ask if he will meet me, Hillingdon Council and some of the amazing hard-working SEND teams that do incredible work. I also thank those who work in special educational settings across Uxbridge and South Ruislip for their amazing and dedicated contribution. That is the thing: some fantastic work is already being done by our local communities. As a councillor, and since my election to this place, I have been lucky enough to see some of the work done by the council, providers, community groups and local charities, including the SeeAbility programme at Moorcroft School in Hillingdon, which I have mentioned in previous speeches. As I am sure the Minister is aware, SeeAbility works to ensure that children with disabilities do not miss out on eye care, and it has played a key part in championing the Government’s national scheme to bring eye care to all special schools.

I have had the pleasure of visiting an amazing special needs school— Hillingdon Manor School. It shared with me how its newly formed pupil parliament ensures that young people are involved in the decisions that shape their educational experience. I have also seen the work done by Wealdstone football club in its SEND sessions, which promote sport and offer respite to parents. In recognition of Wealdstone FC’s SEND support, Anita Kaye and Rob Davies recently received a community award at No. 10 Downing Street for their amazing work, ensuring that young people can feel part of the wider community.

As I am sure the Minister is aware, this work is being done under a great amount of strain. The Government have exciting things planned to revolutionise how local authorities deal with SEND provision. That includes the inclusion dashboards announced in the SEND review, whereby capturing and tracking metrics will allow areas to identify and respond more promptly to emerging needs. Local authorities such as Hillingdon are drawing up innovative, clearly defined plans that will once again put pupils first, treating them as the individuals they are. Success at any and every level requires adequate provision in terms of funding, logistics and other non-monetary support. I stand ready to work with the Government to ensure that everything is done to achieve that.

To those Uxbridge and South Ruislip parents, such as Kelly, who got in touch to share her experiences of navigating the process of accessing SEND provision, but especially the children and young adults watching the debate or reading about it afterwards like her daughter Darcie, I assure them that I hear them. What is more, I will continue to work with, champion and fight for them, their education and their future. I hope the Minister will reaffirm that the Department for Education and, indeed, the Government more widely stands with them.

16:12

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Steve Tuckwell) on securing the debate. The people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip could have no better champion than him. Improving the SEND system across the country is a priority for this Government, and it was great to hear what a priority it is for him, supporting people like Kelly and Darcie, to whom he referred at the end of his speech.

Our ambition for children and young people with SEND is for them to thrive, fulfil their potential and lead happy, healthy and productive lives. That means ensuring that they have access to the right support in the right place at the right time and intervening when a local authority is not providing that. I enjoyed hearing my hon. Friend describe the actions that Hillingdon has been taking in this area to identify children’s needs early enough, which is important in reforming the system.

As my hon. Friend said, last month we published our SEND and alternative provision improvement plan to ensure that children and young people get high-quality early support wherever they live in the country. He asked me to update him on the progress we have made since then, and that is what I will do for most of my speech. Since we published the plan, we have already opened 15 new special free schools and approved a further 40 special free schools, in addition to the 41 special and alternative provision free schools that are in the pipeline. We have launched a £13-million partnership for the inclusion of neurodiversity in schools, which will support up to 1,680 primary schools in better meeting the needs of neurodiverse children. More than 5,000 practitioners have registered for our early years special educational needs co-ordinator training to boost their knowledge and understanding of SEND in the early years so they can promote greater early years identification, which my hon. Friend touched on, and work collaboratively with parents, carers and other professionals.

We have announced a new initial teacher training and early career framework, which includes new and updated content on special educational needs and disabilities, to ensure that teachers have the skills and confidence to support all children. We are also introducing a new national professional qualification for SENCOs from this autumn to ensure that they receive consistent, high-quality and evidence-based training. In addition, we will be investing a further £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists in the next two academic years. My hon. Friend knows how important access to educational psychologists is, so we are really pleased about that.

A big part of what we are doing with our reform plan is trying to create more places in specialist provision. We announced the allocation of more than £1.5 billion of high-needs provision capital in the past two financial years, including £17.5 million for Hillingdon. That funding will create hundreds of new places in mainstream special schools and other specialist settings, and will improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings.

Local authorities can also commission new schools via the free school presumption route, as I am sure my hon. Friend is aware. Through the Department’s free school programme, Hillingdon has had two special free schools approved: Grand Union Village primary and Pinn River all-through school. More recently, a third special school was approved for opening.

In 2022, Hillingdon reported that 66% of new assessments for education, health and care plans were completed within the 20-week timeframe. That is above the national average of 49.2% and the London average of 54.7%, but clearly 66% is not where we want to be. We want 100% completed within that timeframe, so the Department continues to provide additional support where needed. We are also putting in place a range of measures to help local authorities deliver EHCPs in a timely fashion. Where they fail to deliver consistent outcomes for children and young people with SEND, we use a range of improvement programmes, including SEND advisers and other professionals who can support them in improving that.

The improvement plan to which my hon. Friend referred rightly committed us to delivering a nationally consistent EHCP system. Part of the problem is that there is huge local variation. We have never had a national system for SEND, so we are trying to create one with national standards that families trust in order to improve the quality of their experience.

The measures being tested include multi-agency panels to improve the quality of decision making as EHCPs are made, a single national EHCP template, the earlier resolution of disputes through consistent and timely decision making, and the use of strengthened mediation procedures. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, however, that although we want consistent standards, we do not want a one-size-fits-all policy.

As my hon. Friend doubtless knows, Hillingdon is part of our Safety Valve programme, which helps local authorities to pay down accumulated deficits and reform their SEND systems. It requires local authorities to develop substantial plans for reform to their high-needs systems, with support and challenge from DFE officials. By March 2025, the Department will have allocated nearly £900 million through that programme to support local authorities in eradicating their deficit.

