Government Response to Covid-19
Debate between Bob Seely and Helen Hayes(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Sir Charles. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) on securing this important debate. It is right that in the midst of this deadly pandemic, which has cost over 46,000 lives and prompted the deepest recession since the 1930s, the Government are held to account for their response. It is welcome that hon. Members have had the opportunity to do so today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) spoke powerfully on behalf of nurses and social care workers and about the extraordinary sacrifices made by so many of them, as well as the need for them to be properly paid and protected. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) rightly highlighted the vital role of test and trace in enabling as many people as possible to live as normally as possible, and the failures of the Government’s privatised Serco system to do so. I want to add my condolences to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on the sad loss of his mother-in-law to this horrible disease. The hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) spoke about the Government’s use of data, saying that they have not made the best use of it, and the hon. Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) described the Government’s approach as erratic: I agree with both of those statements, though I fear not so much with the rest of their analysis.
The Labour party supported the Government in introducing necessary measures to respond to the coronavirus pandemic to save lives and to prevent the NHS from becoming overwhelmed. We are now at a point, once again, at which R is rising in all regions and across all age groups, so we do not agree with hon. Members who have expressed the view that lockdown restrictions are not necessary, or that a whole-country approach should not be used at this point in time. Nor do we agree with hon. Members seeking to trade off the impact on the UK economy against coronavirus spread and impact on health.
Helen Hayes
I am afraid that I will not, as time is short. The consistent pattern across the world is that the countries with the highest levels of coronavirus infections also have the worst economic impacts. The two are linked. An effective approach to infection control is also protective of the economy. The tragic reality is that the UK has both the highest number of deaths of any European country and the deepest economic recession of any G7 country. The key question at this point is why the Government’s response has been riddled with so many failures. The UK entered the pandemic with a PPE stockpile which had been depleted and without emergency supply chains in place, leaving health and social care workers unprotected at the frontline of infection control. Despite the horrific data and dire warnings from Italy, Spain and France—and the knowledge that the pandemic in the UK was running just weeks behind them—the Government were too slow to introduce the first lockdown.
When faced with the challenge of PPE and ventilator procurement, and the need to establish a test, trace and isolate system, the Government instinctively turned to outsourcing companies—many without any proven track record of delivering the goods and services required but, on too many occasions, with strong links to the Tory party—instead of looking to public services. Documents leaked this week reveal Cabinet Office contacts and others were helping VIPs sell PPE to the Government outside normal procurement channels. Contact tracing—the critical tool in preventing infection spread—was suspended in mid-March, at which point the Government lost control of the virus. Since it started again, the privatised Serco test and trace system has entirely failed to reach the baseline hurdle of reliable—still less the promise of world-beating—while much more effective contact tracing has been done by hard pressed local public health teams.
The hon. Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) highlighted issues around compliance. Yet in failing to hold his closest adviser, Dominic Cummings, to the same rules that he had ordered the public to obey, the Prime Minister himself undermined public trust and confidence in his approach, confirming in the minds of residents across the country that we are not all in this together. For months, the social care sector was left entirely abandoned, without PPE or access to testing, but was forced to accept patients who were covid positive, resulting in huge numbers of tragic, avoidable deaths. Unlike in Wales, social care workers in England are not entitled to full sick pay if they need to self-isolate, forcing many to choose between health and safety and putting food on the table. Now the Chancellor has increased the tax on PPE by reinstating 20% VAT, affecting people buying face masks. Why have the Government introduced a mask tax in the second wave of a pandemic?
The Government were warned weeks ago that a short, sharp circuit break would be effective in limiting infection spread and mitigating the impact of a second wave. If anybody has any doubt about the need for that, I invite them to make—as I did just a week ago—a visit to their local hospital, to see how exhausted staff still feel coming into this second wave. When we talk about the need to protect our NHS, we are talking about those staff being overwhelmed by the numbers of patients who are so sick and who they have to treat. But when Labour called for a short, sharp circuit break, the Prime Minister ridiculed the idea, and the Chancellor doubled down to block it. It is clear that the delay has cost both lives and livelihoods, and has deepened the scars to our economy. We now face a much harder lockdown with a far higher cost, because the Government have once again acted far too late.
