Committee on Standards: Decision of the House
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Wendy Chamberlain
We on these Benches are the Opposition. It is our job to oppose the Government unless they can behave otherwise. I will try to make some progress.
Over the past 20 months, my constituents have had to follow more rules than they have ever had to deal with before, while sadly we are governed by Ministers who seem to care far less about the rules than any predecessors in living memory. That is why we are here today. It has been reported over the weekend that Ministers are focused on pleasing their boss, not on doing what is right for this country. We have seen story after story break, including cash for honours and undeclared interests.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
On that point about cash for honours, does my hon. Friend agree that the House of Lords Appointments Commission should be put on a statutory footing, to ensure that any recommendations made to the Prime Minister cannot be ignored in the same way that the Prime Minister ignored advice given to him by the previous independent adviser on ministerial interests, recommending that the Home Secretary be sacked for bullying?
Wendy Chamberlain
These are all things that need to be looked at on an ongoing basis, and there are potentially areas where the different processes are in conflict. However, I will now make some progress.
Who is influencing our politics? How is taxpayers’ money being spent, and what is being done to hold those in power to account? Those questions are why we argue that we need a public inquiry, with the powers and resources to get to the depths of the situation we are in. People around the country who play by the rules deserve answers, but instead they are being let down by this Government and by a Prime Minister who will not take even the most basic of steps to turn up to this debate.
It is a great shame that the Prime Minister has not graced us with his presence this afternoon, because there is still a huge amount that we do not know about the events of last week. There are many questions that demand answers, many of them involving the Prime Minister’s personal role in this affair. This is a Prime Minister, after all, who has been under investigation more times than any other Member in recent years. The question is: who stands to benefit from getting the current standards processes out of the way? Members of the public will have to draw their own conclusions on that, with the Prime Minister not being here today.
However, the questions do not stop at the Prime Minister; they extend to all those involved in the whipping operation last week. First, why was there a whipping operation in the first place? This was House business and it should not have been whipped. The Government tried to change our procedures without our consent; and then they U-turned and tried to walk it back. But they cannot walk back the events of last week—that is why we are here, looking forward.
We have heard serious, concerning allegations today that Members breaking the whip were threatened with a removal of funding for projects in their constituencies. I ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office to address that point and whether it is this true, as the matter deserves further investigation. The idea that communities should suffer because their representative did the right thing is, frankly, abhorrent. Despite all those alleged threats, the whipping operation was only a partial success. I thank those Members on the Conservative Benches who stood up for what was right and those Members, including the Father of the House, who last week supported my application for this debate.
Afghanistan
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Watching the scenes at Kabul airport this week left me and many others with feelings of overwhelming grief and anger: grief for the millions of Afghan women and girls in particular who were promised a brighter future and the opportunity to learn, work and pursue their dreams; and anger that the many pledges made to the Afghan people over the past 20 years have been broken as they were abandoned to their fate.
The stories being told by terrified Afghans are heart-rending. There are the women students who are now hiding their diplomas and certificates for fear of punishment, and in the belief that in any case their qualifications will be useless as they will not be allowed to use them. There is the female mayor who says that she is now waiting for the Taliban to come for people like her and kill them. There is the Afghan journalist, now in hiding with his family, who said:
“There was a lot of promise, a lot of assurance. A lot of talk about values, a lot of talk about progress, about rights, about women’s rights, about freedom, about democracy. That all turned out to be hollow.”
That journalist is in danger of being proved right.
We have to do whatever we can now to honour our commitments to the people of Afghanistan. That starts with fixing our failed refugee and asylum-seeking system. For all the hand wringing of Government Ministers in the last few days, the reality is that their actions over the past few months have left thousands of ordinary Afghans in terrible danger. Interpreters and contractors who worked side by side with UK forces have been refused resettlement on the grounds that they were technically subcontractors. That is shameful.
I fear for the thousands of ordinary Afghans who supported the UK in delivering aid and supporting other projects, often in the interests of our foreign policy objectives. They are now at real risk of being seen as collaborators working against the Taliban’s interest. The NGOs they worked with are now powerless to help them, but the UK Government are not, yet we have heard very little about what the Government are doing to persuade and support them. Many are not covered by the Afghan relocation and assistance programme because they worked for UK organisations other than the Government—for NGOs and other civil society organisations, even though they were paid by UK aid. They are in extreme danger, so that ARAP programme must be expanded to encompass them, too. The scheme was far too late to get off the ground and only started in April when Taliban advances and atrocities were already all too apparent, and it has been drawn all too narrowly. It must be amended to allow visas for the family of people who would have been eligible but who have died, and for people who have fled Afghanistan but would have been eligible had they remained in country.
