UKPOL.CO.UK

Tag: Lloyd Russell-Moyle

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2023 Personal Statement on Comments Made to Miriam Cates

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2023 Personal Statement on Comments Made to Miriam Cates

    The personal statement made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 18 January 2023.

    On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wanted to notify the House at the earliest opportunity that I have written to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) to acknowledge that the tone of my remarks in the Chamber yesterday was a mistake. I stand by the words that I said, and I profoundly disagree with the comments that the hon. Member made, but our job as MPs is to channel passion and anger into considered debate to win our arguments—in this case, on the trans community and devolution. I recognise that I failed to control that passion during what was an emotional debate. I should have expressed my deep disagreement on what I believe is an abhorrent view in a more appropriate way. I want to particularly apologise to Madam Deputy Speaker, who had to preside over the debate.

    Mr Speaker

    I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving notice that he wished to come and make that point of order. It allows me to take this opportunity to remind hon. Members of the importance of good temper and moderation in contributions from all sides and all Members. We will disagree, but how we express that disagreement is important. Please, let us have moderate and temperate language going forward.

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on Voter ID at Elections

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on Voter ID at Elections

    The speech made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 12 December 2022.

    The whole debate around voter ID and the safety of our voting system is slightly Trumpian. This is exactly what happened in the US: the far right tried to claim the system is not safe and that people cannot trust it, and then, when a clearly democratic result came around that it did not like, the far right whipped up its henchmen by saying, “This was an unfair vote.” We know that that is not the case in Britain, and we know it has never been the case in Britain.

    The Conservative party and this Government talking down the safety of our electoral system is exactly what these voter ID regulations are about. It my view, it is extremely dangerous. I asked numerous times in Committee on the Elections Act 2022 for a public assessment of why certain forms of voter ID are acceptable and others are not. I was particularly concerned about why student cards and young people’s cards will not be accepted. Not once have the Government published their rubric of why certain ID cards will be accepted and others will not.

    It is interesting that, in applying for temporary or permanent voter ID, one piece of evidence that a local authority can accept is that the applicant is on the roll of a local educational institution, but a polling station will not accept the card from that educational institution. That barrier makes no sense. The Government cannot say, on the one hand, that evidence from the educational institution is not acceptable to vote but, on the other hand, that it is perfectly acceptable as the sole piece of evidence to get a voter ID card from a local authority—no further evidence is required—other than the barrier of having to apply days in advance.

    Under the regulations, however, a voter can apply for a temporary ID card up to the day before an election, if the electoral returning officer believes they would not have been able to apply in advance. Why on earth could they not apply for it at the polling station by showing another form of ID, by allowing the polling clerk to make a determination? Surely it is only because the Government want to make sure that people who would not have ID cannot vote.

    Government data shows that about a third of people have only one piece of ID. My mother has only a passport. She has an old-fashioned paper driving licence, and she does not have any other form of ID. What would she do if her passport needed to be renewed and an election were called? Given the mess in the Home Office, she might be waiting months, if not longer, to get her passport. It is the same with a driving licence. A person who moves house might wait months to get their new driving licence, but they have rightly chopped up their old licence and sent it back. They might then have no voter ID. Despite the Government saying that only a single-figure percentage of the population do not have ID, anyone renewing an equivalent ID might have no form of voter ID during the renewal period.

    According to the Government’s data, 6% of people say they will be less likely to vote. What is 6% in each constituency? It is about 3,000 voters on average. About 40 Conservative constituencies have a majority of less than 4,000. That is 40 Conservative constituencies that might hold on a bit longer, meaning the Conservatives claw on to power despite the popular will.

    Let us consider travelcards, for example. Even the Government’s own research shows that 4% of young and middle-aged people believe their travelcard can be used as voter ID. If they turned up to the polling station with that ID, every single one of them would be refused a vote—that is not to mention the embarrassment of being turned away—and many of them, about a third, would not bother to return. Those numbers would change about 15 results at an election. That might make a difference in a tight election.

    The Minister said the professional world has mixed views about the implementation of voter ID, which I am afraid is just not true. The Minister is either mistaken or something far worse, and I would not believe that of this very good Minister. The reality is that every single professional body—the Local Government Association, the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators—says that the implementation of these regulations at this time is dangerous. They know it is dangerous because they have not been able to roll out even a card-based voter ID. It will be a piece of paper produced by the local authority. A piece of paper! Really? They will accept a piece of paper that an electoral services officer may have authorised, but they will not accept a travelcard that has to be applied for with a proper form of ID. It is ridiculous.

    The regulations will allow people in the community to attest that someone is who they say they are, but they will allow a person in the community to attest for only two people every election publication cycle. A doctor, a teacher or the one lawyer in a poor community might want to attest for many people, to say that they have known a person for a long time, but they will only be able to do so for two people. If those people cannot prove through other means who they are they are—there are other means, I grant that—they will not be able to go to their doctor, because the doctor will have used up their two for that year. Those are unnecessary burdens. We do not put that burden on applying for a passport or any other form of ID. Those arbitrary numbers are deliberately designed to attack the poorest who would not have access to others.

    The Government’s own data says that those who are trans or non-binary, who might be sick or have cancer, or who have experienced large amounts of weight loss and look significantly different, might face difficulties getting past the electoral services officer, but they have no plans to do anything about that apart from highlight to the polling stations that they should be cautious about that. How can they highlight to someone that they should be cautious that someone might not look like their ID, and at the same time say that they must refuse anyone who does not look like their ID? The Government’s own impact assessment does not make sense. The impact assessment on age says that they do not think that will be a significant difference, but the data itself says there will be a 4% to 6% drop in young people going to the polls. We know that those people are already less likely to vote.

    We can have an argument about whether we should have electoral ID or not. We can have an argument about whether it should be photo ID or the wider version. The Electoral Commission said that it preferred any form of ID, such as a credit card or other form of named evidence. We can have those arguments and we will continue to do so, but this instrument is being introduced with less than five months to go before nationwide polls, and no council administrator believes that they will be able to operate it safely. That is undermining our local councils. We know why the Government are trying to do that: they know that they will lose a load of their councils because people are fed up with the nasty Conservatives undermining their democracy and their councils. This should not pass.

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on World AIDS Day

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on World AIDS Day

    The speech made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 1 December 2022.

    I beg to move,

    That this House has considered World AIDS Day.

    I declare an interest as the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS and honorary patron of the British HIV Association, and of course as someone who is personally affected by these issues.

    I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate to mark World AIDS Day. Every year, on 1 December, the world commemorates World AIDS Day. People from around the world unite to show support for people living with and affected by HIV, and remember those who lost their lives to AIDS. At 5.30 pm, I, among the community in Brighton, will read out the names of all the people who have died of AIDS in Brighton in the 40 years since the first death, as we do every year. Vigils such as that will be happening up and down the country: in London, in Birmingham, in Manchester, in Oxford, and in other places.