While the Government have our support for the additional measures this week, their response to this deadly pandemic has been characterised by a lack of preparedness, dither and delay, prioritising who they know over who is best placed to deliver, and failing to heed and act on the advice of scientists. Families and communities across the country are paying a devastatingly high price for their incompetence.
European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill
Debate between Bob Seely and Helen HayesFriday 20th December 2019
(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I thank voters in my constituency for re-electing me to serve as their Member of Parliament. It is an honour to represent one of the most diverse constituencies in the country. In 2016 it voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union, and, in my experience, the strength of my constituents’ pro-EU views has only grown over the past three years.
The vast majority of my constituents did not vote to “get Brexit done”, and my mandate from them is to keep standing up for our values in Dulwich and West Norwood and to champion their interests. Our values are those of outward-facing internationalism, a celebration of diversity and community solidarity. These are the values that underpin our support for membership of the EU and these are the values that lead us to be deeply concerned about Brexit and this Government’s reckless approach to it.
Our values lead us to be concerned about the protections people are afforded in their workplace, the protection of our environment and our response to the climate emergency. They lead us to prioritise human rights and to be concerned about how Governments are held to account for human rights abuses which happen on their watch. And they lead us to be concerned about refugees and to want the UK to play a full role in responding to the global refugee crisis by welcoming people who have lost everything and helping them to rebuild their lives. Indeed, many of my constituents are already playing their part through community sponsorship groups and they want to see the Government doing the same.
We are dismayed to see in the Bill the Government jettison their previous commitment to the Dubs amendment on child refugees and the non-regression clauses, which were designed to ensure that the UK does not move backwards on workers’ rights relative to the EU—or at least that if the Government did so it would be completely transparent and they could be held to account. In relation to human rights, the previous Government removed the UK’s commitment to the charter of fundamental rights. The Bill further waters down the commitment to the European convention on human rights, and the political declaration makes no mention of rights previously protected by the EU charter of fundamental rights. There is a real risk that hard-won rights fought for over hundreds of years could be watered down by this or any other future Government.
The Prime Minister’s reckless approach to the implementation period is nothing short of a disgrace. There is not a shred of evidence that a trade deal with the EU can be secured within a year. The EU says it cannot. All trade deal precedents indicate that it cannot. Yet the Prime Minister seeks to enshrine in law the UK’s crashing out of the EU with no trade deal in just a year’s time. Brexit will not be done; it will be doing its worst to communities up and down the country. Jobs will be lost and lives left devastated if we crash out in a year’s time. I urge newly elected Government Members to reflect very carefully on what exactly this will mean for the communities they represent, and to heed the warnings of UK manufacturers about the dependence of supply chains on our membership of the single market and customs union.
None of this is hypothetical. It is about the ability of thousands of people to go to work in secure, well-paid jobs that keep a roof over their family’s head. It is about the rights of working people to holiday pay, maternity and parental leave, sick pay and protection from discrimination and unfair dismissal.
Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady accept that, actually, in many cases UK standards are higher than those of the European Union? I am very confused as to why Opposition Members keep using the EU as a gold standard when actually it is the UK that is the gold standard.
Helen Hayes
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but I do not accept that that is the case. Nor do I accept that the Bill does anything other than leave those rights to the mercy of any future Government. I do not trust this Prime Minister to maintain the standards we have derived from the EU.
It is about the protection of our woodlands, rivers and coastal habitats at a time when the environment could not be more important. It is about the practical expression of our values in the way that we treat the world’s most vulnerable children.
