Budget Resolutions
Helen Hayes Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I want to pay tribute to our social care workers across the country—a workforce who day in, day out work hard to care for our loved ones who are vulnerable owing to age, illness or disability; and a workforce who are often among the lowest paid and in precarious zero-hours employment, yet whose skills, compassion and dedication make a daily difference between whether life is utterly intolerable or lived to the full.
Social care has suffered a decade of austerity and neglect by the Tories. We have known for many years that our population is ageing and that our social care system is inadequately funded and unsustainable, as demonstrated starkly in the 1 million people eligible for care who are currently not receiving any support, and in the £3.5 billion a year that is needed just to meet current needs.
The Government have repeatedly kicked the social care can down the road, and the consequences are now coming home to roost. Social care is on the frontline of the covid-19 pandemic, providing care for vulnerable people—many of whom will be in high-risk groups for the virus—and meeting additional needs as hospitals work to discharge people to free up bed space. Yet there has been a woeful lack of support and guidance for the social care sector in the context of the pandemic.
On Friday, more than 100 parliamentarians from several parties joined me in writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ask him to guarantee full pay for social careworkers who have to self-isolate because of covid-19. This commitment has already been made to NHS workers and contractors. It is vital for the protection of the vulnerable people who receive social care that staff who have direct contact with them, often providing intimate care, do not have to choose between the safety of those in their care and paying their own rent or feeding their family. Please could the Government make this commitment without further delay?
It seems hard to imagine that our current utterly broken social care system can cope in this current crisis, and the Government must, without further delay, deliver comprehensive reform. However, in the short term, emergency funding for social care to protect the workforce and those they care for is an absolutely vital part of minimising the impact and the devastation of this pandemic.
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Hayes Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)
The Government take our environmental responsibilities very seriously, and the Prime Minister established the new Cabinet Committee on Climate Change for that very reason. The UK is, of course, the G20 leader in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions while growing our economy. Later this year, the Government will set out further plans to reduce emissions in key sectors such as transport, energy and building while seizing the economic benefits of clean growth. We have launched a review into the transition to a net zero economy and how that will be funded, and the review will publish its findings this autumn.
Mr Clarke
The electorate obviously gave their verdict on the relative credibility of our manifesto. This Chamber, on a cross-party basis, should welcome the real consensus that the UK has done the right thing by becoming the first major western economy to commit to a net zero policy. We have allocated £1 billion for the take-up of ultra low emission vehicles, £350 million for the industrial energy transition fund and £800 million in our manifesto for carbon capture and storage.
The hon. Lady says our ambitions in this area are inadequate, but the Committee on Climate Change report of May 2019 did not consider it credible to reach net zero emissions earlier than 2050. The report called it the “highest possible ambition” supported by the science for us to target 2050 rather than an earlier date.
Helen Hayes
The UK Government currently offer more financial support than any other European state for fossil fuel industries. The oil giant Shell paid no corporate income tax last year due to tax rebates, despite making a £557 million profit in the UK. This situation is unsustainable and unacceptable in the context of a climate emergency. Can the Minister explain how a Government who continue to subsidise fossil fuel extraction to such a degree can ever be trusted to deliver net zero?
Mr Clarke
The most important thing to recognise is that last year was the first year on record in which renewable energy constituted more of our energy mix than fossil fuels. We also need to recognise that oil and gas support many thousands of jobs in the United Kingdom, and we must be careful not to jeopardise economic growth during the transition.
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Hayes Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sajid Javid)
We would prefer to leave with a deal, and we continue to work energetically and determinedly to get a better deal, but the Government are turbo charging their preparations to ensure we are ready to leave without a deal on 31 October. All necessary funds have been made available. The fundamentals of the British economy are strong: real wages are growing; employment is at a record high; and unemployment is at an historic low.