    This year’s theme is “equalise”. It is a recognition of the health inequalities that still affect far too many children, men that sleep with men, transgender people, drug users, sex workers and people in prison. Those are the populations most affected by HIV and AIDS in their respective countries; different countries might have different, more focused populations, but those are the groups. Fundamentally, however, the groups that are most at risk are people who are marginalised from healthcare, and that is what we need to equalise—that is what we need to sort out.

    This year marks the 40th anniversary of the death of the former Hansard reporter Terry Higgins, who died of an AIDS-related illness on 4 July 1982, and the creation of the now well-known Terrence Higgins Trust. On behalf of the APPG, I thank the Terrence Higgins Trust, not only for the work it has done over the past 40 years but for the work it keeps doing, pushing for us to have no new transmissions of HIV by 2030. That seems a remarkable target, but it is within our reach; it will help the estimated 106,000 people living with HIV in England that we know of. The work of the Terrence Higgins Trust, along with the National AIDS Trust and others, continues to lead the way, and I am delighted that the two organisations are working closer together. I hope that collaboration continues.

    Ahead of World AIDS Day in 2018, four years ago now, I spoke in this Chamber about my own diagnosis. I said then that World AIDS Day was

    “deeply personal to me, because next year I will be marking an anniversary of my own”.—[Official Report, 29 November 2018; Vol. 650, c. 492.]

    Now, of course, it is 14 years since I became HIV-positive. It has been a long journey, from fear to acceptance and to today, where I now play a role of advocacy, knowing that my treatment keeps me healthy and protects any partner that I might have, preventing me from passing on the disease. Since then, further developments have taken place in the fight against HIV/AIDS—many of them positive, but there have been some setbacks, which I wish to talk about in a bit.

    We have, of course, a HIV action plan in England, setting clear goals and milestones for achieving our target. Similar plans are set to be launched in Scotland and Wales—we hope they will come quickly. Last year’s HIV action plan for England sets out how we will achieve an 80% reduction in HIV infections by 2025, building to the end of transmissions by 2030. First, that plan will prevent new infections by expanding and improving HIV prevention activities, investing £3.5 million in a national HIV prevention programme up to 2024, and ensure that PrEP—pre-exposure prophylaxis—is expanded to all key groups. Secondly, it will scale up HIV testing in high-risk populations where uptake is low, and ensure that new infections are identified rapidly, including through the expansion of opt-out testing in A&E departments in areas of very high prevalence of HIV. That testing will be backed by £20 million over the next three years.

    Thirdly, the plan will ensure that, once diagnosed, people rapidly receive treatment. When I was first diagnosed, you waited until your CD4 count was below 200, which is when you can start to get infections and AIDS can start to be diagnosed. At that time, we did not know whether the drugs would cause continuing side effects; now, as soon as someone is diagnosed, they go on the drugs, because we know that they have very few side effects. Of course, each person has to get the combination that is right for them, because everyone reacts differently, but we have a good array of drugs with which to do that. That means that very quickly—within a matter of months—new people who are diagnosed can be undetectable, and can effectively go about their life without fear or favour. That is a remarkable change in those 14 years.

    Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)

    I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, and commend him for his stance and leadership in this House—and, indeed, outside of this House—when it comes to HIV/AIDS and how to live with it, as he does. In Northern Ireland, which he did not refer to, the Public Health Agency has responsibility for this area. Its hope and ambition is to reach the target of eliminating HIV transmission by 2030, and it seems confident that it can do so, because of the PrEP that he has referred to. It is good sometimes to mark and record the things that are going well.

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    It is remarkable. If we achieve that 2030 target in this country, and if we then achieve a roll-out of it globally—that is a lot of ifs—HIV will be the first disease that we have rolled back via treatment and prevention, rather than vaccines. It would be a world leader, and hopefully a pioneer in how we can treat and test other diseases, particularly with mass testing, which I will come on to in a second.

    If all that happens, we will meet the 2030 target, but—as we always say—the Government need to do more. To start with, they need to expand opt-out testing. That has been trialled in areas with very high prevalence—that is, Brighton, London, Manchester and Blackpool. Not all of London was originally included in the opt-out testing, but it took the decision to expand that to all hospitals in London, sharing out the money. Remarkably, that has shown that, in non-high prevalence areas, the percentage of people coming back with an HIV-positive test is still significant. The argument, therefore, is to roll that out to all areas.

    Over the past 12 months, we have seen real successes in opt-out testing in England. That happens when somebody is already having their blood taken in A&E and the vial is sent off for an additional test. We are testing for HIV and hepatitis B, unless someone opts out. No one is forced to do this, but I understand that very few people opt out.

    The pilot’s results have been astonishing. In just three months, 102 people were newly identified, and 70 people were identified as having dropped out of treatment. If someone drops out of treatment, they are a risk not only to themselves, but to the wider community. Those people have been brought back into treatment and that has saved lives. The results are clear: opt-out testing is working.

    On a side note, it is also possible to test for syphilis with the same vial. However, it was not possible to expand this to syphilis, because syphilis testing is paid for by local authorities, not by NHS England, and the local authorities were unable to identify where people were from, because hospitals are not coterminous with local authorities and it was too complicated. That seems ridiculous. We need the Government to sit down with local authorities or to provide for that through central funding. If we are taking the vial, we can run it through the same machine. If the only reason stopping us is bureaucratic, I do not see why we cannot do this. We should test people routinely for as many things as we can, if we know that it will help people’s lives. We know that there is a spike in syphilis in certain key populations.

    If this vital programme is eventually expanded to all towns and cities with high prevalence, it will be a game- changer. Where London has expanded the programme, it has already been worthwhile financially in areas that do not have very high prevalence. The programme should also be expanded to sexual health clinics to ensure that everyone going to one is tested for HIV. This may be a surprise to many, but that is not always done routinely and it is not an opt-out system. Actually, an HIV test is becoming less, not more common, because more sexual health clinics are moving to online services. Online services have some great advantages, but one downside is that they require people to collect a vial of their blood, which often does not happen, or does not happen effectively, so HIV test rates are lower. We need to ensure that, when people attend a clinic, it is routine and there is an opt-out system. Some clinics do this already, but it is not universal.

    I spoke about the HIV prevention drug, PrEP, in 2018. We have a come a long way since the PrEP impact trial. To remind colleagues, PrEP, which is a pill that people take daily, contains two of the three drugs that someone with HIV would have. In fact, I have now been reduced to two because the latest evidence shows that, when someone gets to “undetectable”, the drug load for people who have HIV can be reduced to, effectively, just the PrEP load. The drugs will not be exactly the same as I take for PrEP, but some people can maintain on those as well. So this is also about new interventions that can reduce the costs and the amount of drugs that we are providing.