I understand that the Prime Minister has a majority that means he will pass the Bill and we will leave the European Union, but my constituents will not be denied a voice in that debate. Make no mistake: the Bill will deliver nothing but damage to the UK on many fronts. I will oppose it, I will stand up for my constituents’ values and interests, and I will hold the Government to account for the consequences of their reckless actions.
Principles of Democracy and the Rights of the Electorate
Debate between Bob Seely and Helen Hayes(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
In Dulwich and West Norwood, 77% of people voted to remain in the EU—the seventh highest pro-remain vote in the country. My constituents are not remoaners; they are not anti-democratic. They are citizens with deeply held and sincere convictions. Yet since June 2016, 77% of my constituents and 48% of voters across the country have been told that we must be quiet and that our views no longer count. We have been told to be silent in the face of the Government’s own evidence that Brexit will harm the UK economy. We have been told to be silent as we raise important questions about the future of scientific research, the supply of medicines, the regulation of chemicals and the future of trade. We have been told to be silent as we raise grave concerns—not discussed at all during the referendum campaign—about the impact of Brexit on the Good Friday agreement and peace in Northern Ireland. We have been told to be silent as we have raised concerns about the increase in hate crime and the anxiety of EU nationals living in our communities.
The continual dismissal and denigration of the views of 48% of UK voters—77% of my constituents—has been extraordinary. It is not how Governments should, or usually do, behave in a democracy.
In 2016, faced with a very narrow result, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) had the opportunity to define Brexit in a way that reached across the divide—in a way that took seriously both the result of the advisory referendum and the concerns of almost half of those who voted about the impact of Brexit on our economy, security, rights and access to medicines. Instead she spent six months saying nothing but “Brexit means Brexit”, while the right of the Tory party, and Nigel Farage, moved into the vacuum and defined Brexit as the hardest, most extreme Brexit possible.
It is a principle of democracy that we all seek to win the argument—that we seek to provide evidence to justify a position, to reassure and persuade those who disagree with us, and ultimately to achieve a mandate to proceed. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead put her Tory-party-facing version of Brexit to the people in 2017, and they took away her majority and her mandate.
In this context, it is no surprise that my constituents’ pro-remain views and their deep fears about what Brexit will mean for them, and for our country as a whole, have only grown and strengthened, these past three years. The Government have done nothing to reassure them; nothing to provide evidence that their concerns are unfounded; nothing to prove that they respect and take seriously their values and their views. Instead we have a Prime Minister who is facing down his opponents with the language of hate, a Government who have failed to provide any assurance that our communities—
Mr Seely
I do not quite understand how the hon. Lady can keep talking about the language of hate when I have just given her examples of the abuse that Labour MPs are putting out there about their opponents, and also material from the Labour party conference, which I presume that she may have been at, where she sees the abuse from extremists aimed at moderate Labour party MPs. The abuse is coming from the left.
Helen Hayes
To be absolutely clear, the reference to a surrender Bill—the language of “traitors”, the language of “surrender”—is the language of war, and that is being used by our Prime Minister, in an utterly irresponsible and reckless way.
As I was saying, the Government have done nothing to prove that they respect and take seriously the values and views of my constituents. We have a Government who have failed to provide assurance that communities will not face job losses, shortages of food and medicine, and lower environmental standards; and a Government who are prepared to put at risk peace in Northern Ireland, casting aside the Good Friday agreement.
Democracy is a process of governance, not a moment in time. In a context where the Government have failed to reach out, failed to engage and reassure and failed to provide evidence and win the argument, the only option is to allow that process to continue—to hold another vote, not on the same proposition as the first, but on what we now know, to allow people to vote again on whether they have confidence that the Government have been able to negotiate a deal that can secure their future, protecting their jobs and security.
I say this again: my constituents are not remoaners; they are engaged citizens—internationalist and outward-looking in their views and values, worried about their families, their communities and their future, and this Government have ignored, denigrated and failed to reassure and convince them. They deserve better than this failing Government and our reckless, irresponsible Prime Minister. They deserve more democracy, not less. They deserve a people’s vote.