Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. That is why we are putting in another £36 billion under the measures we are putting forward tonight, and I am absolutely astonished that the party of Nye Bevan has confirmed today that it is not going to vote for that. We want GPs to be seeing the right people at the right time, and we want to fix the waiting lists. That is the objective of the measures that we are bringing forward.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

Q6. Funding for organisations helping vulnerable or hard-to-reach citizens with the EU resettlement scheme is due to end at the end of this month. My own constituent tried to get assistance from the local citizens advice bureau in March, but the funding cuts meant that it could not help him. He has been unable to get support from the resolution centre either, and has now been refused settled status. Can I ask the Prime Minister what practical support will be provided to EU citizens still navigating this system, and what he would advise my constituent to do to ensure that he has the right to stay in his home of 47 years?

[The Prime Minister]

I am of course sorry to hear about the troubles that the hon. Lady’s constituent is experiencing, but I remind her that under the EU settlement scheme we have helped almost 6 million people to settle in this country, which is double the number that was expected at the time of the Brexit referendum. That is a tribute to the compassion of this country and its willingness to help those who come here and make their lives here.

International Aid: Treasury Update

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Programme motion
Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD) [V]]

I thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank Members from across the House for their perseverance on this issue. When the Government announced last summer that the Department for International Development would merge with the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I and my fellow Liberal Democrats warned of the risk to overseas development assistance and funding. I asked an urgent question to the Foreign Secretary I wrote to the Secretary of State for International Development on those very issues. The Secretary of State said at the time:

“We are committed to the 0.7% of GNI commitment…We want the aid budget and the development know-how and expertise that we have in DFID—it has done a fantastic job…at the beating heart of our international decision-making processes.”—[Official Report, 18 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 947.]

But here we are, just one year later. With the Government having claimed just last week that the opportunity to vote on this cut to ODA spending had been lost by a Division not being called in the recent estimates day debate, I wonder what has caused them to change their mind and bring forward today’s debate at such short notice.

Economic circumstances caused by covid are not the fault of the world’s poorest, and we and the many charities and NGOs that contacted me in advance of today’s debate know that the poorest will be hardest hit by these cuts. The reality of the covid pandemic is that no one is safe until everyone is safe. At the heart of this is the sharing of urgently needed vaccines around the world, but it is not only that. We know that global inequalities and poverty mean that people around the world cannot take precautions to protect themselves. We cannot expect those without access to clean water—785 million at the last count in 2017—to be able to wash their hands for 20 seconds.

Slashing development spending is deeply harmful to the notion of global Britain and to us at home. The cuts to this funding also mean cuts to spending within the UK, a fact that I think is sometimes lost. ODA funding goes to many places, including our universities that are doing research into how best to tackle the entrenched causes of global inequality and how to support developing countries to be self-sufficient. St Andrews University in my constituency is looking at up to 50% cuts to some of its active projects, which will impact on the poorest today. These cuts harm not only those in need around the world but our own research and innovation industries, which are vital to our response to Brexit and to facing the climate crisis.

Turning to the Government’s update, the fiscal tests for development spending presented today are the height of cynicism. They are designed never to be met. As others have said, we have met these tests only once in this century. Conservative MPs must know that supporting today’s motion means not returning to 0.7% in this Parliament, and that means that every one of them who supports the Government today will be breaking their manifesto promise for five years in a row. It is a straight choice: do we return to 0.7%, as we were all elected to this place to do, or do we fail to be the global leader on this issue that the UK has been to this point?

Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

This country has led the world in condemning human rights abuses in Xinjiang, in putting sanctions on those responsible and in holding companies to account that import goods made with forced labour in Xinjiang. I will certainly consider the proposals debated, but I must say that I am instinctively, and always have been, against sporting boycotts.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

May I associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister and others on the anniversaries being marked today? This Sunday, 11 July, marks two years since the Government committed to reforming a cruel aspect of the welfare system that forces terminally ill people to prove that they have six months or less to live before they are granted fast access to benefits. The Motor Neurone Disease Association and Marie Curie estimate that, in that time, 7,000 people have died waiting for a decision on their benefits claim. With the pandemic, and with the NHS managing it and the backlog of diseases, the situation will become only more acute. When will the Government publish their review and finally scrap the six-month rule, as they have committed to do so?

Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack]

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in thanking everyone at Kinloss barracks. At the start of the pandemic our British armed forces distributed essential equipment and personal protective equipment. They helped build hospitals across Scotland and were instrumental in getting vital equipment to the Glasgow lighthouse lab. They operated the mobile testing centres, and, currently, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), there are 21 military planners working with Scottish health boards and the Scottish Government on logistical planning for vaccine deployment. Our offer remains open: if the Scottish Government require further assistance from our amazing armed forces, they are standing by and are ready to help.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

What progress has been made on the publication of the Tay cities deal.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Iain Stewart)]

Good progress has been made on the Tay cities regional deal. The Chancellor announced at the spending review on 25 November that the UK Government investment will now be compressed to 10 years. We are working with local partners to get the full deal signed on 17 December.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

It has been almost a year since I was elected, and in all that time we have been assured that the Tay cities deal is just around the corner. I am delighted to hear that the deal is over the line. It will be a Christmas present for North East Fife and elsewhere, for which people have been waiting for some time.