Helen Hayes
There is evidence of a rise in short positions being taken out against the pound. Is the Chancellor confident that the hedge funds taking those short positions, some of which donated to the Prime Minister’s leadership campaign and the Conservative party, have no inside information about the planning or timing of a no-deal Brexit?
Sajid Javid
That is such a ridiculous suggestion it does not deserve an answer.
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Hayes Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I was contacted this week by a constituent who runs a business in Derry/Londonderry. He writes:
“The official position is that”
the recent bomb attack
“is nothing to do with Brexit; everyone I’ve spoken to finds this laughable—it is everything to do with Brexit. The danger, irresponsibility and absurdity really comes home to you when the bomb disposal Land Rovers are screaming past our office.”
What does the Chancellor think the implications of Brexit will be for jobs in Northern Ireland, when local employers feel like this?
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Helen Hayes Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
In June 2016, my constituents voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union. The vast majority of them were devastated by the referendum result, and there has been no subsequent reduction in the level of engagement from my constituents on Brexit, nor their palpable distress and concern. I made a firm commitment to represent the views of my constituents on Brexit, and their views are clear. Overwhelmingly, my constituents do not want the UK to leave the European Union, and I will continue to put that view on record for as long as this process continues.
Although passionate in their beliefs, my constituents also understand the catastrophic risks that a no-deal Brexit presents for our economy and security and are clear that it must not be allowed to happen. Many have watched closely the approach taken by the Government in their negotiations with the European Union, hoping that they would negotiate thoughtfully in the national interest, intent on bringing together a nation divided by a close referendum result. They have looked carefully for signs that the Government were working for a Brexit deal that demonstrated that Ministers had listened to and reflected on their concerns—albeit in the wider context of something that they wished was not happening at all. Two years on, however, it is clear that the Prime Minister has failed catastrophically in her Brexit negotiations. It is also clear that the seeds of that failure were sown at the very beginning in the speech that she made in Downing Street in which she declared that “Brexit means Brexit.” Brexit was not clearly defined at the time, but that vacuous statement allowed the Conservative hard Brexiteers to move in and claim the definition for themselves.
Soon afterwards, with the Prime Minister setting out her red lines, it became clear that the she was allowing the hard Brexiteers to go completely unchecked and to have a role and influence that was grossly disproportionate to the views of the country as a whole. Instead of establishing a set of principles and objectives for the negotiation that sought to build unity in a country split down the middle by Brexit, and instead of being able to see that this process would have implications for the UK that transcended party politics, the Prime Minister sought only to appease the extremists within her own party who hate the European Union far more than they are concerned about the potentially devastating economic consequences for communities up and down the country of leaving it.
The Prime Minister’s approach to Brexit also failed to acknowledge that the wider global context has changed since the referendum—not least with the election of Donald Trump as President of America. The reality of a volatile, inconsistent, protectionist US President is a de facto weakening of any hypothetical opportunity to benefit from a new trade deal with the US. Any trade deal with the US already ran the risk of being a race to the bottom on environmental protections and workers’ rights, but the Trump presidency introduces further risks that could not have been imagined, still less debated, in June 2016. The importance of our trading relationship with Europe has therefore strengthened, not diminished, over the past two years.
The Prime Minister’s deal is also fundamentally unstable. It is her deal and hers alone. The Henry VIII powers established by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 allow the Government to make fundamental changes to the legislation that we currently derive from the EU, so there is every risk that the Prime Minister could quickly be replaced by a hard Brexiteer who would undermine the deal by the back door to deliver a much harder Brexit. I cannot vote for a deal that has such as strong risk of paving the way to an even more damaging hard Brexit. If the Prime Minister’s deal is defeated, she should resign and call a general election. If Parliament will not vote for a general election, it must allow people the opportunity to vote on whether to accept the Brexit deal on offer or stay in the EU. That is not undemocratic. It is more democratic, and it is the right thing to do.