I echo my hon. Friend’s tribute to Hillingdon Manor School, Wealdstone football club—especially Anita Kaye and Rob Davies—and SeeAbility for its work at Moorcroft School. Only a few weeks ago, I visited one of SeeAbility’s projects in my constituency—in Didcot, where I live—and I was very impressed with the work it is doing, so I was pleased that my hon. Friend highlighted the importance of its work.

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward this incredibly important subject. He asked whether I would meet him, Hillingdon Council and the teams working locally on SEND. I would be delighted to do so, and I will ask my officials to set that up. I echo his thanks to all the people working across education, health and care in the interests of children and young people with SEND in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Hillingdon more broadly and across the country. We need to deliver the very best standards for children and young people with SEND. He and I share that passion.

Question put and agreed to.

16:20

Sitting suspended.

Deportation of Foreign National Offenders

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Relevant document: e-petition 642364, Deport all foreign and dual nationals imprisoned for a year or more.]

16:30

[Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the deportation of foreign national offenders.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Let me start with a quote:

“Never in the history of the world have there been so many migrants. And almost all of them are migrating from regions where nationality is weak or non-existent to the established nation states of the West. They are not migrating because they have discovered some previously dormant feeling of love or loyalty towards the nations in whose territory they seek a home. On the contrary, few of them identify their loyalties in national terms and almost none of them in terms of the nation where they settle.”

Roger Scruton wrote those words in 2004.

I have often spoken of the generous and welcoming nature of the people of Redditch. My constituents have opened their hearts and their homes and shown love to strangers from Syria, Ukraine and all over the world who are now our neighbours and friends. But as a Conservative, I defend my right to tell the truth to the British people about the abuse of our homes and communities that is facilitated by some in our asylum and immigration systems, and in our courts and tribunals, in the name of kindness and virtue signalling. I am choosing my words very carefully, because I know many will try to discredit my remarks. Note my use of the word “some”—it does not mean all. It might be a small number, but nevertheless the public expect us to take this seriously.

Our critics attack us. They say it is heartless and cruel—or, bizarrely, far right—to believe that the people who have lived all their lives in our country should have a say in how many more people come to it, or to aver that the people who come to our country should respect our laws, traditions and culture and that, if they do not, they should be sent back to where they come from. That is why I secured this debate.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service, the number of foreign national offenders subject to deportation action living in the community has risen year on year for the last decade and has reached nearly 12,000, a 192% increase since 2012. That is 12,000 criminals free to roam our streets while they exploit our legal system at taxpayers’ expense to stay here longer.

As that number has climbed over the last decade, the number of people we return to other countries has fallen: total enforced returns dropped from 15,134 in 2012 to 5,506 in the year ending September 2023. Meanwhile, 10,321 FNOs are on the prison estate. According to Ministry of Justice figures, in 2021-22, the average cost per prisoner per year was £31,000. Add to that the legal fees involved in getting them to prison in the first place, and the figure runs into the hundreds of millions every year.

We must raise our eyes and stop thinking that the United Kingdom is uniquely afflicted by this problem and that our own Government are the only ones battling it. Every country around the world is dealing with spiralling immigration. None has ready solutions. All face the same issues of democratic consent. Take the EU: 2.3 million immigrants entered the bloc from non-EU countries in 2021, an increase of almost 18% compared with 2020. The tiny Italian island of Lampedusa was last year overwhelmed by 7,000 migrants—more than its entire population of 6,000. The EU does not have the answers.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at the end of 2022, 108.4 million people worldwide were displaced. That represents an increase of 19 million people wanting to leave their own country compared with the end of 2021—more than the population of Ecuador, the Netherlands or Somalia. Of course, many of those aspire to come to European nations in the west, including the UK, and we have always done our part in this country. In the UK, net migration has been a major component of population over the past two decades, making up 60% of the growth from 2001 to 2020.

It is a fact of human nature that not everybody is a good person. That is something that Jesus of Nazareth—we will come to him—knew. When numbers of immigrants rise, most—the vast majority—are good people, but proportionately more bad people will be among their number. In this country, we are open hearted, generous and tolerant to those who treat us with respect and are willing to abide by our laws. But we have all seen the examples of people that we have welcomed to our homes who only wish to harm or kill us, our families and our communities. They are people who have no intention of returning the love and support that we have shown them, and they have treated our country as a dormitory, and sometimes as a cash machine, to bring their relatives in by the back door.

Our constituents are not naïve. They know that people of any nationality are capable of sinning, lying and evil, but they do not expect our country to be an offshore prison facility for criminals from all over the world. They elect us to keep people safe in their beds at night and on our streets, and to get foreign criminals out of our country and let their own societies rehabilitate them. Every sovereign nation has the right to control its borders. This is not far-right rhetoric; it is centred on common sense.

Why, despite everything that the Conservative Government have done, are the numbers going the wrong way? I served as a Minister both in the Home Office and in the Ministry of Justice. It is a true pleasure to have my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), with whom it was my privilege to serve in the Home Office, here today. She will know, as I do, just how many obstacles exist to deporting people who should not be here, despite the excellent people who work in the Home Office.

I think most people would be surprised to learn, for example, that foreigners convicted of crimes that attract sentences of less than 12 months can still be granted asylum and stay here. Why? Conservatives have done more than ever before to tackle the concerning rise in illegal migration and criminality, and to clamp down on the merry-go-round of spurious asylum claims, but a thicket of legal instruments, treaties and conventions still exists, which gives foreign national offenders grounds to escape deportation. I know it is difficult, but we must do more.

