Tag: 2020

Rishi Sunak – 2020 Comments on Priti Patel Bullying Allegations

The comments made by Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the BBC Andrew Marr Show on 22 November 2020.

Andrew Marr: Yes. It is said that the prime minister had asked the official concerned in this report to water down the language. Would that have been an appropriate thing to do?

Rishi Sunak: Well, that’s not what happened. And the independent adviser conducted a detailed review at the request of the Prime Minister because he takes this matter very seriously and that’s right because it is a serious issue. That review concluded, the findings have been published, the Prime Minister has spent a lot of time considering them in the round, has reached the conclusion that Priti is not a bully and she has offered a full and unreserved apology for what’s happened and as far as the Prime Minister’s concerned that draws a line under this and we should get back to focusing on what people want, which is tackling crime and making sure that our communities are safe, and on a personal level I’ve worked closely with Priti and found her to be entirely kind and very focused and passionate about what she does.

November 22, 2020
Steve Reed – 2020 Comments on Priti Patel Bullying Allegations

The comments made on Twitter by Steve Reed, the Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on 22 November 2020.

Scandal-prone Jenrick defends Priti Patel’s bullying breach of the Ministerial Code – no surprise there, Johnson blocked the Cabinet Secretary from assessing whether Jenrick had broken the same code after he unlawfully helped a billionaire Tory donor dodge £millions in tax.

November 22, 2020
Keir Starmer – 2020 Comments on Priti Patel Bullying Allegations

The comments made by Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, on 20 November 2020.

Yet again, the Prime Minister has been found wanting when his leadership has been tested. If I were Prime Minister, the Home Secretary would have been removed from her job.

It is hard to imagine another workplace in the UK where this behaviour would be condoned by those at the top. The Government should be setting an example. Instead, it is one rule for Boris Johnson and his friends, another for everyone else.

The Prime Minister has previously said he ‘loathes bullying’. Yet when one of his own ministers is found to have bullied their staff he ignores the damning report sat on his desk and instead protects them.

In the interest of transparency, the report into Priti Patel’s conduct and any drafts should now be fully published and the Prime Minister and Home Secretary should come to the House on Monday to face questions on their conduct.

November 22, 2020
Richard Burgon – 2020 Comments on Jeremy Corbyn

The comments made by Richard Burgon, the Labour MP for Leeds East, on 19 November 2020.

Keir stood to be Party Leader promising unity in our movement.

But yesterday’s unjust decision has created wider divisions in our Party. The Tories are no doubt delighted.

There’s an easy and just way to sort this: the Hearing has ruled so now restore the whip to Jeremy Corbyn.

November 19, 2020
Andrew Adonis – 2020 Comments on Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell

The comments made by Andrew Adonis, the former Secretary of State for Transport, on 19 November 2020.

Last time Labour was electable and elected, Corbyn & McDonnell were serial rebels, voting against sensible and essential economic and security policies day in day out.

Much better if this time they’re in a separate party so they don’t hold Labour back from being sensible and successful.

November 19, 2020
Alison McGovern – 2020 Speech on Financial Support for the Sport Sector

The speech made by Alison McGovern, the Labour MP for Wirral South, in the House of Commons on 19 November 2020.

I thank the Minister for sight of his statement, and for the accepting manner in which he has dealt with the pestering from me and from other Members on this subject. Through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I also thank all the civil servants at the Treasury and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport for their hard work on this support package for sport. That work is not unnoticed, and we thank them for it. However, as I mentioned, getting to this point has taken cross-party pestering, and meanwhile, sports are hanging by a thread.

I know that, for the Treasury, sport in the context of the UK Government’s spending is almost a rounding error. It is a comparatively small commitment on the very, very big Treasury spreadsheet, but that fact is irrelevant to how important sport is to families in all our constituencies. It plays a huge role in the life of our country and, given its place in keeping us healthy, we needed a swifter response than this. That is particularly the case when we see how sport has been messed about. In August, with eat out to help out and the Prime Minister saying that he wanted to see “bustle”, sports were told that it was full speed ahead towards the reopening in October until No. 10 executed a sharp about-turn, and since then the pace has been slow to glacial. So in order to speed things up, I would like to help the Minister with some questions that will hopefully prompt action.