[Iain Stewart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for those comments. I know of her hard work especially in helping the Eden Campus project in her constituency to be a leading part of the deal. I had hoped to be up visiting it a few weeks ago, but unfortunately covid restrictions precluded that. I very much look forward to visiting in the new year when circumstances allow.

Oral Answers to Questions

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Justin Tomlinson]

I put on the record a tribute to the proactive and constructive work of Scope and many other organisations to support our efforts, which have resulted in record disability employment—up 1.3 million since 2010. Yes, these are unprecedented times, but we have made sure that all the schemes in our £30 billion plan for jobs have disability provision embedded. We will continue with our ambition to have 1 million more disabled people in work by 2027—nothing has changed.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

What steps the Government are taking to tackle institutional racism.

[The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)]

We are committed to a fairer society. In July, the Government set up the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which is reviewing inequality in the UK, focusing on areas that include education, employment, health and the criminal justice system. The commission is looking at outcomes for the whole population and is due to report at the end of the year.

[Wendy Chamberlain]

This year, one of the issues about which I received the most correspondence was the Black Lives Matter movement and the death of George Floyd. A key thing that came across was that my constituents want to ensure that what we teach in schools is properly representative of the role that black Britons and other people of colour have played in our history. Today, the “Black Curriculum” report, led by Dr Jason Arday of Durham University, has concluded that the national curriculum in England

“systematically omits the contribution of Black British history”.

Will the Minister speak to the Secretary of State for Education, urge him to work with colleagues in the devolved Administrations, such as Kirsty Williams in Wales, and ensure that we have a truly reflective curriculum?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I have not seen the report that the hon. Lady refers to, but I will look at it with interest, decide, from an equalities perspective, whether I agree with the conclusions that have been made, and then speak to the Secretary of State for Education about it.

Covid-19: Winter Plan

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, golf is back. Outdoor sport will be available under all the tiers, and we will publish all the details for each tier imminently.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I welcome the plans in place to test students, enabling them to travel home for Christmas, and I commend the work of the University of St Andrews, in my constituency, which has stepped in to facilitate that, but a gap remains in terms of the new year. We need to ensure that where students must return to university they can do so safely, as well as give reassurance to the communities in which they are situated. I understand from the covid winter plan that guidance will follow suit, but will the Secretary of State, on behalf of the Government, advise me as to what engagement is being had with devolved nations about the return and testing of students in January, including discussions on default online teaching?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, this is a really important subject to get right. The use of testing will make it easier for students safely to go home and then safely to return to university. I have discussed that with my colleagues from across the four nations, not least because so many students go to university in different parts of the UK. I hope we have a good regime in place for the return of students, just as we have a good regime in place for students to be able safely to go home, using the new lateral flow tests that we now have available thanks to the huge investment and the work we did over the summer.

Point of Order

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We were informed yesterday that the Paymaster General’s calls are set to resume. Members will remember that those calls were used earlier this year, while the House was not sitting due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many Members were very concerned by the lack of opportunity for scrutiny during that period, and that concern is ongoing. I am still struggling, as I know other hon. Members are, to get a response from Ministers from many Departments, including the Treasury, and I am concerned about what the resumption of these calls implies. I am sure that Members from across the House will agree that any resumption of the calls must be in addition to existing scrutiny, rather than a substitute that allows Ministers to be required to come before the House less frequently.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I should be grateful if you would offer guidance on how best to seek assurances from the Government that they are committed to parliamentary scrutiny, and that the resumption of these calls does not herald new limitations on the mechanisms available to Members of the House to hold Governments to account.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Michael Gove)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point of order. The Paymaster General, who of course is a Cabinet Office Minister and does an excellent job in keeping Members from all parties updated, and has done throughout the difficult time of the coronavirus pandemic, is resuming the calls to augment the scrutiny that, quite rightly, Ministers will be exposed to at this Dispatch Box, as we all seek to ensure that we do the right thing by all our constituents at this inevitably testing time.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Johnson]

This is perhaps one of the arguments behind keeping to 650 so the actual sizes of constituencies do not change. I have one of the few constituencies in the country that would actually have lost voters, even under the 600 formula, so there are a lot of differences between hon. Members’ constituencies.

I would ask that the Labour party supports this Bill as it goes through Parliament. The only thing in the Labour party’s manifesto about boundary changes was changing from 600 to 650. It has got what it asked for, and therefore should be supportive of the Government on this particular Bill.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I shall speak to new clause 3, tabled in my name and those of my other Liberal Democrat colleagues, and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).

The Government’s rationale for this Bill is that they want to make every vote count equally, and we have heard that. I pointed out on Second Reading that an electoral system in which a Government can win a majority of seats in this House without a majority of votes is one in which votes can never count equally. What the Government really mean is that they want to ensure that constituencies are more or less equally sized. I think there is broad agreement across the House that, within our current electoral system, there are good reasons to do this, although there is clearly disagreement about just how strict that equality should be.

