Armed Forces Bill

Navendu Mishra Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 8th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab) [V]]

I would like to start by paying tribute to Captain Sir Tom Moore on behalf of the people of Stockport. Sir Tom sadly passed away last week, but he represented the best of Britain and gave joy to millions of us during the lowest points of the crisis. He served with distinction during the second world war, and as we debate the Bill, I would like to thank Captain Sir Tom and all the armed forces for their service, not least during this covid pandemic when their efforts have further helped to keep our country safe.

As well as keeping our citizens safe, the armed forces also help to pull our communities together. For example, in my constituency, I would also like to give a special mention to Army veteran Peter Millns of the Stockport branch of the Armed Forces and Veterans Breakfast Clubs. I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the club in March last year and meet the incredible people such as Peter who give their time to help run the club and provide such a worthy service. Peter is an inspirational individual. He is the driving force behind my local branch, helping to create a close-knit community for Stockport veterans. Peter is not unique, though. Liz Murray from the Stockport branch of the Royal British Legion also does so much to support our veteran community in the town. The help that the likes of Liz and Peter give to armed forces personnel past and present is vital, and it is never more important than at times like these, which are particularly challenging and can place an even greater burden on our veterans.

Voluntary organisations are amazing, but it should not be left to them to make up the shortfall in Government support. Too often, the armed forces covenant is not upheld and the promises made do not match the reality experienced by our service communities, from substandard housing to veterans’ mental health and social care. Just last week, a scathing report by the National Audit Office revealed that tens of thousands of troops live in “substandard accommodation” while the Ministry of Defence refuses to pay for £1.5 billion pounds worth of repairs and half the rooms in MOD barracks would fail to meet current building regulations. That is no way to treat those who have put their lives on the line to keep our country safe.

The Armed Forces Bill places a legal responsibility on councils to deliver on the covenant in the areas of housing, healthcare and education, but without providing any extra funding to do so. That commitment is even harder to keep when the likes of my local authority, Stockport Council, have not only faced repeated cuts and austerity for more than a decade but now face a shortfall of millions after the Government failed to deliver on their promise to fully fund local authorities for the cost of covid-19 and keeping the people of Stockport safe. A fair financial settlement for our local authorities is the only way that the likes of our serving and veteran armed forces personnel can continue to receive the support they deserve.

Indeed, it is only right that our armed forces, veterans and their families do not continue to experience any disadvantage when accessing services, as we have seen most recently on the housing issue. The sad reality, though, is that too many still face barriers to accessing the support they need. That is why this Government must go further and deliver the armed forces covenant in full. To ensure that that happens, this Bill should set measurable, national standards that would once and for all end the postcode lottery on the armed forces covenant.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before I call Anthony Mangnall, I must inform the House that the wind-ups will start at 9.40 with Stephen Morgan, followed by Ben Wallace at 9.50. The question will then be put at 10 o’clock, and I apologise in advance to those Members who may not get in.

Oral Answers to Questions

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Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

What plans the Government have to ensure that the May 2021 local elections are covid-19 secure.

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

What plans the Government has to ensure that the May 2021 local elections are covid-19 secure.

[The Paymaster General (Penny Mordaunt)]

The UK Government are working with local returning officers, the Electoral Commission and public health bodies to identify and resolve the challenges involved in delivering the elections next May.

--- Later in debate ---

[Navendu Mishra]

I know from my own experience that a large proportion of electoral staff and volunteers is made up from the demographic that would be considered vulnerable, with many retired and older people volunteering. If the Government have refused to provide any more funding for the running of the May 2021 elections, what steps are they taking to ensure that there is not a huge shortage of electoral staff?

[Penny Mordaunt]

One of the partners we are working with is public health organisations and authorities, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we want to ensure that everyone, whether they are officers or volunteers, is safe. We also anticipate, for example, that we will have extra demands on postal votes and so forth, and we are determined to ensure that we have the supply to meet that demand, but the issues that he raises are at the forefront of our minds.

Oral Answers to Questions

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Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have deep sympathy for Ickford in my hon. Friend’s constituency and the flooding it has suffered; I know Ickford. It is very important that local authorities follow the rules in making their planning decisions, as I am sure he would agree, and we are making a huge investment—£5.2 billion—in flood defences to protect the 300,000 homes at risk across the country.