A new loophole is emerging that is ripe for exploitation, and I am genuinely worried about it. It is the fear of persecution if returned, on the grounds of religious conversion, especially from Islam to Christianity. Every single person in this Chamber, if they are truthful with themselves, can imagine the situation: you are a migrant on the Bibby Stockholm or in a British jail, about to be sent back to Somalia. A nice legal aid lawyer or non-governmental organisation appears in front of you with a script to follow and explains that a miracle can happen. Next thing, the light appears and you are a Christian.

The prime suspect in the Clapham case was given asylum on the second time of asking, despite being charged with sexual assault and indecent exposure in 2018. He claimed that he had converted to Christianity, meaning he would have been at risk of persecution if he returned to Afghanistan. The suicide bomber who attacked Liverpool Women’s Hospital, Emad al-Swealmeen, had, following a failed initial asylum claim, converted from Islam to Christianity. I tried to find figures for how many other FNOs have evaded deportation because of this issue, but I was unable to. I understand that the Home Secretary is looking at this, so I am sure that the Minister can update us.

Jesus understood compassion to foreigners and strangers, as we read in the Bible. The words “refugee” and “asylum seeker” do not appear anywhere in Holy Scripture—and who would argue in all seriousness that the world of the tribes of Israel in Egypt some four millennia ago was anything like the same as it is today? But Jesus was a student of human nature. He understood the temptation to lie. As students of human nature and intelligent people in this place, we should be brave enough to acknowledge this. Only God can look into my heart and my personal Christian faith, with all its flaws, and know whether I believe in him or not. We are asking the impossible of our clergymen. They are not God, and to pretend that they are is the ultimate mass delusion.

Do not gaslight us and say that this is not a situation ripe for abuse. Desperate people do desperate things. We should blame not the people—I emphasise that I do not blame them—but the incentives and the policy structures that allow this to take place. The British people feel, as I do, that we have allowed ourselves to become taken advantage of. We have been quite literally killing ourselves with kindness. If we continue this way, we risk eroding trust in our institutions and structures of government—the very things that we build our nation on.

I do not know about you, Mr Gray, but I was shocked to discover that the BBC has permitted a former employee to give evidence at immigration tribunals supporting 15 convicted Somalian criminals, including rapists. Some of that number have been given leave to remain in the UK after their trials and appeals based on her evidence. Do people pay their licence fee for this? What message does it send to the victims, some of them children, of these evil foreign thugs?

I come now to the most important part of my speech. It is only Conservative values, centred on our belief in a strong nation state, that have any answers to this wicked problem. We are the only ones prepared to stand up and fight for our hard-won peace. We are the only ones who are making progress, difficult though it is, over the longer term to fight to protect our democracy and our safety.

Let us look at what the Labour party is doing as we approach the next election—perhaps they have a plan. What do we see when we look deeper? Members of the current Labour Front Bench—including the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) when campaigning to be the leader of the Labour party—signed a letter calling for the suspension of a flight to deport 50 offenders to Jamaica and the suspension of all future charter flights. One hundred and fifty-one Labour MPs and peers, as well as Liberal Democrats and Members of other Opposition parties, and celebrities, signed the letter calling for the flight to be scrapped. It is hardly surprising, when they are led by someone who once claimed there was a

“racist undercurrent which permeates all immigration law”.

Among those who escaped deportation that day was heroin dealer Akiva Heaven, who had already served four years in prison and went on to be jailed again in May 2021 for dealing cocaine and heroin. If that was not bad enough, one of the criminals Labour Members so generously campaigned on behalf of, Ernesto Elliott, went on to commit murder. How can we ever trust them? These people are only interested in a free ride on the virtue-signalling train with their celebrity mates. They might try to persuade the British public that they have changed, but they are, and they remain, a risk to our national security.

I know exactly what they will say—that it is the easy attack, that it is all our fault, that we have been in government for 14 years. I am afraid that that perfectly demonstrates my point. Their flat denial that this is a global, emergent and unpredictable threat—a new threat in many respects—tells the British people that they have no serious plan to tackle it. Worse, they maintain the fantasy that all can be solved by talking in a nicer way to the EU.

What we need is a cultural change. First, we must protect our homes and our families. Patriotism grows from the soil of trust. People who care about our country as their own, no matter where they have come from, will put their lives on the line to defend it. Scruton speaks of the educated derision that has been directed at our national loyalty by those whose freedom to criticise would have been extinguished years ago had the English not been prepared to die for their country.

We all know who those critics are—the celebrity on a humanitarian crusade to boost their flagging career; some institutions, including some in the Church of England, some of its leaders, some universities and some in the BBC; and that ballooning charity, legal aid and NGO racket. They can burnish their compassion credentials and bottom lines with a few clicks. I say to them: this is on you. You must take your share of responsibility. You are recklessly and dangerously tossing away our national inheritance, which has, as the German poet Goethe said, been laboriously earned by our forefathers from Christianity, imperial government and Roman law. I call on the Minister and the Home Secretary to urgently revisit the legal frameworks underpinning the exemptions on grounds of religion and faith.

I ask the following questions to the excellent Minister, who is to be commended for the vigour and effectiveness he has brought to his brief. Why does he think we have seen a downward trend in the number of FNOs being deported, and what steps are he and the Government taking to address the issue? How many have been granted asylum after being sentenced for a crime? Does he think that the current arrangements, which permit those sentenced for less than 12 months to be granted asylum, are adequate?

I thank everyone who has supported the debate. I finish by reminding us that our generation has a solemn duty to our country. Goethe, again:

“What you have inherited from your forefathers, earn it, that you might own it.”

Earning it, we will own it, and owning it, we will be at peace within our borders.

16:46

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

First, I thank the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) for her speech. I have to put this on the record, and forgive me, Mr Gray, for having to do so, but I am a bit perplexed. I am very fond of the hon. Lady, and she knows that. I am a Christian, I have Christian faith, and I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, so I speak up for those of Christian faith, those of other faiths and those with no faith.