    PrEP prevents HIV and the pill is covered by NHS England, but thousands are still missing out. They are struggling to get PrEP appointments because of under-resourced sexual health services. That is laid bare in the latest report from the National AIDS Trust, the Terrence Higgins Trust, PrEPster, Sophia Forum and One Voice Network. Due to the fragmentation of services in England, the drug PrEP is paid for by NHS England. That is a real milestone for the NHS, and I congratulate the Government on getting that out eventually, after our interventions.

    Anyone who is currently sexually active should be tested by sexual health services every three months, and anyone on PrEP should be tested every three months. In theory, therefore, there is no additional resource for sexual health services for someone on PrEP, because the only people on PrEP should be those who are sexually active, or drug-injecting users who should also be tested, and so on—we should not give it to people who do not need it. But our sexual health services in this country rely on balancing the budget through the fact that people do not attend as regularly as they should. Therefore, that limits the places for PrEP appointments and limits the people who can get access to the drug that the NHS is paying for, even though they are entitled to it and should be offered that level of service.

    Awareness of PrEP is far too low and it cannot be given out by GPs, pharmacies, community or maternity services. That means that the burden is solely on local government-funded sexual health services. We all know what is happening with local government and probably do not need to go there today—that is a whole other debate.

    If we are going to meet our 2030 target, it is vital that everyone who is at risk of acquiring HIV and who wishes to access PrEP can do so as a key tool in completely and effectively preventing new HIV transmissions when it is taken as directed. Over the past two years, the all-party group on HIV and AIDS has published three important reports. We published “Increasing and normalising HIV testing across the UK”—which I just touched on—and “Nothing about us without us”, which addresses the needs of black, Asian and minority ethnic communities in the UK. Those communities are some of the hardest-hit by HIV in this country and are the least likely to have HIV testing done routinely. The roll-out and trial of the saliva HIV testing, which the Terrence Higgins Trust did two years ago and last year, was particularly effective in those communities. It was seen as less invasive, more private, easier to get hold of and possible to do through online and postal services. The Government should consider whether that process should be normalised nationally or provided cheaply and accessibly.

    Our other report, “HIV and Quality of Life—What do we mean? How do we achieve it?”, was published today, and my colleagues have been launching that in Brussels with our partners in Europe. Those reports have been made possible only through the evidence provided by the strong HIV sector that we have in the UK. Its continued insights and hard work are appreciated.

    The latest data, however, is not quite as positive. There were 2,692 people diagnosed across England in 2021. That is up 0.7%, from 2,673 in 2020. Some might say that is a small amount but, in 2022, there was a fall of 0.2% and, in 2019, there was a fall of 33%. We are clearly plateauing and there is a danger that we are starting to get more diagnoses. That might be positive because we are delving down to the hardest-to-reach areas, but we need more evidence on why that has plateaued and why it is creeping up before we can be sure that that is something to celebrate, rather than to be worried about.

    To keep on track, it is vital that we use every lever available to end HIV transmission and to ensure that we do not plateau, as the numbers show. As I said, we can end transmission by 2030 and I strongly believe that the UK will be one of the first countries to do so. We are a world leader. At the beginning of the week, I spoke to our London NHS colleagues, who said that it is the first time in their career that people have been phoning up from around the world to say, “How are you doing the opt-out testing? How are you doing the PrEP roll-out? We want to learn from you.” That is remarkable and we should be deeply proud of that. The head of UNAIDS came to London and Brighton and we showed her the HIV testing vending machines that we have in Brighton. She said, “I thought that I would never learn anything for the developing world from a rich country. I was here as a courtesy visit, but I have seen what you are doing and how we can roll that out to parts of Kenya and Uganda, and community settings around the world, with HIV testing vending machines that run using solar panels”.

    Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (Ind)

    I congratulate the hon. Member on all his work on the issue. Global leadership is incredibly important. He might be coming on to this point, but does he share the disappointment felt by a lot of people in the sector and the wider international development sector—perhaps even the head of UNAIDS—about the cut in the UK Government’s funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria? That risks exactly the kind of backsliding that the hon. Member warns us about.

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    I agree exactly. I will come on to the Global Fund at the very end of my speech, but let me move on now to the picture globally, which I am afraid is totally different.

    Back in 2018, I said that

    “one young person every day is still diagnosed with HIV and young people continue to suffer some of the worst sexual health outcomes.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2018; Vol. 650, c. 496.]

    The situation globally has become bleaker. Last year, an adolescent girl or young woman was newly infected with HIV every two minutes. In the past year alone, 650,000 people have died of AIDS-related illnesses and 1.5 million people became infected with HIV. Only half of children living with HIV have access to life-saving medication. Inequality between children and adults in HIV treatment coverage is increasing rather than narrowing.

    Why are people still dying unnecessarily of AIDS? Why are there so many new HIV infections year after year, globally? It is too easy to put the blame on current crises such as covid and war; the reality is that we were already off target before many of those crises hit. The lack of a comprehensive healthcare system, a lack of education and the growing influence of evangelical Christian churches in Africa—often American-backed—have led to an environment that is hostile to an effective HIV response.

    Uganda was the first country to host the world AIDS summit—it was a revolutionary leader. The same President is in power now, but has completely rolled things back. When Uganda hosted the world AIDS conference almost 30 years ago, condoms were given to every delegate and given out into community settings. When I went to Uganda only a few years ago to visit aid projects that we were paying for, I sat at the back of a classroom with Stephen Twigg, the then Chair of the Select Committee on International Development. We heard a teacher tell children that they could prevent AIDS if they washed the toilet seat and observed “sex only after marriage”. I am afraid that things have gone backwards because of the influence of some malign groups. It is concerning.

    One of the inequalities standing in the way of ending AIDS is access to education, particularly for young girls. Six in seven new HIV infections among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa occur among girls who are outside formal education. Enabling girls to stay in school until they complete secondary education reduces their vulnerability to HIV by more than 50%. All children, including those who have dropped out because of covid and those who were out of school anyway, should get a complete secondary education, including comprehensive sex education.

    Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)

    The hon. Gentleman makes such an important point. Does he agree that we cannot shy away from talking about sexual and reproductive health in the developing world, because that is the single most effective way to ensure that girls stay in school, stay not pregnant and stay free from diseases that will affect them in future? It is crucial that in our role as providers of international aid we do not step back from programmes that talk about contraception.

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    I totally agree. As dark forces around the world try, I am afraid, to withdraw money from programmes that talk in a rational and evidence-based way about sex and reproductive rights, we have a greater responsibility. We must step up, because if we do not, others will not. As the right hon. Lady points out, there are two sides to the coin: providing better sexual health education means that girls stay in school, and staying in school allows them to get better education about their health. Those are both positive things. Both issues need to be tackled together.

    Another inequality standing in the way of ending AIDS is the inequality in the realisation of human rights. Some 68 countries still criminalise gay men. As well as contravening the human rights of LGBT+ people, laws that punish same-sex relations help to sustain stigma and discrimination. Such laws are barriers preventing people from seeking and receiving healthcare for fear of being punished or detained. Repealing them worldwide is vital to the task of working against AIDS.

