Oral Answers to Questions

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

The Secretary of State and the Minister for Defence Procurement have both been heavily engaged in this; indeed, the Minister for Defence Procurement led a delegation to Kyiv to catalyse exactly the idea that my hon. Friend mentions.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

14. What steps he is taking to reduce armed forces emissions.

[The Minister for Defence Procurement (James Cartlidge)]

The MOD has already started its decarbonisation journey in support of the UK’s net zero commitment. At the Royal International Air Tattoo last year, I was pleased to sign the defence aviation net zero charter on behalf of the MOD. Working closely with our industrial partners, we are moving to cleaner and more efficient technology. The Army is building solar farms, and has invested £14 million in battlefield electrification. The Royal Navy’s cutting-edge catalytic systems are reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in its patrol vessels by up to 97%. Finally, the RAF is pioneering the use of sustainable aviation fuel.

[Wera Hobhouse]

It was a pleasure to attend the Global Charge dinner last October, and to see so many members of the armed forces, from all ranks, committed to tackling the climate crisis. However, the Defence Committee has described the MOD’s current reduction targets as “insufficiently demanding” under the greening government commitments—they are the lowest across all Departments. Will the Minister ensure that the next round of CC commitments will contain more demanding targets, not least to reflect the real ambitions and for members of the armed forces on the ground to see the devastation of climate change?

[James Cartlidge]

I know the hon. Lady is very passionate about this issue. I have just listed the ways in which the individual services are taking steps to reduce their emissions, but we always have to balance that against our overwhelming priority as a Department, which is to support the ability of our armed forces to defend these islands.

Service Family Accommodation: Maintenance

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Monday 19th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. Community, support and family life are extremely important to servicemen and women, and I will come to that shortly.

It is important to recognise that families cannot resolve the issue simply by moving to private rented accommodation elsewhere in the vicinity of their base, as often it is unaffordable or just unavailable, and outside the military community. As we know, service families often move house every two years or have a parent or family member away from home on a tour of duty for an extended period. The support network of families who understand their circumstances is really important. It is crucial that service family accommodation is suitable.

If the usable stock is decreasing or service families are put off taking a home because of the issues I have described, the vibrancy of the community is badly affected and service life overall becomes less appealing, as the survey results have showed. Empty and dilapidated housing stock often exacerbates the situation, because where there is a shortage, families must stay in substandard homes. There also appears to be a failure of the contract arrangements to deal with empty properties. One constituent reported houses being left empty and unheated, but with the mains water still turned on. In the winter cold snap, the pipes burst, meaning that the ceilings fell in and serious damage occurred.

Other houses on the estate have had insulation fitted to roofs with unrepaired holes in them, meaning that when water ingress occurs, it causes even more damage. The houses will now cost thousands to repair to an acceptable standard and the families affected will be owed compensation. It is a truly false economy to have allowed that to occur. It is wastes taxpayers’ money and reduces the options for service families who want to live near their base and their community.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a degree of hypocrisy in the fact that we celebrate brave servicemen as our heroes because they put their lives on the line for the security of our nation, yet we cannot guarantee them the most basic support?

[Helen Morgan]

I agree with my hon. Friend wholeheartedly.

My understanding is that the current maintenance contract allows just two weeks after a family leaves a house to carry out any required upgrade work, including any repairs but also big-ticket works such as retrofitting insulation and replacing kitchens and bathrooms. Clearly, two weeks is not long enough if a significant amount of work is required. That leads to incomplete or poor-quality work, which costs more to fix in the future and causes disruption to the family living there.

The overall feedback from my constituents—there has been a lot of it—is that the response to requests for repair and the management of empty houses have deteriorated since the contract was restructured last April, and that while the coming of spring and summer has improved living conditions in the short term, there remain significant concerns about the operation of the process. There appear to be too many hand-offs between, in the case of my constituents, the contractors Pinnacle and Amey. I note that in response to an urgent question in December last year, the former Minister acknowledged that there were IT issues. That rings true with the experiences that have been related to me, in which requests have either not been logged in the first place or have gone missing in the hand-off between the two companies.

Anyone who works in a business knows that IT issues in a contract restructuring of this scale are inevitable, but the Minister suggested that they were unresolved in December 2022, a full nine months after the restructured contracts went live. Has there been any further improvement to date? I have a constituent still reporting little progress on a leaking roof and radiators. The roof was fixed in five days, but the scaffolding remained up for five weeks at goodness knows what unnecessary cost to the taxpayer and the radiators still leak. There is damp and mould, and they have not been given the results of a damp survey that was apparently carried out in December last year.