I am trying to say this as gently as I can, but I have people in my constituency who have converted to Christianity—or whatever they may do, but I know people who have done that. They were never a threat because they said that they had become Christians. I am sorry to say this, but I have some concern about how the hon. Lady, for whom I have the utmost respect, introduced the debate: it seemed as if every person who has converted to Christianity is potentially a criminal. I have to say this: the ones that I know are not, and I have to put that on the record. That is not what my speech was meant to be about, by the way—I will move on to the substance of it—but I felt a bit concerned.

Those who convert to Christianity, who have done it for the right reasons, because that is what their faith, their beliefs or their God has told them, have that right to do so, and they should not be condemned because they have done it. The hon. Member for Redditch knows I am incredibly fond of her, but I am sorry, I felt really uneasy about that. I have to put that on the record, and I wanted to do it now, before I speak about the content of the debate. I welcome, properly, what the hon. Lady said, which mirrors some of what I want to say. I am not saying that everyone is an angel—no, they are not—but most of those who convert to Christianity do so for genuine reasons and should be respected. I will leave it at that—I do not want to develop it any further; I do not want to be adversarial or to have a different opinion.

Despite conflicting opinions among Members about immigration and asylum seeking, we in the UK pride ourselves on being a compassionate country that provides safety for those in need and is well known for believing that we have a duty to help others. That has always been my gut feeling. All my life I have wanted to help others and all my life in this place I have tried to do that.

For some, aid should take place in the home country, and for others, we should open our doors, but that comes with a huge condition, and that is what I am going to develop in my contribution to the debate: that people should respect the law of the land and understand that if they do not, the door is permanently closed. I am quite clear about that—the hon. Member for Redditch and I will agree on that. That part of the contribution I understand incredibly well. For those who break that trust, it is crucial that justice is served and that they are ultimately removed from our country. It is our country, and for all of us here and all our constituents, the safety of our people is crucial, critical and important.

In June 2023, at least 10,321 foreign nationals were in prison across England and Wales. More locally for myself—I always give a Northern Ireland perspective, although deportation issues lie here with the House, which has the final say—around 10.6% of those in Northern Ireland prisons were foreign nationals as of 2022.

The Home Secretary and Home Office have a duty to this country to issue deportation orders for those who have been convicted of an offence in the UK and sentenced to at least 12 months, unless certain exceptions apply. I cannot stress enough the importance of securing safety and protection for the general public. If that is the thrust of this debate, and I believe it is, then let us focus on that. We hear horror stories every day in our local papers and on the news of all sorts of crimes, including what happened to that poor lady and her two children—my goodness me. They are committed not just by foreign nationals but by our own people, and we are trying to gain control over and manage them.

There is no doubt that our justice system has been fragmented in the past, and there have been many calls from our constituents to get the issues of court hearing delays and lenient prosecutions sorted. I do not see how we can give many more excuses for continuing to house foreign national offenders in UK prisons if they are guilty of the heinous crimes of rape, murder or whatever they may be. Statistics show that our prisons have been severely over-subscribed in certain areas for a number of years, and that has meant prisoners being left in custody for longer than needed or left in county jails.

The Government have stated on a number of occasions that the deportation of foreign national offenders is a long-standing Government priority, but as of 2022 there were still almost 12,000 foreign national offenders subject to deportation action living in the community. We must direct ourselves to that issue. The constituents in the communities we represent have a right to feel safe in the areas they live and work in—not just for themselves, but for their children and grandchildren.

I will conclude, because many people want to contribute. We are a compassionate country: we welcome foreign nationals and the contributions they make to our nation. But there must also be a clear understanding that crime, no matter how petty, is not to be tolerated, and that it has consequences. I look to my Government and my Minister to ensure that our actions meet our words. If this is a priority, let us follow through and ensure that we have the necessary means to deport those who do not follow the laws and guidelines of this country. Perhaps the Minister can respond with his plans to reduce the number down from the thousands to as small a number as possible.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. There is 16 minutes until the wind-ups and four or five people trying to speak. Therefore, it would be helpful if speeches were limited to four or five minutes.

16:52

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I commend and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) on her contribution and on securing the debate. I also commend her outstanding work at the Home Office alongside me when I was Home Secretary. She was a steady hand on a very important piece of legislation, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which brought in many measures to directly address illegal migration. The Act addresses not just the causes, but how we bring greater efficiency to the illegal migration system and the whole issue of deportation and removals, which is relevant to this debate on foreign national offenders.

As a former Home Secretary, I have been involved in this issue quite a bit. I oversaw the removal of around 12,000 FNOs, despite the travel restrictions caused by the covid pandemic and the relentless and determined efforts of the campaigners, celebrities, do-gooders and everyone else mentioned by my hon. Friend, some in the media or parts of the legal establishment, and Opposition politicians. The removal of those 12,000 foreign national offenders made our streets and communities safer and protected the public from crime. I promoted what was colloquially known at the time as the prison-to-plane approach, which reduced the amount of time that FNOs are in our country after they leave custody. That is important, as the Minister will understand, because we can remove such people only once they have left prison, after which they have to be in a safe and secure detention facility before being removed. That approach is the right one, and it links to the issue of prison places and how we get flow into the system.

As someone who has held the post of Home Secretary, I know that we are bound by statutory duties to deport those who have been sentenced to at least 12 months imprisonment, unless very specific exemptions apply. However, there are other FNOs who can be deported if their presence is not conducive to the public good, in particular if they breach their UK visa or entry requirements, and there will be a whole load of associated issues.

Removing these individuals is absolutely one of the most serious duties that the Home Secretary of the day has. Of course, we know the appalling crimes that they have committed. That is why—as the Minister will know, and as the Home Secretary will be well aware—it is imperative that we remove those who have committed the most heinous crimes, especially those who have been persistent or even serial offenders.