In two weeks’ time, the current lockdown arrangements will come to an end, and we hear rumours of a return to the tier system. Can the Minister please clearly explain what that means for grassroots sport? There are so many people who rely on swimming, their football team, their rugby game, their running club or their round of golf for their mental and physical health, and the lack of sport is doing our country damage. It cannot go on for much longer, and that is especially true when it comes to our nation’s children, so will the Minister please tell us when children can return to training? Robbie Savage speaks for the nation when he counts down the days in frustration to when we can play sport, and we need answers.

Next, we need to know that the money the Minister has announced just now will reach sports quickly. The cultural recovery fund did not reach cultural organisations quickly enough, so can we ensure that we have no repeat of that experience? Will he commit to coming back to the House next month to explain the detail of the effect of this funding? Will it reach disability sport effectively, and will it support women’s and men’s sport absolutely equally, by penny piece? What measures will he put in place to ensure that that happens?

We live in uncertain times, and the once predictable sporting calendar has been shifted all over the shop, so will the Minister commit to keeping the situation under review? I think I heard him say that he had an open door for anyone who needed help. That is a good thing, and I welcome it. In relation to that, he has explained that these funds are in response to the cancellation of the very slow piloted return of spectators that we were expecting from 1 October. We had an extensive debate on this only last week in Westminster Hall, so can the Minister bring us up to date on that? What is the truth of the rumours that spectators will return, but only in line with the as yet unannounced tier system? There are also rumours concerning the number of spectators. Is it true that the cap will be 1,000 people? While we are on the subject of Members’ concerns, we have another Westminster Hall debate coming up next week on the governance of football, and I expect to see many Members there. If the Minister cannot give us full details of the fan-led review of football at the Dispatch Box today, I suggest that he does so next Wednesday.

Finally, Madam Deputy Speaker, I know it will not have escaped your notice that the Government started this crisis accusing premier league footballers of not doing their share, and ended the summer U-turning on child poverty in response to the heroic campaigning of a premier league footballer. That should be a lesson to the Government. Sports people have been messed about month after month, and the British people want better. My final question to the Minister is this: in the face of a deadly virus, nothing matters more than public health, so where is the comprehensive plan for wellbeing right across the UK? This funding announcement today is a panicked response to a bad situation made worse by Government incompetence, and the country deserves better.

November 19, 2020
Nigel Huddleston – 2020 Speech on Financial Support for the Sport Sector

The speech made by Nigel Huddleston, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in the House of Commons on 19 November 2020.

For millions of people up and down the country, sport is so much more than a pastime. Sports clubs, large and small, enrich lives both on and off the pitches, the courts and the grounds, and they play a vital role in their communities. The value that sports clubs bring to their communities has been clearer than ever during this pandemic, and it is right that we support them.

Earlier this year, in May, we announced a £16 million emergency bail-out for rugby league to prevent the sport’s collapse, and the Treasury’s multi-billion-pound support packages, including the furlough and loan schemes, have been a lifeline for countless sports clubs and organisations across the country, helping them to stay afloat when their doors remained closed. Sport England has announced separate emergency funding of £220 million for grassroots clubs, and we recently announced a £100 million scheme for leisure centres. Together, that support has acted as a significant buffer to the pain.

However, we know that the decision taken in late September not to re-open the stadiums from 1 October has had major consequences for sports clubs large and small. It was the right decision, given the rate at which coronavirus was spreading across the country, but clearly, not being able to generate gate receipts deprives many organisations of a major source of income. The vast majority of those sports operate on tight financial margins and have been forced to make serious cost reductions such as locking down grounds, furloughing their staff, cutting wages, and halting excess payment. It was clear that if we did not act, a number of clubs would go to the wall, with real consequences for the grassroots game. That is why, over the past few weeks, we have been working tirelessly with the sports sector to understand the real pressures it is facing.

We promised to stand by the sports sector when we made the decision to postpone the return of fans, and today I am pleased to announce a £300 million sports winter survival package to see major spectator sports through this difficult period. The majority of that funding will be given through low-interest loans, with flexible repayment terms and grants where organisations are unable to repay loans. The package will focus on those sports that have been severely impacted by the restrictions announced in September, and it is the largest package announced by any Government for its domestic sport sector in the world.

I stress that these are provisional allocations of funding. They were made on a needs-based assessment process, and reflect the submissions made by the individual sports. Recipients will still need to apply, and the funding process will be overseen by an independent decision-making board, and supported by Sport England. That funding will include a top-up for rugby league of up to £12 million, as well as cash injections of up to £28 million for national league football and women’s football, up to £135 million for rugby union, and up to £40 million for horseracing. There is also up to £6 million for motorsport, up to £4 million each for netball, basketball, and ice hockey, up to £1 million for greyhound racing, up to £5 million for tennis, and up to £1.6 million for badminton.