While we have spent much time discussing how much equality there should be between constituencies, we have not really addressed what I believe is a fundamental question: equality of what? That is why I have tabled my amendment. The legislation, as it currently stands, says that there should be equality between the electorates of different constituencies, and that equality should be determined as a proportion of the electorate of the country.

That is not the only option available. New Zealand, for example, uses the census to determine constituency sizes, and I am sympathetic to this. We provide public services to everyone in our constituency, regardless of whether they are eligible to vote or indeed registered to vote. However, my new clause does something else: it redefines what “electorate” means for the purposes of this Bill. Currently, the electorate within the scope of the Bill means all those people on the electoral roll. I would expand this definition. My amendment would include all those who are eligible to vote, not just those who happen to be on the electoral roll at the time of the review.

According to the Electoral Commission, over 9 million people who are eligible to vote are not currently on the electoral roll. I would suggest to the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) that these are not necessarily people who choose not to vote. Our electoral register is incomplete by a large amount. That is a huge problem for our democracy, and it is a problem for this Bill and for what the Government hope to achieve by it, for how can we say that this Bill makes constituencies equal sized when it is based on an incomplete register that misses out nearly 20% of eligible voters? It is easy to think up examples. Two parts of this country may well have an identical number of eligible voters, but one local register may be more complete than the other, and as a result one part of the country counts for more than the other when it comes to the boundary review. That will be the reality when this review takes place.

This also raises questions about the value some Members are placing on this 5%. We must also remember that, by the time of the 2024 election, voters who have lived overseas for more than 15 years will, according to this Government’s manifesto, also be eligible to vote. This is a move that I and my party welcome, but it is another reason why the boundaries that this review will create will never be truly equal. They are out of date before they are even used for the first time.

The most concerning thing, however, is that the 9 million who are eligible to vote but not on the register are not just a random collection of individuals. The groups who are disproportionately likely to be eligible to vote but not on the roll include young people, renters, those for whom English is not their first language, and black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. As far as I am concerned, this is a total failure of public policy. Since the murder of George Floyd back in May, we have collectively reflected across this House on the fact that the structures and institutions that make up our society too frequently produce inferior outcomes for those people who are not white. Every Member of this House should be incredibly concerned about the fact that if someone is black, they are disproportionately unlikely to appear on the electoral roll. We are about to carry out a boundary review that will disproportionately exclude BAME people from being counted. That surely is not right.

That is the problem my new clause seeks to address. It would mean that the fact that our register is incomplete does not make a difference because the Boundary Commission would consider these potential electors too. It is entirely possible to treat 100% enrolment as an achievable goal.

Within this country, in Northern Ireland, there is a far more concerted effort to ensure that those in sixth forms and colleges are put on to the electoral register just as they turn 18. I welcome such assisted registration measures, which should be considered throughout the UK. The Government should accept that the annual canvass fails to register a huge number of people. Automatic voter registration is used in many countries, and it is an issue that the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) raised in her ten-minute rule Bill recently. Just last week, the Lords Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 found the same thing. It said that completeness of the register had not improved, and it proposed automatic and assisted registration as well as ways to reduce duplicate applications. We have to be doing more on this issue, and I hope that the Minister will offer assurances during her winding-up speech that the Government are willing to engage with this issue.

EU Exit: End of Transition Period

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

In today’s statement, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has acknowledged some of the costs and attempted to highlight the opportunities of Brexit, but opportunities in financial terms currently equate to zero. Those who said leaving the EU would mean additional costs and bureaucracy were right, and some of these costs are now becoming clear: more money, on top the £100 million previously spent, on comms, and now £705 million on border infrastructure—no frictionless trade after all. When will the Government be in a position to respond to the 50 questions raised today by the Food and Drink Federation, particularly the how?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I and my colleague the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will respond to the Food and Drink Federation’s helpful questions. The FDF has been a valued partner in our preparation for our departure from the European Union and I would like to pay tribute to Ian Wright and all those who work for the FDF for making sure that they work with us in order to provide every part of the supply chain with the information it needs.

Civil Service Appointments

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have a superb civil service, but it is also important that we make sure it serves the people of this country even better. The Prime Minister in his speech in Dudley today announced that part of the doubling down on levelling up was making sure that more important policy-making roles in our civil service were carried out closer to people, including on Teesside.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

In his Ditchley lecture at the weekend, the Minister said:

“How can we in Government be less southern, less middle class, less reliant on those with social science qualifications and more welcoming to those with physical science and mathematical qualifications”?

I am pleased the Government now think that experts are important, but can he set out how his Ditchley commitments were taken into account in the political appointment of a non-expert and arguably initially part-time new National Security Adviser?

[Michael Gove]

There is no question but that David Frost is an expert. Someone who spent decades in diplomatic service, is currently conducting a complex international negotiation and was head of policy and planning at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is hardly an ingénue in the world of foreign affairs, but I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing out that we need to be a little less southern. Voices from Lancashire and Scotland are always important in the national conversation.