In my personal view, not enough is being done to sentence people to custody for long enough. We already know that there are thousands of criminals who commit serious crimes who are either not sentenced to jail or receive sentences of less than 12 months. I think more needs to be done there.

Between 2007 and 2017, around 13,000 people convicted of sexual assault or rape were not sentenced to immediate custody. That included 900 rapists, and some of those offences were committed against children as young as 13. Half of all sex offenders were not sent to jail by our courts during that period. We know exactly what happened, basically, and those shocking figures demonstrate that some of those offenders, who were responsible for the most appalling crimes, would not meet the 12-month custodial sentence threshold to be removed and deported. That is a sobering point, it really is, and it has an impact, as my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch said, on public confidence, community cohesion and safety in our own communities. It basically means that there are some terrible offenders who should have been deported but were not deported.

I am afraid to say that it is inexcusable that those offenders who are deported, sometimes on those deportation flights, have attracted the support of some organisations that have basically prevented their removal. Those offenders have committed serious offences, and my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch has already made the case relating to those individuals. I am afraid to say that the party opposite would use social media, particularly around some of the flights that I was involved with, basically to campaign on behalf of those individuals, and say that they were their constituents and had a right to be in the United Kingdom, despite committing the most heinous and appalling crimes.

The removal of foreign national offenders, or FNOs, is necessary for statutory reasons and public safety reasons. Their removal is in the interests of the victims of crime. I have met too many victims who have been assaulted and abused by foreign national offenders, and we must put their needs first. The needs of the victims must always come first. Our vulnerable people, whose lives have been destroyed and shattered by FNOs, are traumatised—and do you know what? They are even more traumatised, and they relive that trauma all over again, when they see Members of Parliament, celebrities, the media, BBC so-called “expert witnesses”, as exposed by The Mail on Sunday last weekend, campaigners and lawyers backing the rights of criminals over them. The victims should be supported, not these dangerous FNOs.

We have seen the consequences when deportation flights are blocked. I used to have to deal with those consequences, and I had to deal with those deportation flights that were cancelled, because of mutinies by passengers, but also because of the way in which the left in particular would lobby.

To conclude, it is absolutely right that the country knows who is responsible for stopping those flights and stopping the removal of those FNOs. When the Minister responds to the debate, I would particularly like him to speak very clearly about what is being done now to circumvent and stop those mutinous passengers, to stop these lawyers and to stop people in Parliament as well from campaigning to prevent the removal of FNOs, and to ensure effectively that the victims of these crimes are protected and see justice by seeing the removal of these FNOs.

16:58

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I fully concur with the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) that the first duty of a state is to keep its citizens safe and secure, so those who come here from abroad and perpetrate serious crime must not only be publicly punished, but face deportation if it is appropriate in the circumstances. That is not just the state’s duty; it is also logical. That is why we enter into prisoner transfer agreements, of which we have many.

Somebody who is in prison has to be punished, but the state—whether it is our state or another—also has to remember its obligation to rehabilitate them. The factors that matter are quite clear. Will a home be available on release? Will somebody local be taking an interest, preferably even when the person is still in prison? Will the prisoner be able to do something constructive on release? For somebody who is foreign, that is very difficult. Families are also being punished, because they cannot visit. That is why we have prisoner transfer agreements and why we should be seeking to move people back, even before the end of their sentence, to the countries from which they came.

I make two caveats. The first is that what goes out has to come back in. I recall meeting the parents of a drug-dealing young Scots girl who had been imprisoned in Spain. I made it quite clear to her father that we would bring her home—not to put her feet up and live the life of Riley, but to go to a Scottish prison, Cornton Vale. It was our obligation; she was our citizen; she would serve her sentence here, if that was what she wanted. We would not force her to come back, but we would bring her home. That did indeed work out.

What we cannot have is the situation that some people jumped to demand at the time. They were appalled that we should be seeking to bring her back, yet they were the very same people who say that we have to send foreign prisoners home. We cannot insist on foreign nationals being deported, and then say, “By the way, we’re not keeping the door open for our own citizens to be sent back here.” That is hypocritical as well as absurd.

The second caveat is that we have to take into account—I am glad that the regulations do so—the fact that not every foreign national should necessarily be deported. I well recall making a Christmastime visit to a Christian charity in Leith when I was a Justice Minister. Anyone who has been a Minister, including the Minister in this debate, will have made such visits to worthy charities.

I met an Australian gentleman who was a few years younger than me: he must have been in his late 40s or early 50s. I asked what he was doing. He was homeless. He had been deported from Australia. He admitted that he had committed a serious crime. His life had collapsed about him. He was not a bad person; I was not intimidated. He had to be punished for what he did, but he was no Ned Kelly. Yet he had been sent back to Scotland, because he had never taken out Australian nationality. He had gone to Australia with his parents as a baby or a toddler. He had never been taken out of the country or come back to see any relatives, so he had never required an Australian passport. He had not been required to register for anything; he just had his national insurance card or whatever the Australian equivalent was.

He was Australian, but he was sent back to Scotland, where he knew no one. There may have been a second cousin or an elderly auntie somewhere, but they certainly would not have wanted somebody turning up and saying, “I’m your second cousin twice removed. I’ve just been deported from Australia. Do you remember me? Can you make me a cup of tea?”, so he was homeless here. That was fundamentally cruel. He should not have been sent home. He was not really Scottish or a UK citizen; he had a UK passport, but he had grown up in Australia. He was Australian, and Australia should have retained him.

Young Jamaican kids who have grown up in south London are being deported. The same will no doubt happen to young Somalis in Glasgow, who have become our children irrespective of a passport that might not be their responsibility. Yes, when people come here and perpetrate crimes, let us send them out, but there are others who have lived here who may not happen to have the right of citizenship. We should remember that Australian and remember our obligation to look after them. We must make sure that they are punished, but then we must rehabilitate them.