The resettlement scheme announced by the Government last night is welcome, but it is not enough. Places must be based on need, not on numbers. There should be no artificial cap. When the Government are already failing to achieve their existing target of settling 5,000 refugees a year, we need to hear an awful lot more about how Ministers are planning to deliver for Afghan refugees and guarantees that local government will be properly funded to work with them.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
Does the hon. Lady agree that it is vital for local councils that have been willing for some time to take on additional refugees, such as mine in St Albans, to be given additional finance? For local government to support those refugees, it needs funding to help with finding furniture, relocation and connecting with utilities. All that support is needed so that the council itself can support refugees.
Caroline Lucas
I absolutely support the hon. Lady’s comments. Such support is vital.
I call on the Home Secretary today to abandon the resettlement-only plans set out in the Nationality and Borders Bill, which would criminalise, or deny full refugee status to, those who make their own journeys to seek asylum in the UK. I call on her to grant immediate asylum to Afghans already waiting for status in the UK, release all Afghan nationals from detention, and urgently expand the family reunion route so that Afghans can be joined by other members of their family, including siblings and their parents. I was contacted by a constituent who used to work for the EU delegation in Kabul and whose siblings all worked for allied forces. He has asylum here in the UK and his siblings have asylum elsewhere, but his mother is left alone, desperate and very much a target. We absolutely need to widen the family reunion rules.
We also need not just to properly restore aid, but to increase it. The Foreign Secretary said that it is being doubled; I welcome that, but it is still less than the 2019 figure. We need to recognise that the need today is so much greater than it was even in 2019.
There are many lessons to be learned from this disaster. It looks as if our intelligence might well have been inadequate, our promises to the Afghan people worthless and our duty of care to ordinary Afghans who worked with us patchy and unreliable. More than that, this Afghan tragedy should be the catalyst that finally forces us to rethink how the so-called war on terror is fought. The debacle in Afghanistan, with the loss of almost a quarter of a million lives, is just one of four failed conflicts in the past 20 years. Western military action in Libya and Iraq and the air war against ISIS in Syria have all failed to achieve their objectives: ISIS is still active in Iraq and Syria, ISIS and al-Qaeda are active across the Sahel and eastern Africa, and there are still links with Afghanistan.
We urgently need to learn the lessons of failed wars of intervention and take an honest look at the objectives behind our foreign policy. For too long, protecting British interests has been about stability and safety through access to oil, maintaining the current balance of power and a very inconsistent approach—to put it mildly—to human rights and democracy. When we ally ourselves with countries such as Saudi Arabia, our moral credibility to speak about human rights is fundamentally undermined. We need a longer-term approach, including stopping arms sales to oppressive regimes that do not abide by international law, and a more consistent approach to democracy across the world.
The Government like to boast of our country being global Britain. If that is to mean anything, it surely has to be an opportunity to finally develop the ethical foreign policy that we have spoken about for so long, focused on seeking to build international consensus with co-operation, security and human rights at its heart.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The appalling scenes that we have witnessed over the last few days will certainly outlive us all, but equally moving are the accounts on the ground that I am sure we have all heard. The brother of my neighbour, Assad, is a Hazara, one of the most persecuted minority communities in Afghanistan. He has not left the house in weeks, not because of covid, but because of fear—already—of being killed, and he is one of millions. We must not be fooled. Despite what the Taliban say, they do not mean it. My good friend Nemat, an Afghan academic who is luckily now in Australia, said to me, “The Taliban are professional liars”. Behind their empty promises and their weasel words lies a devastating reality, and shame on us for believing them twice.
This Government must do all they can to ensure that people have an escape route. The airport in Kabul seems to be working, but what of those who cannot get there? What about those who cannot get to Kabul itself at all? That is why the Liberal Democrats have been calling for a safe corridor. We must utilise every diplomatic tool available. I note that in his opening remarks, the Prime Minister said that he had spoken to Prime Minister Khan. Did he raise this? We know that the Inter-Services Intelligence has been providing support for the Taliban for some time. We have leverage with Pakistan, and Pakistan has leverage with them. Was that even broached?
On the refugees that we are to take in, 20,000 sounds good, but we have had 20 years of involvement. If we take the 5,000 and break it down by constituency, that is seven per constituency. For 20,000, it is 30 per constituency. Surely we can do better than that? That should be a starting point, not a target. When they come, we need to recognise that councils need to be well funded in providing services such as housing, education, language provision, and mental health support—all that must be part of what is provided.
For my very final remarks, on women and girls, I hand my voice to a woman on the ground. She said:
“Like every other woman I have been staying home and am afraid to go out. Women are not allowed to leave their homes without a government official... Their safety, hopes, dreams have to be locked once again, we just live to exist, nothing else.”