Windrush: 70th Anniversary
Helen Hayes Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes the 70th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks carrying passengers from the Caribbean; further notes the critical role those passengers played in the post-war reconstruction of the UK, and in particular their work to support the establishment of the newly created NHS; and recognises and celebrates the significant social, political and cultural contribution that those passengers and ensuing generations have made and continue to make to communities across the UK.
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate and to the many colleagues from across the House who supported my application.
Today is the first anniversary of the horrific fire at Grenfell Tower, and I want to say at the start of this debate that my thoughts—and those of every Member, I am sure—are with the families of the victims, the survivors, members of the emergency services and all those for whom the last year has been marked by the trauma of that dreadful fire.
On 22 June 1948, HMT Empire Windrush arrived in Tilbury docks from the Caribbean carrying 1,027 passengers and two stowaways. More than half the passengers came from Jamaica, and there were many from Trinidad, Bermuda and British Guiana. There were other nationalities too, including Polish passengers displaced during the second world war. The passengers were responding to advertisements in local newspapers, including The Gleaner in Jamaica, for jobs in the UK, with an opportunity to travel on the Windrush for £28.
The UK was desperate for labour to help rebuild following the devastation of the second world war. The ship’s records reveal that the passengers had a range of skills: they included mechanics, carpenters, welders, engineers, cabinet makers, housing domestics and scholars, and there was a hatter, a judge and a potter, along with many other skilled workers. There were also dozens of airmen who had volunteered to serve in the RAF during the war and had played a hugely significant role in fighting fascism in Europe, including Samuel Beaver King—Sam King—who became the first black mayor of Southwark.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. In the London Borough of Ealing, on the other side of London, we have had a Windrush physical memorial and events for kids in schools since 1998. Does she agree that the word “Windrush” is meant to be a celebration of the kinds of achievements she is talking about, but that it has now turned into one we associate with tragedy because of failures in the Home Office? We see it week in, week out in our surgeries—for example, in the applications that take so long to be processed even when people have paid for priority service. Does she agree that now more than ever the words of Lord Reid from our side—that the Home Office is not fit for purpose—apply?
Helen Hayes
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and will come later to exactly those issues, which she raises so powerfully.
Sam King said of his decision to join the RAF:
“'I as a young man volunteered to contribute and fight Nazi Germany and by the Grace of God we won. It was a close thing, for example during Dunkirk a lot of people don’t realise that Britain stood alone, for nearly two years against tyranny… we as part of the former British Empire volunteered and contributed and I am glad I did that.”
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I am drawn to the hon. Lady’s speech and delighted to be here to hear it. What she says is quite true, but of course Britain did not stand alone, and does not stand alone now; we stand alongside our brothers and sisters, who have grown up with us and with whom we have grown up, who came from all parts of what was once the empire and is now the Commonwealth and who have enriched our lives and our culture every day since our contacts were first built. The Windrush generation are not a foreign generation but our own generation and very much part of us. It is to that spirit of unity that she is speaking, and it is one of pride, not shame.
Helen Hayes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I agree entirely with his comments.
Windrush passengers from the Caribbean travelled as British citizens as a result of the British Nationality Act 1948, which created a new category of “citizen of the United Kingdom and colonies” for anyone born or naturalised in either the UK or any of the countries subject to colonial rule. Writing on the 40th anniversary of the Windrush voyage, Sam King described the mixed feelings of the passengers as the ship left Jamaica:
“In the cool afternoon breeze as the sun tilted towards the west, the ship gave out three or four mighty blasts and eased out of Kingston Harbour heading for the Mother Land. About half the immigrants would not look back. In their hearts they were leaving the ‘Rock’ to start a new life in England where, once settled, they would send for their children, brother, sister, mother and father. The other half gazed at the azure sky, the sparkling sea, the majestic Blue Mountain, the beautiful horizon as they disappeared from view, and pledged to go back to the ‘Yard’ within the next five to ten years.”