Today’s provisional allocations are not the end of the story. The door is open for any sport to apply where there is a need. That includes cricket and other sports that are not on the initial list of allocations. Full details of the application process will shortly be announced by Sport England, with the first tranche of support expected to be distributed to clubs and bodies before the end of the year. In the meantime, if any individual club is facing imminent collapse, we will work with it through its national governing body. Based on the information that sports have given us, this package will help them to survive until the spring.

Of course, we would all prefer to see fans back in the stadiums. Spectator sports need spectators, and with the real progress that we are making on vaccines and testing, that goal is now firmly within our sight. Until then, we have stepped in to protect not just individual clubs and organisations, but entire sports and the communities they serve. I commend this statement to the House.

November 19, 2020
Gavin Newlands – 2020 Speech on Online Harms

The speech made by Gavin Newlands, the SNP MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, in the House of Commons on 19 November 2020.

We have had another excellent, if curtailed, debate today. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for securing it and the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating it. I do not have time to discuss and praise the various speeches that we have had, but I particularly praise the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam, who opened the debate. I thought his speech was fantastic and immensely powerful; nobody could ignore what he said. Take note, Minister: if an SNP Member and a Tory Member can agree so wholeheartedly, actions surely must follow.

We spend more and more of our time online, whether we are interacting with others or are passive consumers of content—the growth of Netflix is testament to the latter. As we spend more time online, the harms that were historically the preserve of the physical world are shifting to the online world. We have seen the growth in online financial scams and their increasing sophistication.

I have a number of constituents, as I am sure do other hon. Members, who have been scammed out of tens of thousands of pounds and lost everything, in part because the scammers were able to manipulate Google keywords advertising to drive traffic to their site and begin the scamming process. The pandemic and lockdown have seen an increase in those scams, as the perpetrators know people are spending more time online than normal.

Since the start of the pandemic, the level of disinformation around vaccination and healthcare has grown exponentially. Anti-vaxxers have already targeted the newly developed vaccines that we all hope will get us out of this situation. Such disinformation campaigns have always been dangerous, particularly for young people who are usually the main recipients of vaccines, but now present an even bigger danger to public health.

These lies—that is what they are—are propagated via the platforms of social media companies, which should have a responsibility to tackle such anti-science, anti-reason and anti-fact campaigns quickly and directly. It is not good enough for Mark Zuckerberg and the like to parrot free speech as if it were a “get out of jail free” card. Free speech comes with responsibilities; it does not give people the right to place others at risk of illness and death.

Just as children were most at risk from the anti-vaxxers until the pandemic hit, it is children who are most at risk from online harassment and abuse, in particular young women and girls. A recent report by Plan International on girls’ rights in the digital world makes extremely depressing reading. More than a fifth of girls have received abuse on a photo or status they have posted, and nearly a quarter have felt harassed by someone contacting them regularly on social media. The net result of the abuse, harassment and pressure is that nearly half of all girls are afraid to give their opinions on social media, for fear of the response, and 13% have stopped going on social media completely to avoid negative responses. Less than a week before the international day for the elimination of violence against women and girls, those figures are shocking.

A toxic environment is stopping women and girls participating in the online world on the same basis as boys and men. It feeds into a dangerous and violent misogyny that is on the rise on social media, again largely unchecked by the big tech companies until it becomes a big PR issue. It is no surprise that so many executive positions in those companies are occupied by men and so few by women.

For most households, online communication is now a fundamental part of daily life, whether it is streaming content or keeping in touch with family and friends on social media, but too often the regulation of online activities that cause harm seems to be stuck in the last century, when the internet was something we read about in newspapers or heard about on one of our four TV channels. The world has moved on dramatically in the past two decades, but the legislative framework has not. It is especially important that the victims of online harms, whether it be abuse, harassment or financial scams, feel able to report their experiences to the police or other relevant authorities. If big tech will not act, it falls to the Government to protect our citizens.

I understand that the pressures on the Government at the moment are absolutely huge, but so are the risks for individuals and for society the longer these harms are allowed to proliferate. I urge the Government to heed the contributions of Members right across the House and bring forward concrete plans to introduce the Bill as soon as possible.

November 19, 2020
Stephen Timms – 2020 Speech on Online Harms

The speech made by Stephen Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham, in the House of Commons on 19 November 2020.