17:03

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) on securing this extremely important debate.

It is an absolute abomination that we see tens of thousands of illegal migrants choosing to come from safe mainland France and arriving undocumented on the shores of our country. They are predominantly young men: over 70%. In some cases—not all, but some—they will go on to commit heinous crimes or will be using these routes on behalf of gangs or even terrorist organisations, as has been reported by our security services. That is potentially undermining our nation’s very security.

The people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke simply will not stand for that, but they find themselves up against an institution like the Church of England. Its leader, Archbishop Justin Welby, has created political activists within the clergy to go out of their way to allow people to pretend that they have somehow seemingly converted to Christianity. A document leaked to GB News, seen by Nigel Farage and others, says, “After someone’s application has been granted, don’t be shocked if that person does not subsequently attend the church congregation.” It tells us everything we need to know about the abuse of the system that the BBC, the Church of England, the Labour party, lefty lawyers and do-gooder celebrity types are acting against national interests and are willing to leave our borders wide open without our knowing or understanding who is coming in and endangering our great nation.

I feel real anger at His Majesty’s Opposition, the Labour party. Back in February 2020, more than 150 Labour peers and Members of Parliament went out of their way to sign a letter that sought to stop the deportation of serious offenders, all because they wanted some cheap likes on social media platforms such as X, formerly known as Twitter. These people—people like the shadow Foreign Secretary; the shadow Health Secretary; the shadow Minister for Women and Equalities; the shadow Justice Secretary, who would be in charge of the prison estate if, God forbid, the Labour party were ever to take control of this country; the shadow Attorney General, when she is not busy demeaning the St George’s flag or the white van man, supporting the de-banking of political opponents or enabling murderers and rapists to stay in our country and terrorise our streets; and the shadow Solicitor General, when he is not busy spreading tin-hat, deepfake, fake news images on social media accounts—are signing letters that endanger people on our streets. They are endangering communities in places like Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, where sadly we have seen radicalisation that led to a dreadful terrorist act. Someone from the town of Tunstall went and committed the heinous crime on London bridge.

This is an issue of the utmost importance. When the Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), signed the letter, he was busy pandering to his Corbynista friends—or should I say his former friends, whom he has recently ditched in order to pretend that he has somehow rehabilitated himself—to get the extreme loony left that still rages in the Labour party to back him for leader?

The Leader of the Opposition, who has been busy ditching his 10 pledges, is happy to whitewash his history as the Director of Public Prosecutions. Tajay Thompson, who was convicted of battering two women and went on to commit further drug-dealing offences, was prevented from being deported while the right hon. and learned Gentleman was head of the CPS. The right hon. and learned Gentleman also opposed the deportation of Fabian Henry, a foreign rapist who attacked a girl of 17 and abducted and sexually a 15-year-old. That is his record: when it came to putting people allegedly behind bars, he was busy working in the interests of those who very much undermine the safety of the young women and children of our country.

I will not have the Labour party virtue-signalling. I hope that the shadow immigration Minister, uses this debate to apologise on behalf of the Labour party for those who signed the letter, and to say that they will never do such a thing again.

17:07

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) for securing the debate. The recent awful case in Clapham has reminded us of the serious problem that we are addressing: the systematic abuse of articles 3 and 8 of the European convention on human rights to frustrate the legitimate deportation of people who have forfeited their right to be in this country. As we have heard, the latest practice appears to be claiming a conversion to the Christian faith that may or may not be genuine. There is a serious problem with rights groups, which we should all acknowledge across the House. Judicial activism has led to the law being expanded in ways that those who created the post-1945 order would struggle to recognise and certainly would not agree with.

It is deeply problematic that the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Justice Secretary signed letters attempting to block the deportation of foreign national offenders, as we have heard. In some cases, these people have gone on to commit further very serious crimes. It speaks to the fundamental naivety—some would call it madness—that blinds us to the reality of how dangerous some of these people are, and how wrong-headed it is to put their rights ahead of the rights of the victims of crime and of the wider British public.

We do not have a moral responsibility in this country to offer asylum to sex offenders from elsewhere. That is at the heart of this debate, and it is why it is important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) said, that the Opposition acknowledge that they got that wrong. I say with great affection for the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) that his party needs to change its approach to the question. Otherwise, I am afraid it will give succour to people who do not deserve it.

The post-1945 world order is under strain in all directions. We live in a world that is being transformed, largely by the issues connected with migration. If we do not address cases in which there is a clear imperative to remove people have committed crimes in this country, I am afraid we will completely lose the moral right to make the case for balanced, compassionate and fair immigration to this country. This House should act. I hope that today the Minister will set out a clear path to tackling the problem.

17:10

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gray.

I do not really know where to start in this debate. Uncharacteristically for me, as someone who does not profess to be any kind of person of faith, I might start with a passage from Leviticus:

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

The Bible may not talk about asylum seekers and refugees, as the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) says—I honestly would not know—but there is certainly an awful lot in there about treating other people as you would treat yourself and your own family. There has been very little of that in this afternoon’s debate.

We are here in very febrile times. I completely understand how upset people are about the attack in Clapham. That person should be fully held to account for his actions. He should face the full extent of the law and the justice system, and deportation, if indeed that is what is decided. There is no question about that. There is a process there that should be respected.

Hon. Members have heard me talk many, many times about the issues around asylum, but they probably have not have heard me say that, yes, there are circumstances in which people need to be removed. The right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) will remember that when she was Home Secretary I wrote to her plenty of times about many constituents in many complex situations. There is very little that I have not seen in my constituency, given the complexity of casework that I have.