The arrival of the Windrush at Tilbury docks was captured by Pathé on a news reel, interviewing some of the passengers about their plans, including calypso singer Aldwin Robert, also known as Lord Kitchener, performing his specially written song “London is the Place for Me” on deck, capturing the optimism of that moment.
About 200 Windrush passengers found temporary accommodation at the Clapham South deep air raid shelter, from where they found their way to the nearest labour exchange, on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton in my constituency, to look for work and permanent accommodation. Many found accommodation from Jamaican landlord Gus Leslie, who had bought property in and around Somerleyton Road in Brixton, and they settled in the area.
The Windrush passengers found London still devastated by the war—undeveloped bomb sites were everywhere, many properties were still damaged and rationing was still in place—but the new arrivals found work. Many passengers were responding specifically to the call for nurses to work in the NHS, which was formally established in July the same year. In my constituency, they went to King’s College Hospital, further down Coldharbour Lane from the labour exchange. As we also celebrate the 70th anniversary of our NHS this summer, we must pay tribute to the enormous contribution the Windrush generation made in both building and sustaining our NHS.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the speech she is making. She notes the contribution made by the Windrush generation in her constituency and in London, but I am sure she will also want to recognise their contribution right across the country, including by the families who moved to my city of Manchester.
Helen Hayes
My hon. Friend is exactly right. Many nurses trained in London and were then placed in hospitals all around the country. They were part of that outward move from London to all over the country, where they indeed made, and continue to make, such an important contribution.
Windrush passengers also found work on London transport and in the construction industry. Some rejoined the armed forces and many were entrepreneurial, setting up stalls and shops in Brixton market and elsewhere.
The lives of Windrush passengers and others from the Caribbean who followed them to Brixton were captured by commercial photographer Harry Jacobs, who set up shop on Landor Road close to Brixton town centre, providing photographic services so that people could send images to their loved ones back home. Many of Harry’s photos are currently on display in Lambeth Town Hall as part of the Windrush 70th anniversary celebrations. They capture, in a very poignant way, the hopes, dreams and achievements of people in the process of making a new life in their new home of London: a woman in her nurse’s uniform; families dressed in their Sunday best, showing off their prize possessions; the first image of a new baby or a new spouse.
In marking this important 70th anniversary, it would be easy to present a sentimental view of the Windrush generation, focusing only on their significant contributions to Britain, but that would not do their experience justice. The thing which makes the Windrush story so remarkable and so humbling is not just that those passengers came to the UK to work in the aftermath of the war, but that they did so despite facing many challenges: the experience of being far from home in an unfamiliar country with a colder climate and, worse than that, widespread racism, the most clear and ugly illustration of which was found on the signs on the doors of boarding houses reading, “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, and which in many situations ran much deeper, often resulting in daily discrimination and humiliation. It is devastating to read the words of John Carpenter, who travelled on the Windrush aged 22, speaking in 1998:
“I know a lot about Britain from school days, but it was a different picture from that one”.
He went on:
“They tell you it is the ‘mother country’, you’re all welcome, you all British. When you come here you realise you’re a foreigner and that’s all there is to it.”
Despite these hardships and injustices, the Windrush passengers and those who followed them settled in the UK and put down roots, often clubbing together to buy property in order to circumvent the racist landlords, establishing businesses and setting up churches. Sam King became a postal worker. He was elected to Southwark Council and became the first black mayor of the borough, an achievement that was also very brave since he faced threats from the National Front which was active in Southwark at the time. Sam was also instrumental in establishing the Notting Hill Carnival and the West Indian Gazette, and he later established the Windrush Foundation with Arthur Torrington, who still runs it today.