    Of the 68 countries that outlaw homosexuality, 36 are Commonwealth countries. The majority of Commonwealth countries are still upholding laws that we imposed and that never originated in the countries themselves. In fact, before British colonialism—British imperialism, I should say—many of those countries had better customs and practices around homosexuality than they do now. These customs and practices are not native to people’s home countries; they were imposed. They should be discarded with the shackles of imperialism, which we all now recognise was wrong. One in four men in Caribbean countries where homosexuality is criminalised have HIV. Globally, 60% of people with HIV live in Commonwealth countries. Collectively, we have a responsibility to tackle that in the Commonwealth. Barriers undermine the right to health: a right that all people should enjoy.

    Beyond the human rights implications, the laws criminalising homosexuality also have an impact on public health. LGBT+ people end up not seeking health services for fear of being prosecuted. Those who do seek health services often have to lie about how they were infected. Astronomically high numbers of people with HIV in Russia say that they were infected because they were drug-injecting users; that is widely believed to be partly because of the attitude in Russia that it is better to be a drug-injecting user than an LGBTQ person. Without accurately knowing the source of infections, we cannot accurately run public health programmes to save people. Putting people undercover in the dark, hidden in corners, means that the virus lives on. That is a danger for us all.

    In some countries, people living with HIV are at risk of being criminalised even when they take precautions with their sexual partners. That opens them up to blackmail and fraudulent claims from former partners. People with HIV in the UK are not immune to that either, as we have seen in some high-profile cases. We have known for at least 20 years that antiretroviral therapy reduces HIV transmission, and for the past few years we have known that it stops it completely, so there should be no doubt that a person with sustained undetectable levels of HIV in their blood cannot transmit HIV to their sexual partner, and laws should not punish them. However, under Canadian criminal law, for example, people living with HIV can be charged and prosecuted if they do not inform their partner about their HIV-positive status before having sex. The law does not follow the science, and it puts people at risk.

    Laws requiring disclosure perpetuate the stigma against HIV-positive people. With the advent of PrEP and with “Undetectable = untransmittable”, the law should now reflect the fact that everyone has a role in protecting themselves against HIV and everyone must step up. The criminalisation of drug-injecting users and sex workers has an equally negative effect on HIV prevention and treatment, as I have outlined, in LGBT communities. In all these areas, a health and human rights-based approach must be taken if we truly want to see the end of HIV.

    Beating pandemics is a political challenge. We can end HIV and AIDS by 2030 in this country, but only if we are bold in our actions and our investments. We need courageous leadership. We need people worldwide to insist that their leaders be courageous. That is why last month it was so disappointing not to see courageous leadership from this Government. The UK Government were the only donor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to cut their financial settlement—by £400 million. The fund asked donors to raise their pledges by 30% this year, and almost all the G7 nations—which are suffering economic problems that are, in many respects, similar to ours; as the Government often remind us, this is a global crisis, not a crisis of their own making, although in our view it is a bit of both—increased their amounts. For decades the UK was the leader in the global response to these infections and diseases, but that is no longer the case. When our allies met the fund’s request for a 30% increase, the UK went for a 30% cut from their 2019 pledge.

    Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)

    I thank the hon. Gentleman—my friend—for making this speech; he is an extraordinary advocate in this area. However, I want to put on record the fact that the UK is the third biggest funder of the Global Fund. We have, to date, contributed just under £4.5 billion.

    The hon. Gentleman has said that we are leading the way in respect of our health and our treatment, and that other countries are following. This, too, is a commodity that can be traded and given to other countries. It is not always a question of the value of the money that we give, because we can trade skills, research and development as well. The hon. Gentleman knows where I stand on the development issue, but I think it is worth making that point.

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    The hon. Gentleman has been very good on development issues in the past, and I think he is right. He has also touched on the discussion about patents and patent waivers. There is a live discussion about how we can ensure that the poorest countries in the world can gain access to some of the frontline drugs. Long-lasting drugs are one of the latest innovations, with the possibility of either an injection or a set of, effectively, implants—I cannot think of the exact term off the top of my head—which would last for up to a month and a half. That is revolutionary, especially for those who have irregular access to health systems. The problem is that these are the most expensive drugs because of the way our patent system works; but they are also the most useful in the parts of the world that are hardest to reach. In the UK, most people have regular access to medical settings and can receive daily pill medication. The UK has not always been the very best when it comes to seeking patent waivers. We have done it in the case of many HIV drugs, but we should consider doing it more widely. That might be a good compromise, but we will then need to step it up.

    The UK’s decision on the 30% cut is, in my view, a disastrous decision, which stems from the Conservatives’ 0.5% cap on international development. Rather than considering that amount to be a floor and saying that it is the bottom of our ambition, the Government have said that it is the top of our ambition. Moreover, as a result of their insistence on including the Homes for Ukraine scheme, whereby we are housing Ukrainian people here in the UK, in that 0.5% cap, money is flowing out of the international development Department. International development—internationally spent money—should be 0.5%; that would enable us to fulfil many of our commitments quite easily. The additional aid and charity that we provide should be celebrated, but it should not be detrimental to others. This cut will result in the preventable deaths of up to 1.5 million people, and risk over 34.5 million new transmissions of HIV, TB and malaria. It will no doubt harm our credibility, and I hope we will reverse it as soon as we can.

    We in the APPG have the political will to meet the targets set by UNAIDS and the action plans for Wales, Scotland, England and, I was pleased to hear, Northern Ireland. We will continue to work with and challenge the Government in ensuring that they do the same, because it is time we stepped up and pushed for that final mile. When you are at the end of the race, you do not slow down; you speed up. This is a prize that we can win, so let us not allow it to slip through our hands. In the words of the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, let us end the “dither and delay”. Let us end HIV/AIDS today.

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on the UK Trade Deals with Australia and New Zealand

    The speech made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 14 November 2022.

    The first thing to say about international trade deals nowadays is that they are not just trade deals. They are comprehensive agreements on how countries will co-operate and how they will grow together. They are dynamic deals that will set the future course of the respective countries. They are, of course, very similar to the deals we had with the European Union in many respects, but with less scrutiny, less oversight and less public participation.

    That can be more acutely demonstrated when we compare these trade deals with the deals the European Union is busy getting on with now. We can see that the European Union’s deal is much more advantageous to the European side than this deal is to our side. Why is that?

    Anthony Mangnall

    Speak up for this country!

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    My colleague on the International Trade Committee says I should speak up for this country, as if I should be some ambassador for the Government, ignore how they are running down this country and only talk about the good things. I am afraid that is not the role of the Opposition and of Opposition parties. What we do is lay out how we would benefit our country if we were in power, and what we would do better for our country where the Government have failed.

