Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Meg Hillier and David Lammy

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I said last week that I was keen to meet with the family, and I will meet with them when they meet with the Prisons Minister, I hope, in the coming weeks.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have seen a lack of maintenance of prisons, a stop-start prison building programme and all the challenges in our courts—is it any surprise that we are looking at non-custodial sentences for lower-level offenders? Does the Secretary of State agree that those on the Opposition Front Bench have some cheek to come to this House and question that when the failures in the system are down to 14 years failure?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend did a valiant job as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, constantly revisiting these issues. She will have noticed how successive Justice Secretaries under the last Government have said that they cut the numbers, they failed to invest, violence was up, and now we have junior staff making very important decisions.

Prisoner Releases in Error

Debate between Meg Hillier and David Lammy

Tuesday 11th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman raises issues that are, in a sense, beyond the prison system. He is right about the delivery mechanism of prisoners from court to prisons. He knows, because it has come up in oral questions in the House, that we inherited backlogs from the Conservative party. He also knows that we are demanding that our police arrest more and bear down on crime. The criminal justice system is phenomenally hot. All this will affect the prison system. That is why we have asked Brian Leveson to look at issues of efficiency, in particular, in relation to the courts backlog. Part of that is the relationship between security and the movement of people from our courts to our prison system.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

When I chaired and served on the Public Accounts Committee, on which I served for more than 10 years, we looked at and, with the help of the National Audit Office, uncovered failures in the Probation Service—a policy area that yo-yoed between Ministers as they changed—as well as the failure to build and maintain prisons, failures with the courts IT system and failures with identifying information that needed to be shared. Is my right hon. Friend aware of the Magee review, which was commissioned at the tail end of the previous Labour Government, and can he speculate as to why the review was never implemented over the 14 years of the Conservative Government?

Middle East

Debate between Meg Hillier and David Lammy

Monday 1st September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I remind the right hon. Gentleman of the letter that President Abbas wrote to President Macron, where he was clear for the first time that there can be no role for Hamas. We will make the assessment on recognition in the coming weeks, but clearly the E1 settlement has moved the dial even further away from where we were a few weeks ago. Recognition is a process.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Foreign Secretary said that diplomacy fails until it succeeds. We have talked often in this House about the tragedy unfolding. As we approach the second anniversary, and as he goes to the UN to discuss and agree the recognition of a Palestinian state, can he explain to the House what threshold would need to be reached for a UN peacekeeping force to ensure safe passage of food and welfare to those who are starving and dying, even as we stand here today?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend will understand that the Israeli Government have set themselves against some of the UN agencies that would need to uphold that, so I think that that feels unlikely from the conversations that we have had, but I do applaud the work of Cindy McCain and the World Food Programme to get essential food to people who need it.

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Debate between Meg Hillier and David Lammy

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

That is a crude caricature of a very serious issue. I took a decision back in September in relation to international humanitarian law in suspending arms sales that could be used in Gaza because these are very serious issues—I understand the issues that are before the ICC and the ICJ, and they are very serious. It is because votes in this Parliament helped to set up those mechanisms and made us part of them that I leave it to them to make the necessary determinations that they must properly make.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have seen the slaughter of innocents going on for far too long, and as others have said, people are dying right now. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement and the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday with France and Canada. The Foreign Secretary mentioned that he had met Vice-President Vance. To get a breakthrough, because Israel is not listening, America needs to be part of this. Can he tell us about that conversation with Vice-President Vance and whether he has any hope that we can make a statement jointly with the US as well?

[Mr Lammy]

I know that my hon. Friend’s constituents will be deeply concerned about what is happening. We had hoped, and I know Vice-President Vance had hoped, that we would get a breakthrough in the ceasefire that was being brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt. She will have seen that the United States has been able to strike direct deals—it got its hostage out last week by going direct to Hamas—and that the breakthrough we had hoped for towards the end of last week has not come through. I do not foresee a ceasefire deal at this stage. That is why the only way forward is through more diplomacy, not less. It is not through military means. We have to be crystal clear that we disagree with the course that the Netanyahu Government are now taking.