In my constituency, the Windrush generation helped to forge the Brixton we know today, bringing food, reggae, jazz, calypso and Soca music, stories and songs, and working in many different public services and businesses. In doing so, they made a huge contribution to a community where everyone is welcome, where difference is not feared but celebrated. Talented young people from Brixton recently designed a beautiful logo commissioned by Lambeth Council to mark the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush. It is based on the pattern of human DNA. The Windrush generation and subsequent migrants who have come to this country from all over the Commonwealth sparked the emergence of modern multicultural Britain. They are all part of the UK’s 21st-century DNA.
I am glad today to see Members in the Chamber who I know will speak of their families’ own direct experience of being part of the Windrush generation, including the shadow Home Secretary—my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott)—my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler). It is not my role to do that, but, on behalf of my constituents in Dulwich and West Norwood, to pay tribute and to say thank you to those 1948 pioneers, and those who followed them, for helping to create the diverse and wonderful communities that I am so proud to represent—for helping to make Lambeth and Southwark, and communities across the country, some of the most open communities anywhere in the UK.
But saying thank you is not enough. It is a shameful fact that the injustices experienced by the original Windrush passengers have sadly not been consigned to the past. This has been seen most recently in the Home Office’s appalling systematic denial of citizenship rights to British citizens from the Windrush generation—the ultimate insult to those who came here responding to a call for help on trust that the mother country was their home. It is seen in racial inequalities that still extend through income and employment, educational attainment, physical and mental health, and the criminal justice system. It is seen in the horrific racism that is still to be found in the online spaces of social media. We need look no further than the Twitter timelines of some of my hon. and right hon. Friends here today for evidence of a problem that requires urgent action to address it.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I welcome the powerful tribute that my hon. Friend is making to the Windrush generation and the source of pride that the Windrush generation should be, right across the country. She has raised the injustices faced not just in the past but, outrageously, still today by some from the Windrush generation. She will be aware that the Home Affairs Committee is inquiring into the Home Office’s treatment of these people. Will she join me in supporting an urgent hardship fund for those in the Windrush generation who are being so heavily affected? This has been called for in our interim report and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy).
Helen Hayes
I thank my right hon. Friend for her intervention. I am delighted to wholeheartedly support the call for action that she and her Select Committee have made. I have seen myself, through very many constituency cases, the hardship that this Government’s approach is causing. There is a need for urgent action in the interim as well as for compensation in the longer term for all who are affected.
As we acknowledge and celebrate the enormous contribution of the Windrush generation to the UK, we must commit to an enduring legacy of this anniversary which addresses injustice and roots out racism wherever they are found. To this end, I have some asks of the Government that I believe will help to turn the tributes of our words into a lasting commemoration.
First, I hope that the Minister will know of the work of the Black Cultural Archives, based on Windrush Square in my constituency. The BCA was established in 1981 by Len Garrison, who had come to the UK from Jamaica as a child in 1954. Len Garrison was an educator who believed that, in his words,
“collecting and structuring the fragmented evidence of the Black past in Britain as well as in the Caribbean and Africa is a monumental task, but it is a major agenda item in”
the
“last decade of the 20th century”
to create a
“better basis for achieving a fully multicultural British society.”
The BCA has an extensive archive documenting the history of black people in the UK, from the African Roman emperor who was stationed at Hadrian’s wall—Septimus Severus—to black Georgians, the Windrush generation, and much, much more. It is a national resource that is critical to our understanding as a society, and vital for the sense of place and belonging of many black British people. Unusually for a national archive, the majority of the BCA’s core funding is now provided by the local council, Lambeth. This is neither appropriate nor sustainable, particularly in the context of local authorities’ shrinking budgets. The BCA needs stable core funding from the Government, commensurate with its national role, to enable it to do the work of outreach and interpretation and to secure it for the long term. I therefore call on the Minister to work urgently with ministerial colleagues in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to identify and confirm core funding for the BCA as part of the Windrush 70 commemorations.