I hope I have illustrated the chaotic and broken process of reporting an issue and getting it fixed under the newly restructured contract, the shocking state of dilapidation of some empty homes that could otherwise be used for housing our service families, the impact on the service family community, and the unacceptable waste of taxpayers’ money. This is the price of a failing process. We have spent much time in this Chamber rightly debating, and indeed agreeing on, the need for social housing to be of a decent standard, and for tenants to have the right to demand a decent standard, both in the context of the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill as it passed through Parliament and in demanding an end to the system that led to the shocking death of Awaab Ishak.

Ukraine

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

I think the whole House will agree that since the invasion on 24 February the UK has led the world in imposing sanctions on Russia and in mobilising diplomatic, political and military support for the Ukrainians. I think that most impartial observers around the world—and I meet a lot of them—believe that if it had not been for the actions of the UK Government, things might have been different. I am delighted to see this Administration continuing with the commitments that we began; the financial commitments in particular are extremely important.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Boris Johnson]

I am just about to conclude.

If it were not for Putin’s inability to see what is really happening—if he were not locked, as it were, in a windowless dungeon surrounded by bodyguards, spies and sycophants in a sort of Lubyanka of the mind—he would see the tragedy that he has unleashed. He would withdraw from Ukraine before he is pushed out—and he is going to be pushed out.

In the past seven months, the sufferings of Ukraine have moved the world; I know that they have moved everybody in this House and in this country. We grieve for the people of Ukraine, and we open our hearts to them as few other countries have done. We know that, thanks to their bravery and sacrifice, their day of freedom is coming. When that day comes, we will rejoice with Ukraine, and that rejoicing will echo around the world. Until that day comes, I am sure that this House and this country will stand in unshakeable support for the people of Ukraine.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I nodded along in agreement with much of what the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) said. I think it fair to say that when the February invasion took place, he and his Government, particularly the Defence Ministers on the Front Bench today, got the calls on Ukraine right. It is important to acknowledge that. Based on his remarks, I think he will do well in his new role as my warm-up act here in the Chamber.

I pay tribute to the new Under-Secretary of State for Defence—the hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton), who is not in her place right now—and congratulate those colleagues who have managed to stay in position amid the many changes. I also wish the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) well as the new Minister for Security. He was formerly the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, of which I am a member; I think we will be in for various auditions for his replacement as this afternoon’s debate goes on.

Before I come to the crux of my remarks, I should also draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It was a pleasure, just two weeks ago, to be back in Ukraine and back in Kyiv—with some colleagues who I hope we shall hear from this afternoon—a country and a city that I have come to know and love over a few years now. On this occasion I was there to attend the annual YES—Yalta European Strategy—conference, which brings together civil society, political leaders, military leaders, academics, and others from around Europe to discuss Ukrainian and European security. There were many facets to the fascinating set of discussions that we had during the two days that our delegation spent there. It was also a real pleasure to meet members of Ukraine’s armed forces—who have so heroically not just fought for their country, but fought for what we all stand for and have cherished since 1945—and of course, the man himself, President Volodymyr Zelensky, who, as the former Prime Minister said, embodies everything that is noble in Europe right now.

Here we are, seven months on from this wave of a war that started in 2014, in which we have witnessed a level of barbarism and butchery that few of us could have imagined. Hospitals, schools and people’s homes have been the targets. We have seen, in Bucha and also more recently, evidence of some of the most heinous war crimes imaginable.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I did not have the opportunity to ask the former Prime Minister about his commitment to treating sexual crimes as war crimes. Can we all, on both sides of the House—including the hon. Gentleman—come together in viewing sexual violence as a war crime like any other?

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Yes, I think we can come together and agree on that. I am sure that other colleagues will want to discuss it in great detail.

So here we are, seven months on from this invasion, and—as was mentioned by the former Prime Minister—much in the world has changed. Sweden and Finland have joined NATO, unity among western countries is something like never before, and, indeed, unity in this House is something like never before. In fact, we may have been only partly joking with our Ukrainian counterparts, during a recent visit, in saying that supporting Ukraine might well be the only issue that unites this House. Given the noises coming from the new Government, I suspect that that will be even more the case, but it is important for that unity to be maintained and developed in support of Ukraine.

Back in February the German Federal Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, told us that not just his country but all of Europe was at a turning point: a Zeitenwende, as they say in Germany. Seven months on, however, it seems to me less like a turning point and more like Gramsci’s interregnum, in which the old is dying but the new cannot yet be born. At the moment, we are in a messy flux. While I think that the unity of purpose that we have is serving us well to get through the tumult that we are going through and Ukraine is going through, I also think that there is much in our own record—the record of all of us in the House and across the west—that we need to assess, going back, yes, to 2014, but also to 2008. I have to say to the former Prime Minister that we should consider the issue of how Russian money has been treated in this country.

I think it takes a lot to admit it when one has got things wrong, and I think it only fair that we, as staunch partisans at times, give our opponents the space to make that admission. It is easier said than done, but if the new world that is incubating in the messy time in which we are currently living is to be born, that is the way in which I think we have to approach it.