    Let us talk about things that could have been included in this deal, but were missed—first, food standards. In this deal, animal and food standards are frozen in Australia, because this deal gives Australian producers a competitive advantage. While they will not go backwards, why on earth should they desire to improve their standards above ours? That gives them no advantage. Rather than saying, “We will slowly reduce barriers as you meet the standards that we are getting to,” it says, “You have absolute access to our markets, and don’t worry, you don’t need to change your standards either”—that is, apart from some wishy-washy wording about some long-term desire; mañana, mañana. We all know what those clauses mean: nothing. The only thing that matters is hard trade law, hard tariffs and quotas, and on that, we have been let down.

    In fact, when we asked the Australian negotiating teams what they thought of this, they said, “All our red lines were met; we compromised on almost nothing. It is a fantastic deal.” Well, yes, it is a fantastic deal for Australia. If one side has all of its red lines met and the other does not, it is clear who the winners and losers are.

    We could have gone further on free movement of people. The extension of our current visa arrangements for the free movement of students from two years to three years is pretty pathetic. Free movement should be afforded to countries that are of a similar economic situation to us—that is why we had free movement with Europe—and that have similar flows. We have similar numbers of people going to Australia and of Australians coming to us. The expansion by only one year is pretty pathetic and will not make much difference for most young people, who already had the right to two years and could extend it in Australia if they worked on a farm. It is pretty miserable and unambitious.

    The same can be said for climate change. In the Australia deal, the wording is weaker than, and does not go beyond, the Paris agreement. Australia is a country of similar economic and legal profile, and it now even has a Labour Government—unlike us, but not for much longer, I hope—so why can we not negotiate something better? The clauses on climate change are the kinds of things that we would expect from negotiations with countries that are much harder to negotiate with, such as China or India—countries that are much more problematic on climate change.

    Drew Hendry

    The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point about climate change. Does he not find it incredible that all the concerns that might have been raised about climate change and the Paris agreement were scrubbed in the haste to get the Australia deal through so the Government could meet some arbitrary deadline?

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    Exactly. I must wrap up— [Interruption.] Oh, I will continue, then. I thought you were giving me the eye, Madam Deputy Speaker.

    That is exactly the problem. If we have higher climate change standards, workers’ rights or environmental standards, and we have free trade with another country that has lower standards, all we are doing is exporting British jobs, opening the door and saying to companies, “Don’t worry about our climate change rules, our carbon trading or the standards we expect you to meet. Go and set up your companies in that other country, and we will still import all the goods and services.” That is an unemployment note for British workers, and the Government are signing it constantly, with country after country, because they are obsessed with getting deals over the line rather than with the quality of those deals.

    Tony Lloyd

    The environment chapter ought to have been capable of actually changing the climate change debate in Australia, so it is disappointing that it has, quite frankly, no teeth whatever. What does that say to countries with which we might want to negotiate to stop deforestation, mining coal and so on?

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    Exactly. Australia is a deep friend of ours. I spent hours outside the Australian embassy for the last elections, canvassing and campaigning for the Australian Labour party, which is now in government—although I do not think that success is all down to me. I regularly meet our counterparts in the Australian Labour party, and I am proud to say that not only are they friends, but my senior researcher is from that party and now works for me. There are strong links between our systems and our people. If, with friends, we cannot negotiate a deal that has teeth on environment and climate, we have no hope whatever when dealing with much more difficult countries.

    This is partly because of the Government’s refusal to have proper parliamentary scrutiny. First, there was no need for them to trigger CRaG, because the agreement cannot be put in place until we have passed the enacting legislation, which has not even come back for Third Reading. The Government forcing through CRaG without parliamentary scrutiny was just arrogance on the part of Ministers and the Government—there was no other reason for it. They show the same arrogance to the International Trade Committee, which, time and again, they refuse to come and speak to. I cannot ascertain whether it is the arrogance of Ministers or the arrogance of senior civil servants—maybe it is a bit of both—but it is clear that the Department for International Trade has shown in this process that it is not fit for purpose and needs a real overhaul.

    I am quite in favour of some of the ideas that the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) set out. We should have a Department of trade, of foreign negotiations, or probably of foreign affairs—a Foreign and Commonwealth Office, one might say—that co-ordinates expertise in other Departments, such as the former Department for International Development. I was in DFID negotiations on the environment and on the Rio process year in, year out, all through our European period, and our colleagues in DFID led many of the discussions on the oceans and biodiversity. It had real expertise in those negotiations. We should have been using it. We have failed in the environmental chapters of this agreement because we did not leverage the fantastic negotiators as well enough as we have in other Departments.

    The right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth was also right to say that proper scrutiny in this place can help the Government’s hand. I remember when I was a trade unionist, and we would want our members to lay out strong, hard lines to us so that when we went into negotiations with the employer, we were able to say, “Look, I am the reasonable one here—I am trying to get to an agreement—but my members are livid; they are angry; they are fuming. You need to give me a bit more so we can strike this deal and avoid any action.” It is the same process in trade deals, but the Government’s refusal to use us means that they have sold this deal short.

    Finally, I will touch on procurement. In the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill Committee, we heard that some of the wording on procurement puts British companies in a worse position than they are currently, and I will briefly explain why. There is already a global agreement on procurement under which British companies already have the right to bid for procurement contracts in Australia. Those agreements require that if a company has worked up a credible bid that is then rejected, the company can claim certain costs. This trade agreement excludes those particular words. Of course, a company will probably go to the Australian courts or to our courts, where they will be able to argue their case, but the insecurity of different wording in different agreements now means that although a French company would have a 100% cast-iron guarantee of protection, because it is part of the same global agreement on procurement, a British company would be insecure in that protection.

    In some areas, the agreement not only falls short of what we want, but actively sells our country short. That is why the agreement is such a shame; that is why we should have gone further; and that is why, if we had had earlier debates, none of this mess from the bungling lot on the Government Benches would have happened.

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on the Private Rented Sector White Paper

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on the Private Rented Sector White Paper

    The speech made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 3 November 2022.

    I beg to move,

    That this House has considered the White Paper A fairer private rented sector.

    I thank my co-chair of the all-party group on renters and rental reform, the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), who is the co-lead sponsor of today’s debate, and the 30 other MPs from across the House who supported it. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that we have such a timely debate on the matter. Of course, I direct Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare that I am the chair of that all-party group.

    Many commentators have said that the private rented sector is really three markets. The first is the luxury and high-end market, where people wish to pay high amounts for quality housing. To some extent, that market does not need the regulation we are discussing here. It will not be harmed by it, but this regulation is not aimed at it. The second is the market for people who are unable currently to buy a home or wish to have the flexibility of renting. This White Paper is about making their market a feasible, long-term, sensible one that they can live in. The third is for people who need social housing and often wider wraparound support. They should not really be in the private rented sector, as it will never be appropriate for them, but the White Paper still must protect them while we deal with the social housing problems that the Government, in the Bill they are bringing forward on Monday, recognise we need action on.