Imagine what that must be like. Imagine the pictures of young girls being posted on social media as spoils of war, to be married off to the fighters.
Daisy Cooper
In times of crisis, the voices of women are often missing. Does my hon. Friend agree that whatever the UK Government and the international community do next, the protection of the rights of Afghan women and girls must be put front and centre?
His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]
Much has been said in the last few days about Prince Philip’s steadfast support for Her Majesty the Queen—my thoughts are with her and her family—but he was also a figure in his own right, especially in the Commonwealth. I worked in Commonwealth affairs for eight years and met him a number of times, mostly at the Commonwealth Secretariat’s pretty raucous Commonwealth Day receptions, but it has only been in recent days that I have learned just how much he did to shape the association.
Arnold Smith was the first Commonwealth secretary-general. In his memoirs, he talked about how in 1965 he and his wife found themselves standing at the end of a diplomatic line-up at a palace reception. Prince Philip apparently noticed that and demanded an explanation from Whitehall officials. The next week, the secretary-general was informed that he would in the future be put before the line of ambassadors. That was a small but important change in protocol to establish the authority of the first secretary-general of a new multilateral organisation.
Then in 1974, there was a heated debate about whether the word “British” should be dropped from the title of the British Commonwealth games. Prince Philip agreed with Nigeria and some of the other newer countries that it should be dropped, but he made his views known less publicly. Aside from being a royal, he was respected as a sportsman, so the argument was won and the word was dropped.
During my time at the Commonwealth Secretariat in the 2000s, the fourth secretary-general, Sir Don McKinnon, was still benefiting from Prince Philip’s wise counsel. It was a tricky period, with a number of countries facing suspension over military coups or human rights abuses. Don tells me that Prince Philip once said to him, “But, SG, you just have to persevere with some countries for longer than others, especially the UK.” It was very much the in-joke. There is no doubt that in the Commonwealth, Prince Philip was quite the modernising force, helping behind the scenes to help move the Commonwealth beyond the roots of empire to become a modern association of equal sovereign countries supporting democracy and the rule of law.
Many have paid tribute to Prince Philip’s unique Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. In the last eight years, more than 40,000 young people in Hertfordshire have enrolled on the award. In the same year that he established the DofE scheme, he also established the Commonwealth study conferences for young people to discuss industrialisation and its impact on their communities. He was also a patron of the Commonwealth expeditions, which sent young people on intrepid adventures through Europe and the middle east with little more than a rucksack and a bus ticket. It would be a fitting tribute indeed if we could reverse the declining opportunities for young people in Britain to take part in more of these international exchanges.
From St Albans to Saint Lucia, from the corridors of Whitehall to the windswept teenagers in Windermere, from the Allied base of Malta to the cargo cults of Vanuatu, Prince Philip’s contribution to international youth exchanges and modernising the Commonwealth will surely be remembered.
Oral Answers to Questions
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)
The whole House can be proud of the UK’s vaccination programme, with more than 22.5 million people now having received their first dose across the UK. We can also be proud of the support the UK has given to the international covid response, including the £548 million we have donated to COVAX. I therefore wish to correct the suggestion from the European Council President that the UK has blocked vaccine exports. Let me be clear: we have not blocked the export of a single covid-19 vaccine or vaccine components. This pandemic has put us all on the same side in the battle for global health. We oppose vaccine nationalism in all its forms. I trust that Members in all parts of the House will join me in rejecting this suggestion and in calling on all our partners to work together to tackle this pandemic.
This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Daisy Cooper [V]
The Government are throwing a staggering £37 billion at a test and trace system that we know has made barely any difference, yet they say they cannot afford to give more than a pitiful 1% pay rise to NHS workers. The Prime Minister has said that he owes his life to them. He stood on the steps of No. 10 and applauded them. So will the Prime Minister do more than pay lip service? Will he pay them the wage that they deserve?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is indeed right that we owe a huge amount to our nurses—an incalculable debt—which is why I am proud that we have delivered a 12.8% increase in the starting salary of nurses and are asking the pay review body to look at increasing their pay, exceptionally of all the professions in the public sector. As for test and trace, it is thanks to NHS Test and Trace that we are able to send kids back to school and to begin cautiously and irreversibly to reopen our economy and restart our lives.
