Teesworks: Accountability and Scrutiny
Debate between Lisa Nandy and Rosie Winterton(11 months ago)
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Levelling Up
Debate between Lisa Nandy and Rosie Winterton(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
After all the delays, all the slogans and all the big promises, is this it? Is this really it? The sum total of ambition for our proud coastal and industrial—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The Secretary of State was heard with respect. I do not expect the shadow Secretary of State to be shouted out.
Lisa Nandy
Conservative Members do not disrespect us when they chunter and jeer; they disrespect the people of this country.
Seriously, is this it? The sum total of ambition for our coastal and industrial towns, our villages and our great cities is a history lesson on the rise of the Roman empire, and Ministers scurrying around Whitehall, shuffling the deckchairs and cobbling together a shopping list of recycled policies and fiddling the figures. Is this really it?
For some of us, this is personal. We have lived these failures every single day. We have watched good jobs go, our high streets boarded up and young people who have had to get out to get on. The Secretary of State talks about Bury FC. My step-dad was a lifelong supporter of Bury FC, a regular at Gigg Lane and his last words to my step-brother before he died were, “What’s the score?” If he were alive today, he would never forgive the Government for standing aside while this asset at the centre of Bury’s community was allowed to collapse.
This system is completely broken, and the Secretary of State has given us more of the same. This was meant to be the Prime Minister’s defining mission of Government. I am not surprised he was too embarrassed to come here today and defend it himself. It is so bad that even the Secretary of State has privately been saying that it is rubbish. They tell us to wait till 2030, but where have they been for the last 12 years? I will tell them where—in Whitehall, turbocharging the decline of our communities, and cutting off choices and chances for a generation of young people.
The Secretary of State talks about 12 missions, but this is 12 admissions of failure. Let us take one of them. Only two thirds of children leave primary school with the basic skills to get on. Forgive me if I have missed something, but was he not the Education Secretary for four years? What about this? The Government want to tackle crime, but on their watch fewer than one in 10 crimes are solved and nearly all rapes go unprosecuted. No one listening to this would think that he had been in charge of the Ministry of Justice.
This is a Government in free fall—out of ideas, out of energy—with recycled, watered-down ambitions. None of this is new. In fact, some of it is so old that one of the better announcements that caught my eye was actually made in 2008 by Gordon Brown and has been running ever since. Across our home towns, we have seen good jobs disappear and far too many young people who have had to get out to get on. This does nothing to address that.
The Secretary of State talks about a Medici-style renaissance, but can he not see what is happening in front of his eyes? Our high streets are struggling because the local economy is struggling. People do not have money to spend in our shops, our businesses and our high streets, and the Government are about to hike up their taxes. This does nothing to address that. What we needed was a plan to connect our towns and villages to jobs, to opportunities and to our family and friends, but they have halved the funding for buses and scrapped the rail promises to the north, and where is the digital Britain we were promised?
We do not need to look to Rome, Jericho or renaissance Florence for inspiration, because in Preston, Wigan and Grimsby, people are delivering real change for themselves, not because of their Government, but despite them. Imagine what we could do if they would get out of the way and give us back the power that we demand to make decisions for ourselves. [Laughter.] Well, Conservative Members laugh. They do laugh—they have been laughing at us for years—and here it goes again.
It is absurd that we have to go cap in hand to Westminster to do things that we know will work for us. Do not believe me; believe the former Mayor of London, who in 2013 demanded powers that are nowhere to be seen in this report. We asked for powers, and we got a process. Where are the powers we were promised? Seriously, we have the arrogance of a Chancellor sitting in Whitehall, drawing lines on a map, choosing which of us have earned the right to have some say on the decisions that affect not their lives, but our lives, our families and our communities.
The Secretary of State talks about London-style regeneration. My colleagues in London will talk proudly about the London they call home, but not every part of this country wants to be the same. We have our own identities. We are proud of our own places. We believe in our communities and we believe in our people, and we deserve a Government who back us, not the smoke and mirrors that we have been handed today.