    The core of the debate is about how we create a private rented sector that is stable, affordable and safe, and where all parties have access to justice. I do not think that is a controversial thing. If it is not, the question is: how do we go about achieving those principles? It is not about whether those principles are desirable. Again, I believe there is broad consensus on the ways of doing it, most of which are laid out in the Government’s White Paper, “A fairer private rented sector”, published in June. It not only covers the points I have mentioned, but discusses information, enforcement, children and pets in the home, and giving people the protections they need.

    The chief executive of the National Residential Landlords Association said, on the release of the White Paper, that the

    “headline commitments to strengthening possession grounds, speedier court processes and mediation are helpful”.

    The renters’ campaign group Generation Rent said:

    “This is a serious set of proposals that will help to raise standards in private rented homes and restore some balance to the relationship between tenants and landlords.”

    The charity Shelter said:

    “This White Paper promises people safety and security in their home”.

    I could go on with the countless other ringing endorsements of the White Paper and its proposals that are coming from across the sector, with everyone wanting to go further on one bit or another, but welcoming the core.

    That is why it came as such a shock to many of us when it was briefed to The Times at the beginning of last month that all of that was being dropped. In Prime Minister’s questions on the same day, the former Prime Minister—I know it is hard to keep up with which one we have at the moment, but I am referring to the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss)—recommitted to a ban on section 21, but the full status of the rest of those proposals remains unclear. I hope that the Minister will continue in the good vein that the Minister but one initiated. I put no blame on her immediate predecessor, who did not have the brief long enough to make a difference one way or another. This is about how we make the pledges that we all put in our manifesto a reality.

    Let me deal with the substance of this issue. I start with the root of so many of the problems in the private rented sector: the issue of people’s stability and security in their home. Section 21 provides the ability for a landlord to evict without any reason a person from their home—that structural power imbalance is hugely consequential and exists in almost no other form of contract that we have today.

    On safety standards, I know of many cases in which renters do not wish to complain about the condition of their property, through fear of revenge evictions. The law at the moment is not good enough on revenge evictions; it currently requires a council to have made an assessment that the home is unsafe or in poor condition, in accordance with the housing health and safety rating system, in order for someone then to have the protections from eviction. That sets the bar well beyond where it is practically useful if it is to protect a renter who complains about something such as a boiler not working or the windows jamming.

    On affordability, section 21 is creating a crisis that is spiralling out of control, where we see a wave of assured shorthold tenancies coming to an end and section 21 being used to get higher rents, pushing up inflation, to above 20% in some areas. I know of a schoolteacher who received a demand for a 40% rent increase at the end of their lease. Unable to pay, he is now sofa surfing and homeless. A school teacher who is working full time is homeless not through any fault of his own but due to the state of the housing market today.

    Shelter commissioned research to show that some 230,000 private tenants have been served with section 21 notices since the Government made their first pledge in 2019—that is one every seven minutes. But that does not even show the scale of the problem, because a notice is not usually required; knowing they have no rights, renters will often just leave when the landlord asks them to do so, at an inconvenience to themselves. Section 21 provides no real recourse, no appeal and no exemptions, and even if it did, we know that the current court system has delays coming out of its ears, so taking things to court will not be an answer to these problems.

    Last week, in preparation for this debate, I asked renters to get in touch with me with their stories. One of the many replies I received was from a young couple who said that before they moved in the landlord agreed to carry out a deep clean, but when they entered the flat they found that it had an insect infestation and it had not been cleaned for months. Both the agent and the landlord refused to do anything. Later, the couple found that two windows were broken and so they asked for repairs, but, again, there was a refusal to do anything. They contacted the council, but it did not carry out an in-person inspection—we all know the pressures on councils—and in the end, on the balance of things, it just accepted the landlord’s word against that of the tenants. At the first possible instance, in November 2021, the couple were issued with a section 21 notice. They had a three-month-old baby and they were homeless.

    I have countless other such examples, and I am sure many other Members do, so it is no wonder that the commitment to deal with this was a cross-party commitment in all manifestos, but we cannot allow the abolition of section 21 to be in name only. We must not allow the next crisis to be the use of section 8 evictions due to rent arrears. If we simply abolish section 21 but allow landlords to increase rents uncontrollably, we will create a loophole that a lorry could be driven through. If a renter complains about the state of a property and the owner wants them out, the owner will just raise the rent to £10,000 a month and evict the tenant. The current rental increase protections are inadequate for protecting renters. When I last looked, the only way to make an application to the tribunal was by fax. That is ridiculous.

    Potential economic evictions were foreseen by the Renters Reform Coalition, and I am pleased that the White Paper addresses the issue. It states:

    “We will only allow increases to rent once per year… We will end the use of rent review clauses, preventing… rent increases that are vague or may not reflect changes in the market price… where increases are disproportionate, we will make sure that tenants have the confidence to challenge unjustified rent increases through the First-tier Tribunal”.

    Those are the Government’s words. If that works, it will be a game changer for stability in the rental market. Personally, I would like the Government to take on more rental controls. I know that they have ruled that out, but I hope that others will press them on the matter. My friend the hon. Member for Dover will say more about rental controls. However, the proposal in the White Paper is a sensible compromise on which we can start to make progress.

    I note the concerns of the National Residential Landlords Association about moving from periodic tenancies and the effects on student housing. It points out that both landlords and students need to know that a property will be available many months ahead. I am sure that the Government are working on solutions to that perceived problem, but if I could offer one piece of advice, it would be, please leave the proposals in the White Paper as they are. More loopholes will be taken advantage of.

    I offer a solution. Dare I say that there should be an opportunity, if not a duty, for universities to house all their students who wish to be housed? Universities could engage in tenancies with the private rented sector. They would be permanent periodic tenancies, and universities could license rooms to their students. That would give the private rented sector the security it needs and students the wraparound support they often require. In our communities, we often hear complaints about people not coming forward. Such a solution would give universities the knowledge that their students were in safe and secure accommodation. It could also work for other institutions and would still mean that the decent homes standards that the White Paper requires had to be fulfilled in such accommodation.

    Security of tenancy is particularly urgent. We are facing a difficult time, with many landlords selling their properties. Mortgage rates are going up and many landlords may wish to leave the market. That is fine. Some say that landlords leaving the sector means that rental provision leaves the sector. However, for every landlord who leaves the sector, there is another homeowner or private rented landlord entering it. My fear, which is shared by many, is that turmoil in the housing market will mean that renters are evicted so that landlords can sell property to another buy-to-let landlord, who would often be more than willing to allow a renter who had been paying rent for a long time to stay there.

    The Government stated:

    “We encourage any landlord who wishes to sell their property to consider selling with sitting tenants, which may provide an easier and faster solution.”

    However, most mortgages do not allow that. I ask the Minister to sit down with mortgage providers and work out a way in which buy-to-let tenancies could facilitate that. It might mean a slightly higher premium in some circumstances or some conditions, but it needs to happen now.