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

The Greater Manchester Metrolink tram system cuts carbon emissions, improves air quality and reduces congestion on our roads. As part of the post-covid recovery plan, will the Prime Minister commit funding to extend the tram network from East Didsbury to Stockport town centre in order to improve access and give much-needed support to businesses and communities in my constituency?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I will study the plan he proposes with care, although I should tell him that a massive infrastructure programme is already under way, as the Chancellor will shortly announce, and it may be that in due time the scheme the hon. Gentleman proposes could benefit from those investments.

Integrated Review

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Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed. This will be big for the Black Country. The west midlands, once again, is at the cutting edge of technological change and the new industrial revolution. The technologies that we will need and that are foreseen in this spending package will certainly drive jobs in the west midlands and around the whole UK.

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

Britain is the penholder for Yemen at the UN Security Council, with the responsibility to support the peace process and a real opportunity to show global Britain at its best, but will the Prime Minister tell us why his Government have resumed indefensible arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which has credibly been accused of human rights violations that may amount to war crimes?

[The Prime Minister]

Under the consolidated guidance, we have some of the strictest rules about exports of weapons to any country in the world. Everything is closely overseen and scrutinised by our lawyers, and, indeed, judicially reviewed. I am content that we are doing everything in accordance with the law and in accordance with humanitarian law.

External Private Contractors: Government Use and Employment

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Wednesday 21st October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker)—my former employer, no less—for securing the debate. I draw Members’ attention to my membership of trade unions and donations from Unite, as set out in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I also thank the PCS union, which represents more than 8,000 workers employed by private companies on Government contracts, for its ongoing work in this area, particularly its campaign to bring outsourced jobs back in-house, and for continuing to apply pressure on contractors and the Government to pay a real living wage—the one calculated by the Living Wage Foundation, not the one appropriated in a public relations stunt by former Chancellor George Osborne—while continuing to fight for workers to have access to the terms and conditions afforded to their civil service counterparts.

Last year I was proud to join more than 200 PCS members in my constituency of Stockport when they took industrial action over workloads, staffing levels and the oppressive working conditions that they were forced to endure while working on universal credit reforms. The level of outsourcing, cost to the taxpayer and general wastage of hiring private contractors in my region of Greater Manchester alone is truly eye-watering. It is a legacy that we have been forced to endure since the Thatcher era, and it has been a 30-year-long failed experiment.

Almost three years on from the collapse of Carillion, described at the time as the largest ever trading liquidation in the UK, lessons have failed to be learned and it is slowly coming to light just how entrenched outsourcing has become in this country. In my region alone, the Manchester Evening News was able to unearth Carillion’s involvement in 10 major public and private sector projects, including Network Rail electrification, the M6 smart motorway work, High Speed 2, Airport City and Owens Park. It was also heavily linked to Greater Manchester schools, roads and basic services, through contracts with Manchester, Tameside, Rochdale and my own local authority, Stockport Council. In my borough, a Carillion offshoot was contracted to handle estates, assets and facilities management at various sites.

That is all part of a staggering 10-year £100 million deal that was signed in 2014 to handle key development services. Private contracting permeates every single stratum of our society, from Stockport Town Hall to Greater Manchester police. With local authorities already strapped for cash by central Government, how can it be right that they sign off multimillion-pound contracts with companies that often have little to no track record of delivery, as we have seen most recently in the Government’s decision to outsource covid test and tracing to Serco? Months later, we still do not have a functioning system like those of our European partners.

What is worse is that, despite paying such exorbitant fees to private contractors, nothing is put in place to ensure that workers are treated with dignity. For example, earlier this year the PCS union led a month-long walkout in response to Interserve’s treatment of its staff, who were maintaining the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office premises. The move was the longest period of strike action in the history of the Foreign Office—all because Interserve was not prepared to recognise trade unionised workers and was continuing to drive down its staff through measures such as reducing working hours.

It is not much to ask in return for multimillion-pound, multi-year contracts that these organisations recognise trade unions. As we have seen time and again, these companies will never prioritise workers’ wellbeing over private profit. It is time to end that practice once and for all, bring these contracts back in-house and finally deliver the services that we so desperately need, efficiently and in a fiscally responsible way, if we are to kickstart our economy again and recover from this crippling pandemic.