The Government have given more to fraudsters than they have given to the north of England. For every £13 they have taken from us, they have given us £1 back. We get a partial refund and they expect us to be grateful. [Interruption.] I will give the House an example. The Mayor of Greater Manchester today raised broken promises on rail, and he was told by one of the Government’s MPs, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
It is not their money; it is ours. Imagine what we could achieve if we had a Government with an ambition for Britain that matched the ambition of the people in it. We could build good jobs in every community. There is a global race to create these jobs, and we will bring them here so that young people in our coastal and industrial towns can power us through the next generation, like their parents and grandparents powered us through the last. In every community in this country, people know that we can do so much better than this, with well-paid jobs and money back in people’s pockets to genuinely transform our high streets. We can reform business rates to back our bricks and mortar businesses. We can be buying, making and selling more in Britain and have an educational recovery plan that stands as a testament to our commitment to the young people who make this country what it is. That is our mission, and today we have learned one crucial thing: for all the spin and all the gloss, the Government will not do it, because they do not believe in this country—we will. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I think you are preventing the Secretary of State from speaking. I suggest that a modicum of silence from those on the Back Benches would be welcome.
Withdrawal from Afghanistan: Joint Committee
Debate between Lisa Nandy and Rosie Winterton(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Lisa Nandy
I could not agree more and am sure we can find cross-party consensus on this, but those women need practical help now. There is a way to get them to the border if we can issue them with the paperwork, so will the Minister commit to working with the Ministry of Defence, which is represented here today, to make sure that paperwork is issued within the next 24 hours?
Beyond the help for those left behind, we need urgent action on the humanitarian crisis. There are 37 million Afghans now living under a Taliban regime. The pledging conference was a start, but there are practical challenges. I was very concerned to speak to aid workers in Afghanistan recently who have been told that women aid workers cannot return to work. They are understandably unwilling to operate under those conditions; what discussions has the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office had with our allies and with the Taliban to ensure that that work can begin again without conditions?
We need a global agreement to deal with the refugee crisis, as the Minister knows, but we also need to make sure the UK plays its part. Pakistan is, for instance, home to 3 million Afghan refugees already and is being asked to take more when the UK has capped its contribution at 5,000 over the next year. Can the Minister see the problem? If we want to keep the borders open he will have to pick up the phone to the Home Office to see what more can be done, and while he is doing that perhaps he will mention to the Home Secretary that this warm welcome looks pretty chilly indeed when families are being dumped into overcrowded hostels and hotels without local authorities even being notified that they are there.
No one in Government has yet been able to outline a political strategy. We need clarity on how the Government intend to try to influence the new Taliban regime, a clear assessment of the financial and economic leverage available, and clarity on the Government’s approach to conditionality. We are now in the unpalatable position of being dependent on the Taliban’s promises that they have changed; I am sure I am not the only Member who is deeply sceptical about their assurances. Whatever the PR operation in Qatar is telling us, on the ground there are daily reports coming into my office of journalists being beaten, women being hunted and minority groups being tortured and killed, so how does the Minister intend to use our leverage, particularly financial and economic, to ensure the Taliban keep that promise?
Finally, on national security we must have assurances that effective security checks are applied to those coming to the UK, and that there is clarity on the threat assessment and a plan to strengthen our intelligence coverage of Afghanistan now that the UK is no longer present on the ground. As well as the reality of those left behind in Afghanistan, what keeps me awake at night is the unknown security risks we now face. There are ways to address this, but one consequence might be that we become more reliant on countries that are not our natural partners. When we went to the UN, we were reliant on China and Russia in order to establish a joint international approach. What does this mean for Britain as we enter the next few weeks or the great strategic challenges that will become apparent in just a month’s time at COP26?
It did not have to be like this; we could have used the last 18 months to plan our exit and to recommit to the aspirations of the Afghan people for a peaceful democratic country. Although we are withdrawing troops, we should not walk away from the people of Afghanistan. The alternative to chaotic exit is not endless war, as the former Foreign Secretary the right hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab) suggested, but the endless, tireless pursuit of peace that shows leadership on refugees instead of simply lecturing other countries, and that invests in friendships and alliances so that when we most need them we find willing partners who stand with us and readily answer our call. That was the spirit shown by our troops, our diplomats, our civil servants and the Afghan people over two decades. We owe it to them to learn the lessons, we owe it to them to do better. I commend this motion to the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Before I call the Minister, I have further news in relation to the points of order that were raised earlier. Initially, the Government committed to making a statement in response to any such votes as took place earlier within 12 weeks. However, in 2019, the Government reduced that deadline to eight weeks. I thought it would be helpful for the House to know that so that it is clear about the position. If there are any further concerns, I am sure that Members will consider raising them with the Leader of the House at business questions tomorrow.
There is pressure on time in this debate, so there will be an immediate time limit on Back-Bench speeches. It may be five minutes, but it might be four, depending on the length of the Front-Bench contributions. Just to reiterate, if anyone stands who was not here at the beginning of the debate, they will not be called.