    Ideally, we would have a system such as TUPE, whereby when an employer is taken over, the employees continue in employment. If a landlord is taken over, the tenants should continue to live in the property. We should aim for that. Of course, a new buyer might choose to move in and renovate the property. The existing clauses allow them to remove a tenant as they see fit.

    There is broad agreement on both side of the House and in the sector on access to justice. Unless we take enforcement and the ability to access redress seriously, this is all a waste of time. The rogue landlords list was set up in 2018 with a great deal of fanfare. It was meant to be a game changer. Earlier this year, the Government were asked how many landlords were on the list. The answer was 61. That makes a joke of the entire system. I could probably name more than 61 in my constituency, let alone the country. That is even more reason why the White Paper’s proposed property portal, which would require all landlords and properties to be registered, is the only way forward. I think that the Government have come to realise that. I genuinely believe that they have seen the error of their ways. That is why they talked about establishing an ombudsperson to

    “provide fair, impartial, and binding resolutions for many issues without resorting to court.”

    The White Paper goes on to say:

    “The Ombudsman will have powers to put things right for tenants, including compelling landlords to issue an apology, provide information, take remedial action, and/or pay compensation of up to £25,000.”

    That is spot on. It empowers renters and gives them a body to seek redress, but it also means that landlords know that there is a place where they will be fairly heard. That, combined with the removal of section 21, is a life changer for many. It will give people the ability to complain about poor housing.

    One person told me:

    “One electrician said that the wiring was the worst he had ever seen. The poor wiring led to us having a power cut, which was only repaired with a temporary fix. The landlord admitted that they were aware of the oven being faulty at the start of the tenancy but refused to fix or replace it.

    Our hot water didn’t work when we moved in—the landlord had a friend (who wasn’t a qualified gas safety engineer) disconnect our heating from the boiler without telling us. We had to call out emergency gas and electrical technicians to fix these issues and shortly after” —

    surprise, surprise—

    “we were served with a Section 21 notice.”

    If the Government enact their proposal, renters could go to the ombudsperson and get their home fixed to a decent standard, and they would not have to fear a section 21 eviction notice.

    It is vital to include deposit protection schemes in the responsibilities of the ombudsperson. Decisions about such schemes should be published on the property portal. At the moment, they are not and they are only sporadically enforced.

    Last year, the APPG heard from a young woman in her early 30s. She said that she was still sharing a house in an insecure renting arrangement, despite earning £35,000 a year. She spoke about wanting to start a family with her partner, but said that she could not because she could not provide a stable home. The system has robbed that young woman of the ability to start a family. The White Paper could not just address some of the imbalances in the system but restore dignity to millions of renters.

    As is customary, I will finish with some questions for the Minister. Will she commit to implementing all sections—that 12-point plan—of the White Paper? Does she recognise that the pledge to abolish section 21 is not about getting rid of a clause called section 21 but about providing stability, security, and justice in the housing market? Will she commit to introducing the draft legislation this year? If not, when will that happen? Will she commit, as I have asked, to meeting mortgage lenders to discuss buy-to-rent mortgages with sitting tenants?

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on Energy Price Capping

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on Energy Price Capping

    The speech made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 8 September 2022.

    Some of the announcements are welcome, particularly the focus on people who are not on the grid. I would like to highlight to the Government Front Benchers—I hope they will go away and seek more clarity on this—the people who resell energy. They are often landlords in blocks who buy the energy on the commercial market and resell it to their tenants. The Government have never explicitly mentioned that. They have talked about heat networks, which is if the landlord is running a boiler, but not about landlords they are supplying the electricity directly to a flat. Those meters are not on the official meter grid and they will not even be eligible for the £400 support from the Government unless action is taken. There needs to be some urgent action to ensure that landlords can purchase at fair prices and that they pass them on. At the moment, the landlord has to pass the cost on at the purchase price. I am not saying that landlords are gouging, but there is a problem that the purchase price is a commercial price, not a residential price. I hope the Government will come back with clarity on that.

    The reality is that this package is still a £500 increase on what energy bills are today. This is not a reduction; it is an increase. It did not need to be like this. We could have regulated the wholesale market price, and the Government could have stepped in and offered loans to energy companies to bridge the gap for the gas they are importing.

    That could have been the offer, with the debt put on the energy companies and not the state, but that is not what has been put forward. The Government could have fixed energy prices at what they are today and made interventions, but we have not seen that either. Therefore, there are real difficulties relating to who pays. Does this come from the profits of the companies or is it done on the backs of the people? I am afraid that the wrong choice has been made, because future generations, and even this generation in future years, will pay for this policy. That does not seem right.

    Improvements of efficiencies were mentioned slightly but not enough. We need a house-to-house, street-by-street approach to insulation—as my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), has called for—to get this right. Leaving it to the market does not work. We will not get the efficiencies of scale. Labour has put forward a plan to start that process, but even more ambition is needed.

    We also need to look at the production of wind energy not just offshore, but onshore, and having solar panels on our roofs. At the moment, the solar panel feed-in tariff is less than the cost of buying energy directly from the market. That does not work; we need to reverse it. We need to give people the incentive to pay into the grid at a fair market price—

    Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

    Order.

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on the Resignation of Lord Geidt

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2022 Speech on the Resignation of Lord Geidt

    The speech made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 21 June 2022.

    We have heard a good discussion today and a good speech by the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa), although I do worry that he was dancing on the head of a pin in some of his constitutional reflections.

    It is as simple as this: the public have lost trust in the Prime Minister, and 140-plus of his own Members of Parliament have lost trust in him on these matters. Add that to the number of Opposition Members, and a majority of Members do not trust him. This House therefore has a duty to act. That is the constitutional reality, and all the other academic waffle is for the birds. What is important is good behaviour—the system relies on that. The Prime Minister has not behaved as well as he should have done, and his colleagues know that.

    It might well be that some actions are excusable, and that they are not all sackable—I mean breaches of the ministerial code rather than the Prime Minister’s behaviour —and that is why we need a fair and just system to make that determination. At the moment, the danger is that the public just damn us for everything. Small, vexatious issues are brought up about a Member delaying the registration of an interest here or there, and of course those administrative matters require slaps on the wrist, but they are not resigning issues. The public conflate those issues with serious misbehaviour, whether it be corruption such as trying to appoint friends or family, law breaking or sexual assault.

    This place realised that marking our own homework on sexual assault was not good enough—the public will not accept that, however much we dance on the head of a pin about it as a constitutional issue. We therefore had to come up with a hybrid system. Members could have an input and act as a reality check, but the independence of the system had to be guaranteed, complaints had to be investigated and outcomes had to be public. That is what we need in this situation. More importantly, we need a commitment that independent advisers will be appointed and listened to.