Oral Answers to Questions

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Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon Friend because that is a classic and fine example of the philanthropy and public spirit of the British people, which has been shown clearly throughout this crisis.

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

I know that the Prime Minister refused to recognise my figures last week, but my local housing provider, Stockport Homes, has a waiting list of more than 7,000 households. With Shelter saying that 200,000 renters are at risk of imminent covid eviction, will he reinstate the ban upon evictions to prevent an even bigger housing crisis in Stockport this winter?

[The Prime Minister]

We have changed the law to ask landlords to provide tenants with at least six months’ notice before eviction. We are not going to have evictions in lockdown areas, there will not be any enforcement of evictions over Christmas and we are putting £180 million into discretionary payments for local authorities to help hardship cases. We are also embarking on a huge programme to build hundreds of thousands more homes, particularly affordable homes, which I hope the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will want to buy and to part-buy.

Covid-19

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Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The sectors that my hon. Friend refers to have in many respects already been provided for and supported, but clearly there will be further demands. I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will be applying his imagination and creativity to helping those sectors in the months ahead, but the best thing for them is to get back to life as close to normal as possible by getting this virus down. That is the point of the package of measures that we are announcing today.

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

Last week I received a letter from the Health Minister informing me that a new covid testing centre would be available for my Stockport constituents some 240 miles away at the University of Greenwich campus in Kent. I am willing to accept that this might have been an administrative error, but it is entirely possible that the letter is accurate, given that many of my constituents are already having travel more than 70 miles for a test in Telford. Is it not time that this Government got a grip and provided comprehensive testing like our partner countries, or will their shambolic handling of the pandemic once again lead to the highest covid death toll in Europe in the imminent second wave?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid that I must correct the hon. Gentleman’s figures. We are now testing more than any other country in Europe, and the median journey is, I think, about 5.8 miles. No journey is permitted to be more than 75 miles, so I do not recognise the figures that I have heard from him.

Defence

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Monday 13th July 2020 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from Defence questions on Monday 6 July 2020.

[Navendu Mishra]

The Minister said that the veterans’ gateway app would put veterans’ care in the palm of every veteran in the country. Can he tell us how many people have downloaded and used this app in its first two months?

[Johnny Mercer]

I have not formally launched the veterans’ gateway app at the moment. We are going through a process of working with users and so on to make it more user-friendly. That is an ambition of mine: to put veterans’ care in the palm of every single veteran in this country. We will have a formal launch and I would be delighted if the hon. Gentleman came with me to that launch. We can then look at the figures together and perhaps work on getting the app into more people’s pockets as we go.

[Official Report, 6 July 2020, Vol. 678, c. 650.]

Letter of correction from the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer):

An error has been identified in the response I gave to the hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra).

The correct response should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

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Wednesday 10th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Our aid spending is linked to the growth of our economy. The challenge this year, in which gross national income will go down, means that the economy is likely to shrink. We are working closely with the Treasury to understand the likely forecasts and to ensure that we can meet our 0.7% commitment. We are working across Departments to ensure that we continue to drive UK aid spending and commit our official development assistance to the most vulnerable and poorest.

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

What discussions she has had with her international counterparts on requiring private creditors to cancel debt owed by developing countries during the covid-19 pandemic.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

What discussions she has had with her international counterparts on requiring private creditors to cancel debt owed by developing countries during the covid-19 pandemic.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (James Duddridge)]

The UK, the G20 and the Paris Club will suspend debt repayments from the poorest countries due this year. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his G20 counterparts have called on private sector creditors to do likewise. At the World Bank spring forum, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development amplified that call, along with other World Bank governors.

[Navendu Mishra]

Happy birthday, Mr Speaker. Following comments from the UN Secretary-General in recent weeks on the increase in allocations of its special drawing rights currency to give countries more access to funding, what is the Secretary of State doing to get an SDR issuance agreed multilaterally? Will she support the UK and other rich countries transferring some of their allocation to poorer countries?

[James Duddridge]

Last time, the allocation was split, and I am sure we would want it to be used by developing countries if special drawing rights were exercised. That could be part of the solution, but as the hon. Gentleman knows, 85% of the banks need to agree, and the US effectively has a blocking right, which means that this is perhaps not a short-term solution but one to work on over time with international partners.