In the climate of uncertainty forged by Brexit in which we are currently living, and which in some areas means that we are seeing an increase in intolerance and hatred, we need to be proactive and assertive in our celebration of the contribution that migrants have made, and continue to make, to life in the UK. I therefore call on the Government to designate 22 June as Windrush Day—an annual event to remember our debt of gratitude to those who answered the call to come and help rebuild the UK, and whose contribution to our economy, public services and communities enriches the UK immensely. It should be a day to celebrate both our diversity and our common humanity.
There is much more still to do to ensure justice for the Windrush generation from the Home Office. Much has been said about the scandal in this Chamber in recent weeks, and there is more to say. Today, however, I will simply say this: justice for the Windrush generation is to be found in confirmation of the citizenship that they have always had, and in financial compensation for the hardship and indignities they have suffered. It must also be in a resetting of the dial for both our collective narrative and Government policy on immigration. We must reassert the British values that do not treat others with fear and suspicion, and instead welcome those who come to the UK to seek safety or contribute their skills, wherever they are from.
Finally, wherever inequality is still rooted in race, we have more to do. We must with urgency address the terrible increase in knife and gun crime that disproportionately affects young black men, and we must ensure that all our schools are properly funded and that there is equal access to the best universities for young people from all backgrounds. The disproportionate incidence of mental ill health among BAME communities must be addressed, and there are many other areas to address.
The recently published report by the Women and Equalities Committee on the Government’s race disparity audit highlighted a woeful lack of data collection on race and ethnicity. That makes it difficult to analyse and reach conclusions on the actions that need to be taken to address race inequality. We do know, however, that the austerity of the last eight years has been bad for advancing equality. Therefore, my final ask of the Government is that they ensure that public services that play the greatest role in increasing equality and tackling disadvantage—schools, housing, policing, youth services and the NHS in particular—are funded properly to enable them to keep on doing so year on year. The Windrush generation are extraordinary for their resilience, dignity, commitment and creativity, and Britain is indebted to them. Let us make this 70th anniversary into a lasting legacy by continuing to build a just, tolerant and equal society.
Helen Hayes
I wish to thank Members from across the House for contributing to this debate, but I am particularly grateful to my right hon. Friends the Members for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), because their contributions have been not only representation but very powerful testimony.
We are about to embark next week on a fabulous series of celebrations across the country for the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush. The debate today has set the context for those celebrations very well. It is a context not of sentimentality but of immense gratitude, held in tension with a sense of the injustices, both of the past and of the present.
It is, however, a matter of regret to me that some Members have made mention, again and again, of illegal immigration in this debate. Sometimes, in seeking to draw a distinction repeatedly it is possible to achieve the opposite. This debate was never intended to be, in any way, shape or form, about illegal immigration; it was a debate about celebrating the contribution of the Windrush generation. I welcome very much the encouraging comments of the Minister about Windrush Day and the Black Cultural Archives. I look forward to progressing those ideas with him and, I hope, to hearing more positive announcements next week. Once again, I thank Members, as we enter a period of genuine celebration of, and gratitude for, the contribution of the Windrush generation next week.
Customs and Borders
Helen Hayes Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). I commend him for his clarity and bravery on Brexit.
The referendum on 23 June 2016 set out one high-level question: should the United Kingdom remain in the European Union, or should the United Kingdom leave the European Union? The referendum campaign covered many issues, but the EU customs union was not a mainstream issue for debate. It was not articulated as a defining, essential feature of Brexit and it was not a motivating reason for people to vote leave. The customs union was a phrase that comparatively few people knew until after the referendum.
Following the referendum result, it was the responsibility of the Prime Minister to lead and to articulate how the Government would respond to the result of the EU referendum and how they would seek to negotiate Brexit in the best interests of the UK economy. Instead, the Prime Minister’s only articulation of the shape and content of Brexit for several months after the referendum was “Brexit means Brexit.” In the utter vacuum of content that this left, hard-line Brexiteers and their supporters in the press peddled the myth that leaving the customs union was a talismanic and essential feature of the Brexit that the British public had narrowly voted in favour of. This was never the case. Membership of the customs union was barely debated during the referendum campaign and it was certainly not on the ballot paper. Membership of the customs union is not the same as membership of the EU. It has been misrepresented as such by the hard Brexiteer ideologues, whose hatred of the EU runs so deep that they cannot bear the thought of any formal association with our friends and neighbours in the EU.