However, I also know that there are circumstances in which people cannot be deported, because to do so would mean their execution. We do not extradite to countries that have the death penalty, for example, so to say that everyone must be deported in all circumstances simply is not the basis on which the law of this country operates. I have had situations like that in my constituency, where people could not be removed and sent back to their countries of origin, because they would almost certainly have been executed on arrival.

The only thing on which I agree with the hon. Member for Redditch is that this situation is, indeed, the fault of the current Government and their predecessors.

[Rachel Maclean]

That is not what I said.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Lady said that it is the current Government’s fault. She is quite correct in saying that. The Conservatives have been in control for quite some time now, and they have failed on numerous occasions to deal with the situation.

Stephen Shaw’s review of the issue identified many areas in which the Home Office had failed to deal properly with foreign national offenders. I appreciate that time is limited, but I want particularly to pick up on the excellent point from the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) about our responsibilities to people who are more British than foreign. Stephen Shaw reflected on that in his review, saying that

“a significant proportion of those deemed FNOs had grown up in the UK, some having been born here but the majority having arrived in very early childhood. These detainees often had strong UK accents, had been to UK schools, and all of their close family and friends were based in the UK… Many had no command of the language of the country to which they were to be ‘returned’, or any remaining families ties there… The removal of these individuals raises real ethical issues.”

He also said that

“the twelve month sentence criterion for deportation in the UK Borders Act is not a very good guide to criminality”—

we can all think of sentences of 12 months or so that are not the types of sentences that some hon. Members read out earlier. He further said:

“I find the policy of removing individuals brought up here from infancy to be deeply troubling. For low-risk offenders, it seems entirely disproportionate to tear them away from their lives, families and friends in the UK, and send them to countries where they may not speak the language or have any ties.”

If we believe in rehabilitation, that means that if I were to commit a crime, I would go to prison, serve my sentence, and then be considered rehabilitated; I would not be sent to another country. We have a double standard in how we treat these people.

Stephen Shaw’s review also points out the inability of caseworkers to manage the FNOs within the system currently. It makes it clear that they are not being well managed, that casework is not being well managed and that people are not being prepared for return. He feels that all those circumstances lead to a risk that people will be brought back to a life of crime and will not be rehabilitated at all.

The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has expressed the same concerns, saying:

“This is no way to run a government department.”

There is a lot that the UK Government could be doing better to achieve some of the aims that Government Members would put forward.

17:15

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) on securing this important debate. It was interesting to hear her questions to the Minister about the Government’s dreadful record on removing foreign criminals, and I look forward to his answers.

I also want to echo the comments from the Scottish National party spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), on the deep concerns around the Clapham incident. The shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has written to the Home Secretary with a number of questions, trying to probe what has happened and to get to the bottom of that deeply disturbing matter.

It is beyond doubt that the Conservatives have completely lost control of our asylum system; indeed, the Prime Minister has admitted that the system is broken. He has failed to stop the Tory boats chaos, with 30,000 asylum seekers crossing the channel last year, the second highest number on record. We have 56,000 asylum seekers in taxpayer-funded emergency hotel accommodation at a cost of £8 million every day. Just to exacerbate the problem, the number of foreign criminals being removed has collapsed by a staggering 34% since 2010, when the last Labour Government were in office. Arguably even more disturbing is that we know that 8,786 foreign national offenders are not even being detained. They are out there living in communities across Britain for at least 12 months, with almost 4,000 staying for more than five years, having been released by the Conservative Government. It is quite frankly astonishing.

The first duty of any Government is to keep their people safe. The Home Office is responsible for ensuring that rules are fairly and robustly enforced. It must deport dangerous foreign criminals who have no right to be in our country and who should be returned to the country of their citizenship. That is precisely why the last Labour Government introduced stronger laws to that effect. We on the Opposition Benches are committed to building an immigration system that is firm, fair and well managed, so we find it deeply troubling that Ministers are failing to uphold these basic principles and deeply frustrating that they are blaming everybody else for their failings.

It is little wonder that a number of expert reports over recent years have pointed to how Home Office failures have resulted in fewer foreign criminals being deported than should be the case. In 2015, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration stated that one in three failures to deport foreign criminals was due to Home Office dysfunction. If we fast-forward to the present day, the latest immigration figures show that the Home Office is still failing miserably in that regard, so it is no surprise that the ICIBI has intensified his criticism. Last summer, he stated in his report:

“This is no way to run a government department.”

He added that the Home Office is unable

“to track and monitor the progression of cases”

with insufficient focus on processing removals rather than simply managing cases. What an utterly damning account of the Government’s handling of this critical aspect of our national security.

Why have removals collapsed under the Minister’s watch? Why does he think the independent inspector has criticised his Department in such damning terms? He will no doubt point to the large number of appeals. He loves to blame the judges, the French, the Opposition and the civil servants—he will probably even blame the football pundits—but what are he and his Government doing to make sure the cases are brought forward, and that they are watertight and not easily delayed?

Further, what diplomatic work is being done with other Governments to ensure that we can return those who have no right to be in the UK to their countries of origin? What is being done to encourage more voluntary returns? There used to be a much more effective system, whereby an assisted returns programme was run by Refugee Action. Since 2015, under Home Office management, that programme seems to be utterly broken, with voluntary returns plummeting.

Time and again, the Conservatives choose headline-chasing gimmicks rather than doing the hard graft of Government. Thankfully, Labour has a plan to clear up that dreadful mess. We have set out plans to establish a major new returns and enforcement unit in the Home Office, recruiting 1,000 new enforcement officers to speed up the deportations of those with no right to remain in Britain, including the removal of foreign national offenders, which, as I say, has plummeted by a third since 2010. We are also warning that the failing £400 million Rwanda scheme will not solve the problem of foreign national offenders, as the Rwandan Government can refuse anyone with a criminal conviction. The treaty instead says that foreign national offenders in Rwanda can be returned to the UK—you could not make it up.