There is another important point to be made. As the winter bites and energy prices go through the roof, and as what in some quarters has been called “Ukraine fatigue” may start to settle in, there is a particular group of people in society of whom I think we should be mindful: those whom the Germans call the Putinversteher, the “Putin whisperers”, who would seek to apologise for, or contextualise, or somehow make excuses for Russian “legitimate” interests in Ukraine. They should be thoroughly ignored. Since the February invasion, they have, temporarily and rather embarrassingly, been silent, but they are undoubtedly starting to rear their heads again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I wholeheartedly join the cross-party support for Ukraine. I will mention an issue that has been touched on but debated less this afternoon.

Women are casualties of war and conflict, but they are very often overlooked. Women, including those who fight alongside men, suffer in a uniquely gendered way. Ukrainian women have displayed incredible strength in defending their country and their families both on and off the battlefield. As more Ukrainian territory is liberated, more terrible stories emerge of atrocities committed against women. By June, the UN human rights monitoring team had received reports of 124 alleged incidents of sexual violence. The Secretary-General’s special representative has warned that the number of reports is rising fast.

Wartime sexual violence is one of the oldest crimes known to people. It has long-term implications for individuals and communities long after war has ended. The Government recognise the problem of wartime sexual violence, but that must be fully matched with support for women on the ground. Too often, wartime sexual violence is viewed as inevitable, as part of war. That is totally unacceptable. The sexualised threats faced by women and girls must be confronted head on and prosecuted like any other war crime. I am grateful for the recommendation from the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns).

The Government, along with the international community, need to aid Ukraine to ensure that there is a robust response to gender-based violence. That must include post-rape care, access to abortion and mental health support. Our human response demands that we make sexual, reproductive and maternal healthcare a priority. Perpetrators must be vigorously investigated and adequately punished, and the UK must help by providing support for Ukraine to do that.

The majority of people fleeing Ukraine are women and children. The response from communities in bordering countries and in the UK has been incredibly powerful, but we should not be blind to the ongoing risks for women and girls. Female refugees have always faced disproportionate risk, especially if they are travelling alone. Many of my constituents have contacted me on behalf of Ukrainians who are stuck in dangerous places waiting for visas. While they wait, their funds run low and they are at greater risk of trafficking and abuse.

Refugees are safest when they have options. They need full legal protection and the right papers, and they need to be totally aware of their rights. The Government must equal the outpouring of compassion that has been shown by the British public and allow Ukrainian refugees to come to the UK without unacceptable bureaucratic delays. Otherwise, we are driving vulnerable women and girls into the arms of opportunistic abusers. It is a matter of basic safety. As the war continues and shows no signs of being resolved, the British Government must do better at protecting women and girls. I am sure that many colleagues across the House share my admiration for the courage of the women of Ukraine; we must match it with action.

Although we hope that the war will be over soon, it probably will not. Just as important as speeding up the process now is making sure that support for our Ukrainian refugees is sustained. What are the Government’s plans for six months’ time and beyond? How will we help families to find long-term accommodation, jobs and financial support? We should not underestimate the substantial trauma that women and children will have suffered, especially if they have experienced sexual violence. Support services will need funding beyond this year to rebuild lives in the long term. The Government will have to show a lot of stamina in providing not just military help, but humanitarian help to deal with the human tragedy beyond the here and now.

Galileo Programme

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb]

I thank my hon. Friend and predecessor in this role for his question. I also thank him for his work highlighting the contribution of defence to UK prosperity. As part of that work, he highlighted the contribution that defence makes to the space sector in the United Kingdom. I would argue that our lead in the space sector in the European context is coveted by others. It is key that we again express our willingness to work with our partners in Europe, but if that is again rebuffed we should build on the skills and the developments of the industry in the United Kingdom and highlight the fact that we could still push this issue forward with our fantastic industry capability.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Can the Minister confirm that the possible threat to the Galileo project and the future of the British space industry was fully considered during the EU referendum debate?

[Guto Bebb]

Many and varied issues were discussed during the European referendum campaign. It is certainly the case that nobody, on either side of the campaign, took the view that the democratic decision of the British people would be met by a decision from the European Commission that would threaten the security of the whole of Europe. Nobody thought that such a response was likely.

Oral Answers to Questions

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

T3. The Government’s intention to come out of the single market and the customs union will affect the complex supply chains in defence procurement. Has the Minister made a full assessment of the implications of Brexit for defence procurement, taking into account the complex supply chains?

[Harriett Baldwin]

I assure the hon. Lady that an extensive programme of work is under way not only in the Ministry of Defence, but with our colleagues in the Department for Exiting the European Union. We are very conscious of the importance of those supply chains.