Oral Answers to Questions
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
I am delighted that my hon. Friend is campaigning for a free port. I am a passionate supporter of free ports. There will be a process, as she knows, and successful applicants will be announced in the spring.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]
Oral Answers to Questions
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
Indeed. I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend by saying that clinical modelling work is complete and the site development is now under way as we speak.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
The Prime Minister
Governments of all stripes have supplied free school meals since 1906, and I am proud that it was this Conservative Government who extended universal free school meals to five, six and seven-year-olds. The Labour party was in power for 30 of the past 100 years and never did anything like that. We support kids of low incomes in school, and we will continue to do so, but the most important thing is to keep them in school and not to tear off into another national lockdown, taking them out of school. We will continue to use the benefits system and all the systems of income support to support young people and children throughout the holidays as well.
Oral Answers to Questions
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Wendy Morton
As I explained, the UK is playing a leading role in the international response to the pandemic, with pledges of up to £769 million of UK aid to help to address the urgent needs in vulnerable countries through research and development, through money to the International Monetary Fund’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust and in supporting the global health response. We are working with the UN to ensure that our contributions are channelled to NGOs and other recipients as quickly as possible.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
The Secretary of State for International Development (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)
Both the merger and the integrated review are evidence of this Government’s commitment to a unified British foreign and development policy that will maximise our impact around the world, project our values and be a stronger force for good—they go hand in hand.
Daisy Cooper
The Bond network says that it has not been consulted on this merger and the integrated review has been restarted behind closed doors. Will the Government commit to meeting Bond and other civil society organisations so that those on the frontline can inform the new Department’s aid priorities?
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
Baroness Sugg leads in the Department in meeting the CSOs, and there are regular meetings ongoing. The integrated review is working over the summer to pull together the key issues, and development is an absolutely critical strand within that.
Covid-19: Strategy
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
I am so sorry to hear about my hon. Friend’s father, and I am sure the whole House joins with me in extending him our sincerest condolences. The point that he makes about care homes is also, I am afraid, a very important one. It will be no consolation to those who have lost friends and relatives in care homes during the current epidemic, but the numbers are very substantially coming down now. The numbers of deaths in care homes are very substantially coming down. But where he is totally right is that we cannot make progress as a nation on the steps that we have outlined—the further steps that we have outlined: step 2, step 3—unless we crack these twin epidemics both in care homes and in the NHS. I have been very clear on that both last night and today in the House, and I hope that the House understands that.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]
The Prime Minister has set out five tests that underpin the alert system, but there is one big problem. While the Government have told us how many pieces of PPE they have procured, how many tests they have undertaken and how many temporary hospital beds they have created, to date they have not once told Members or the public how those numbers compare with what we actually need. Will the Prime Minister report to the House openly and regularly on both sets of data—what we have and what we need—and also set out how those metrics will inform his decision—
Public Services
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very important point that I will take into account as we consider how we relax restrictions.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD) [V]
It has been reported that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies—SAGE—includes not one molecular virologist, not one intensive care expert, not one nursing lead or immunologist, and only one member from an ethnic minority. So will the Government publish the criteria and selection process used to identify and appoint members of the SAGE group dealing with covid-19?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for mentioning that. I read precisely that statement in The Guardian earlier today, and it is useful for the House to be reminded of it. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies is composed of some of the finest minds in our scientific community, and the criterion for membership is a commitment to doing everything possible to save others’ lives. It seems to me that it does not matter what colour someone’s skin is if they are committed to saving the lives of others.
Lobby and Media Briefings: Journalists' Access
Daisy Cooper Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Chloe Smith
The hon. Lady takes us on to very, very sober ground, and rightly so. She has great experience as a scrutiniser in this House, but the fact is that that is the wrong characterisation of what has happened. I have set out what the facts of the matter are: what we are dealing with is standard lobby procedures supplemented by an additional specialist briefing. There is nothing more sinister than that, and I think that even she, who is also a very reasonable Member of this Chamber, is just going a little too far.
Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)
It is quite extraordinary that the Government say that there is effectively nothing to see here, when the News Media Association and the National Union of Journalists have both said that this potentially represents a threat to the freedom of the press, and both have asked for the Government to consult them on the changes. Once again, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Prime Minister are missing in action in this House, but I wonder whether the Minister could tell us what action she thinks they would have taken, as former journalists, if they had found themselves excluded from a No. 10 lobby briefing.
Chloe Smith
I think the hon. Lady knows—or she should know, or she will come to know—that, as a Minister at the Dispatch Box, I speak for myself and I do not need to speak for two more senior colleagues. I speak for myself as part of the Government—as part of collective responsibility. Therefore, all Ministers are part of the same message, and that message is absolutely clear here today. It is that we run routine lobby procedures that are more than adequate for ensuring that, if they wish to, everybody with a press pass can ask any question of the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson. That is how that operates, and we are supplementing that with the additional briefings, which I have now mentioned many times. [Interruption.] I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, if this is coming across as boring to some opposition Members, but it is the fact.