The UK’s current annual goods trade with the customs union is valued at £466 billion. Leaving the customs union could cost the UK an estimated £25 billion every year until 2030. The cost of new tariffs alone could be at least £4.5 billion a year for UK exporters. Analysis by HMRC suggests that new customs checks could increase the cost of imported goods to UK customers by up to 24%. Supporters of a hard Brexit claim that leaving the customs union will open up opportunities for the UK to negotiate trade agreements with many other countries. This is like promising to replace two birds in the hand with one in the bush. The Government’s own analysis shows that they believe that new free trade deals will add between 0.2% and 0.7% to UK GDP, compared to a 5% hit from leaving the single market.
Membership of the customs union delivers for the UK now. Future trade deals will take a minimum of three to five years to negotiate, and their terms are by no means guaranteed. Their impact on the UK economy will be much smaller than the current benefits of the customs union, and negotiations cannot even begin until we have left the EU. This is what a cliff-edge Brexit looks like.
There is no time for me to consider the impact on the Northern Irish border, to which many Members have already referred, so I will bring my remarks to a close. My constituents in Dulwich and West Norwood did not vote for Brexit. But even in the areas of the UK that voted to leave, nobody voted explicitly to leave the customs union. Leaving the customs union was not a Vote Leave pledge, and damaging the UK economy was not a Vote Leave pledge. Some 57% of the British public—a bigger majority than voted to leave the EU in the first place—support staying in the customs union. The Prime Minister’s intransigent commitment to leaving the customs union is therefore unfathomable.
The Prime Minister is not negotiating in the national interest; she is simply losing a negotiation with her own Back Benchers. In doing so, she is putting our jobs, and businesses and peace in Northern Ireland at risk. This is nothing short of reckless. I call on Conservative Members to show the leadership in the national interest that the Prime Minister seems to lack, and to vote today to remain in the customs union with the EU.
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Hayes Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Hammond
I hear the hon. Gentleman’s concern and I am absolutely sure that the vast majority of our constituents would agree with his suggestion that we seek to maintain cost-effective access for UK phone users whenever they are roaming within the EU. I think that will be an issue for this Parliament post-Brexit unless we choose, in the course of the exit negotiations, to reach a reciprocal agreement with the European Union.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
The Government are protecting the total core schools budget in real terms. That is possible only through careful management of the economy. As a result, school funding is at its highest ever level, at almost £41 billion in 2017-18. Spending will increase to £42 billion in 2019-20 as pupils numbers rise. We are also delivering our manifesto commitment to implement fairer schools funding. The recent national funding formula consultation includes generous transitional protections for schools that would see a reduction in their funding. The Government are carefully considering replies to the consultation and will respond in the summer.
Helen Hayes
The 2015 Conservative manifesto promised that
“the amount of money following your child into school will be protected”.
However, the National Audit Office found that schools face a real-terms cut of 8% per pupil by 2019-20, even before the cuts the new national funding formula will bring to more than 9,000 schools in England. Will the Government therefore confirm that the Tory manifesto pledge on per pupil funding is now in tatters?
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Hayes Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
1. What steps he is taking to ensure that young people are not disproportionately affected by reductions in government expenditure.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
4. What steps he is taking to ensure that young people are not disproportionately affected by reductions in government expenditure.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Hands)
The Government have a long-term economic plan designed to help young people, which includes 3 million new apprenticeship starts, a 10-year low in youth unemployment, the lifetime individual savings account to help first-time buyers, 360,000 16-year-olds doing National Citizen Service and record numbers going to university.