I want to raise just two points: first, the current epidemic of online frauds; and, secondly, the online sale of the illegal weapons used on our streets in gang violence.

First, the Pension Scams Industry Group has told the current Work and Pensions Committee inquiry that 40,000 people have suffered the devastation of being scammed out of their pension in five years. Much of that is online. Mark Taber told us he has reported to the Financial Conduct Authority this year 380 scam adverts on Google. It is a crime, but after weeks or months the FCA just issues a warning. The Transparency Task Force told us of

“high-profile, known crooks…running rings around the regulators”,

and:

“Paid keyword search is a highly efficient means for pensions & savings scammers to target their victims.”

Another witness told us that there is

“a big increase in social media scams”.

Which? said that

“we need to look at what sort of responsibilities should be given to those online platforms to protect their users from scams.”

A director at Aviva told us that it

“had to take down 27 fake domains linked to our brand… It is very difficult and it takes a very long time to engage the web domain providers to get it down.”

He called big technology companies “key enablers of fraud”, and he made a call

“to extend the Online Harms Bill to include the advertising of fraudulent investments”.

I think that should be done, and I want to ask the Minister if it will be in the legislation.

Secondly, the Criminal Justice Act 1988 bans the sale and import of a list of weapons: disguised knives, butterfly knives, flick knives, gravity knives, stealth knives, zombie knives, sword sticks, push daggers, blowpipes, telescopic truncheons and batons. But all of them are available online for delivery in the post. That is how most weapons used on the streets in London are obtained. As we debated in the Offensive Weapons Bill Committee in 2018, companies should not sell in the UK products that it is illegal to purchase here.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), said in Committee that the Home Office was working with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on these online harms, and looking at

“what more we can do to ensure…companies act responsibly and do not facilitate sales of ‘articles with a blade or point’ or ‘corrosive products’ in their platforms.”––[Official Report, Offensive Weapons Public Bill Committee, 11 September 2018; c. 280.]

What I want to ask the Minister is: will that promise be fulfilled in the coming legislation?

November 19, 2020
Damian Hinds – 2020 Speech on Online Harms

The speech made by Damian Hinds, the Conservative MP for East Hampshire, in the House of Commons on 19 November 2020.

There are so many aspects to this, including misinformation on the pandemic, disinformation and foreign influence operations, harassment, engagement algorithms, the effect on our politics and public discourse, the growth in people gambling on their own, scammers and chancers, and at the very worst end, radicalisation and, as we have heard from many colleagues, sexual exploitation. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for the debate, but this is not one subject for debate but about a dozen, and it needs a lot more time at these formative stages, which I hope the Government will provide. My brief comments will be specifically about children.

When I was at the Department for Education, I heard repeatedly from teenagers who were worried about the effect on their peers’ mental health of the experience of these curated perfect lives, with the constant scoring of young people’s popularity and attractiveness and the bullying that no longer stops when a young person comes through their parents’ front door but stays with them overnight. I heard from teachers about the effect of technology on sleep and concentration and on taking too much time from other things that young people should be doing in their growing up. I take a lot of what will be in this legislation as read, so what I will say is not an exclusive list, but I have three big asks of what the legislation and secondary legislation should cover for children. By children, I mean anybody up to the age of 16 or 18. Let us not have any idea that there is a separate concept of a digital age of consent that is in some way different.

First, the legislation will of course tackle the promotion of harms such as self-harm and eating disorders, but we need to go further and tackle the prevalence and normalisation of content related to those topics so that fewer young people come across it in the first place. Secondly, on compulsive design techniques such as autoplay, infinite scroll and streak rewards, I do not suggest that the Government should get in the business of designing applications, but there need to be natural breaks, just as there always were when children’s telly came to an end or in running out of coins at the amusement arcade, to go and do something else. Actually, we need to go further, with demetrification—an ugly word but an important concept—because children should not be worrying about their follower-to-following ratio or how many likes they get when they post a photograph. Bear in mind that Facebook managed to survive without likes up to 2009.

Thirdly, we need to have a restoration of reality, discouraging and, at the very least, clearly marking doctored photos and disclosing influencers’ product placements and not allowing the marketing of selfie facial enhancements to young children. It is not only about digital literacy and resilience, though that plays a part. The new material in schools from this term is an important step, but it will need to be developed further.

It has always been hard growing up, but it is a lot harder to do it live in the glare of social media. This generation will not get another chance at their youth. That is why, yes, it is important that we get it right, but it is also important that we get it done and we move forward now.

November 19, 2020