The Home Office has a responsibility to get its deportation decisions right. The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years. It is their failure, their responsibility. If they cannot get it sorted, let us have a general election so that we can have a Labour Government in place that will fix the dreadful mess that has been made over 14 years.

17:20

[The Minister for Countering Illegal Migration (Michael Tomlinson)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I pay tribute to my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), for the way in which she conducts herself in this place and for the passion and common sense that she brought to this debate. This debate is topical and timely, and I pay tribute to her for her foresight in applying for it—many weeks ago, I am sure, yet the time is right. It is probably one of those debates where more time would be helpful. The British public rightly expect our immigration system to work for them. We serve the public and our constituents, and that includes having a firm approach to those who abuse our generosity.

Let me address some of the points that were made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch. It is right that we as a country have a long and proud tradition of welcoming the stranger, of welcoming those who are in need, to our shores, but it is only fair that we ask for something simple in response, which is that they play by our rules and are law-abiding. I do not hesitate to say that fairness is at the heart of this debate. The Government are absolutely clear that foreign nationals who seek to take advantage of our generosity or abuse our hospitality by committing crimes should be deported.

Let me turn to the legal framework that underpins this, because that might answer one or two of my hon. Friend’s points. Essentially, two systems—two statutes—are used. The first is the UK Borders Act 2007, where a deportation order must be considered when a foreign national has been convicted of an offence and received a custodial sentence of more than 12 months. She mentioned the threshold of 12 months. There is a system under the Immigration Act 1971 whereby, if someone is sentenced to below 12 months, they can also be deported when it is conducive to the public good. We cannot go into the details of that now, but it is interesting to note that there is no definition of that and therefore there is great flexibility, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) knows. Suitable discretion is given to the Home Secretary in those circumstances.

As this debate has shown, however, circumstances arise where people seek to prevent deportation. There are some good reasons for that: for example, an offender might need to stay here to face the consequences of a court case. I was grateful to my right hon. Friend, the former Home Secretary, for majoring on the victims of crime, who are absolutely at the heart of this issue. That is why it is right that some foreign national offenders stay here for the first part of their sentence at least. But it is also right to say that there are legal challenges, late appeals and re-documentation barriers intended to frustrate the deportation process.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke) tempts me to go down the ECHR line and to address that. It is right to say that we have international obligations under not just the ECHR, but the refugee convention, and that because of those obligations, some deportations have not been able to take place. However, the Government are determined to do everything we can to ensure that foreign criminals are deported, making our communities safer. Perhaps there will be another time when we can debate the niceties of articles 8 and 3 in more detail.

Let me come to the statistics, which my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch mentioned. We removed more than 16,500 foreign national offenders between January 2019 and September 2023. There was a dip, and she is right to challenge me on that point. It was not just because of covid but, at about that time, there was a dip. She will be pleased to know—as will you, Mr Gray, and others in the Chamber—that, since then, the returns of FNOs have been increasing. They went up by 19% in the past 12 months. That is a good start, but I am determined to take her point seriously and to take that further.

The hon. Member for Strangford asked me whether this is a priority of the Government. Yes, it is, and he will hopefully be reassured in that regard by the increase of 19% in the past 12 months. He and others may also be reassured to hear what we have done in the past two years. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham will know better than most about the Nationality and Borders Act, although my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch knows it well. Legislation was introduced to increase the relevant period to ensure that we can remove more foreign national offenders, and do so earlier. That is good for the taxpayer and in regard to the space in our prison estate, and it is fairer to society.

It is also right to say that the Nationalities and Borders Act was opposed by Labour. The Labour party so often opposes—every single measure that is brought in to tighten our borders is opposed by Labour. I will come back to that point and others that the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) made. The measures under that Act were taken to make it easier and quicker to remove foreign offenders. We have also increased the number of caseworkers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham will know how important that is to make sure that we can carve through the numbers and prioritise those we need to remove.

Let me come back to the infamous letter of February 2020 that so many right hon. and hon. Members mentioned. When the shadow Minister stood up and attempted to criticise the Government for the robust actions that they have been taking in this regard, in his wide-ranging speech—it ranged far beyond what one might consider to be the strict and narrow confines of this particular debate—he exposed the fact that Labour have voted time and again against every single measure that the Government have introduced to strengthen our borders. And not only that; the Leader of the Opposition signed a letter calling for criminals and foreign offenders not to be deported.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham will also know about another such instance. In December 2020, another charter flight to Jamaica was due to remove murderers and those convicted of attempted rape, burglaries and the supply of class A drugs. Despite lobbying, campaigns and pressure to make sure that the flight did not leave, it did leave safely. It is with some cheek, dare I say it, that the shadow Minister stands up and complains about the Conservative Government’s actions, when the leader of his party is signing letters asking for foreign national offenders to stay in this country.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch for bringing this matter to the Chamber’s attention. I encourage her to repeat her attempt: may we have another debate on this subject, because it is so timely? We perhaps need more time and more opportunities for others to contribute. I will sum up this debate by saying that this is a matter of fairness. Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality and commit crimes in our country will be caught, they will be punished, and, where appropriate, they will be removed.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

If Rachel Maclean wishes to do so, she has one minute to wind up.

17:28

[Rachel Maclean]

Thank you, Mr Gray. I am extremely grateful for every single right hon. and hon. Member who contributed and made excellent points. I do not agree with them all, but they nevertheless reflected their constituents’ concerns. I am very grateful to the Minister for his full response. Although he had only a short period of time, he covered a number of points that were deeply concerning to me, my constituents in Redditch and the constituents of others. I will definitely take him up on the invitation to apply for another debate, because I think we have many more matters to discuss.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the deportation of foreign national offenders.

17:29

Sitting adjourned.