Helen Hayes
The Chancellor has claimed that the Government
“put the next generation first.”—[Official Report, 16 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 951.]
However, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s “Is Britain Fairer?” report, which was published last year, found that younger people in the UK faced the worst economic prospects for generations. Young people in my constituency are bearing a disproportionate burden of the Government’s cuts. The abolition of the education maintenance allowance has made it harder for 16 and 17-year-olds to pursue educational opportunities; university tuition fees have trebled and are set to rise again; changes to the schools funding formula will see—
Mr Speaker
Order. All we need is a question with a question mark at the end of it in one sentence.
Helen Hayes
Sorry, Mr Speaker. My question is, when will the Chancellor offer a fair deal to our young people, and stop closing off opportunities and driving them into debt?
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Helen Hayes Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
In the short time available, I would like to make just a couple of points about what I believe to be a cynical and desperate Budget. It is cynical because it is designed to deliver appealing messages to some parts of the electorate, while hoping that no one will notice how these benefits are being delivered. It is desperate because the context is the Chancellor’s failure to meet any of the targets he has set himself and he is scrabbling around throwing all common decency out of the window to save face.
The proposal to deliver cuts in corporation tax and capital gains tax, overwhelmingly benefiting large firms and well-off individuals, by cutting personal independence payments to disabled people was a despicable plan. Further cuts to support for disabled people are straightforwardly unacceptable. Making such cuts to precisely the type of support that enables many disabled people to have greater control and lead more independent lives is as incompetent as it is cruel. People across the country have made their outrage at this proposal clear. I am relieved that the Government have U-turned on this plan, but quite frankly it beggars belief that the Chancellor ever thought it was acceptable.
I am compelled to draw attention to the announcement in the Budget relating to homelessness. The Chancellor was so pleased with this announcement—£115 million to tackle rough sleeping—that he leaked it to the Evening Standard the day before the Budget. The Communities and Local Government Committee, of which I am a member, is currently undertaking an inquiry into homelessness. Last week we visited The Connection at St Martin’s, which supports rough sleepers just a few hundred metres from this place. Its dedicated staff told us how the number of rough sleepers is increasing, how they struggle to keep up with the demand for their services and how Government policies, across a range of different areas, are contributing directly to making the problems worse.
Homelessness has increased by 36% since 2010 and rough sleeping in London has doubled. In Lambeth alone, there are over 1,800 households in temporary accommodation, including almost 5,000 children in one single borough living without the security of a permanent home. Additional funding to help rough sleepers is of course welcome, but while £115 million sounds like a big number it is a sticking plaster on a severed artery.
Melanie Onn
There are an additional five housing measures in the Budget, all of which raise more money for the Treasury. Does my hon. Friend think that they will have an impact on homelessness, because they relate to some of the core fundamentals of providing housing in this country?
Helen Hayes
The Government’s approach to housing is broken from top to bottom. The Government must recognise, as the previous Labour Government who reduced homelessness by 62% recognised, that tackling the causes of homelessness is within their gift. The single biggest cause of homelessness in London is now the ending of a private sector tenancy, yet the Housing and Planning Bill will do nothing at all to reform the private rented sector. Even to the Chancellor, it should be crystal clear that rough sleepers cannot afford starter homes and will not benefit from lifetime ISAs or the cut in capital gains tax. The growth in homelessness in London in the 21st century is this Government’s shame. In that context, it is imperative that the Government rethink the Housing and Planning Bill and ensure that sufficient public sector resources are being directed into the building of the genuinely affordable homes that are so badly needed.
This is a cynical, desperate Budget and I think the Chancellor has been found out. I hope the Government will take the opportunity that has been presented to them this weekend to rethink the Budget comprehensively, and that the Chancellor himself will come back to the House with a fair deal for disabled people, a fair deal for our councils, and a plan for addressing the causes of homelessness, not just the symptoms.