    The fact Lord Geidt had to clarify his resignation letter because the Government manipulated his words to try to condemn him for resigning over steel tariffs, which he said was not the case, shows the depths to which this Government will go. In that clarification letter, he agreed that

    “When the Prime Minister is asking his own adviser to advise on the Prime Minister’s conduct it really doesn’t work.”

    How do we, as a Parliament and as the people who fundamentally decide on the Prime Minister’s conduct, get our advice? How do we get the information we need, bearing in mind that the Prime Minister’s consideration is behind closed doors? We know about this only because Lord Geidt felt he had to resign.

    The motion is probably imperfectly worded, and it could probably be improved and tweaked. Our constitution is evolving, and it can always be improved and tweaked. Not only should the Prime Minister have an adviser—I would welcome it if he appointed one—but Parliament should have an adviser and a watchdog so we can decide whether we continue to have trust in the Prime Minister and the Ministers he appoints. That is perfectly constitutional, and those who are trying to make out it is not are misguided. It might not be useful politically, it might be a distraction and it might be unnecessary if we improved the whole system—

    Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)

    With a new Prime Minister.

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    Yes, if we had a new Prime Minister who obeyed the rules and if trust returned because people believed there is good behaviour, I could buy the political argument that Parliament having an adviser might be unnecessary, but we currently have a situation in which a Minister was sacked because of Islamophobia, a breach of the ministerial code. There is meant to be an investigation, but we are none the wiser. The Prime Minister is one of the main witnesses in that investigation, and he will determine how his own witness evidence is balanced against other witness evidence. Surely everyone can see there needs to be independence in the process.

    The witness evidence should be balanced and released to the public, even if the Prime Minister still makes the final decision. Surely we can all agree that one of these stages should be made public. As much as people want to talk about the separation of powers, the separation of legislation, law enforcement and deliberation on whether the law has been broken is a fundamental principle of justice in this country.

    We currently have a situation in which the Prime Minister writes the rules, the Prime Minister or his proxy starts the investigative process and the Prime Minister determines whether the rules have been broken. That is a fundamental breach of any sort of natural justice, and it is not fair on Ministers who are stitched up for technical breaches, not fundamental breaches, and are sacked for no good reason, while other Ministers who have done the same thing are not sacked because it is politically expedient. That is not fair or natural justice for Ministers, either. It does not protect them.

    I am not saying the motion is a perfect solution, but there needs to be a process. Having a process in which a parliamentary Committee can make recommendations is not new. We currently have a system in which certain appointments made purely by the Prime Minister go through Select Committee appointment hearings. I sit on the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which is being offered the opportunity to have greater responsibility, and it already does that in a number of areas, and other Committees do it, too. Our recommendations can be ignored, but at least they are made in public. The motion would make no change to that constitutional provision, but it would make ministerial appointments and abidance by the code open and fair. The motion makes no change to that constitutional provision, but it would make ministerial appointments and abidance by the code open and fair. I do not think that it is unreasonable. I do not think that it is unreasonable to support the motion, but more fundamentally, it is not constitutional and is only necessary because the Prime Minister has acted badly.

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2020 Speech on Plastic Waste

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2020 Speech on Plastic Waste

    Below is the text of the speech made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 15 June 2020.

    The Opposition will not oppose the regulation today, but we would like to place on record our disappointment at a number of missed opportunities. There are two elements to the statutory instrument—the plastics and the single use. This regulation deals only with removing the plastics and does not attempt to deal with or solve the problem of our single- use economy that we need to tackle. It fails to recognise the waste hierarchy of reduction first, and just aims at legislating, in a piecemeal way, one item after another.

    Of course, we agree that plastics have become unsustainable. In 1950, we produced 1.7 million tonnes, and now we produce 350 million tonnes. The Minister has already talked about the number of items that we produce, including the 1.8 billion plastic-stemmed cotton buds, of which 10% are flushed down toilets, with a devastating impact on marine life when some, inevitably, get out of the system.

    Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)

    My hon. Friend and I represent opposite ends of the same city. As a coastal city, we are at the receiving end of some of that rubbish and disposable plastic as it washes up on the beaches. Does he agree that this is a very important step forward, but it is only a step forward and there is a long way to go in order to clean up the beaches that he and I represent?

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    I totally agree, and we both will have been on beach clean-ups and seen the awful amount of rubbish that is either left there or has washed up.

    With the work of nature documentaries such as “The Blue Planet”, and environmental organisations such as Friends of the Earth, Keep Britain Tidy, Surfers Against Sewage and others, the public mood has shifted dramatically on plastics. I remember in 2002 at the world summit on sustainable development our talking about not being able to garner public support for action on plastics. How things have changed, and that is to be celebrated. That is why, of course, the Government have been able to pledge, in their 25-year environment plan, to eliminate avoidable plastics by 2040. Will the Minister set interim targets for this plan and will she bring forward further ​plans to demonstrate how she will achieve the overall target? Without milestones, there is a danger that we will not realise that we are off course before it is too late.

    I would like to hear from the Minister what assessment her Department has made on the impact of covid on the use of plastics. Companies such as Just Eat and Deliveroo are reporting huge increases in sales. I have seen restaurants that were no longer using plastics but have returned to plastic items. While of course we recognise that there is a public health emergency, we need to do all we can to lower transmissions while ensuring that businesses have confidence in their knowledge about the risks of items, but let us return to the age-old—centuries-old—idea of a washable spoon, rather than a paper, plastic or wooden stirrer. It does not seem beyond the wit of man to return to something that we have used for a very long time—

    Sir Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)

    We want cutlery!

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    Proper cutlery! I hear lots of support.

    To highlight the problem of single use, in 2018, McDonald’s UK faced a huge public backlash after the images of their distinctive striped plastic straws on picturesque beaches around the world, and it made a move to paper straws—laudable, fantastic, we would all say. But today it uses 1.8 million paper straws a day and that is 675 million a year. The tragedy is that these straws cannot be fully recycled, so they end up being incinerated, adding to landfill or even getting into our seas—the very thing that they were meant to prevent.

    Replacing one dangerous product with a slightly less dangerous product or energy-exhausting product defeats the point, when the reality is that most people do not need to use plastic straws. We can move away from the idea of unnecessary consumption. Huge numbers of supermarkets and food outlets have already moved away from plastics to wooden or compostable cutlery, but these too end up in incineration. As we know, incineration in this country has a particularly poor energy generation ratio compared with other European countries.

    DEFRA’s own impact assessment on the regulations has assumed that plastics will be replaced on a like-for-like basis, so while we are pleased to see the Government trying to eliminate plastics, it is very disappointing to see this missed opportunity to tackle the problem of single use. The Government are patting themselves on the back because of a ban on three items of plastics, when we need to shift our throwaway culture. We urgently need the extended producer responsibility scheme that is being considered in the European Union, and we should be taking the lead. Such programmes put an obligation on the producer to create more sustainable products. They incentivise companies that are doing the right thing, as well as disincentivising the wrong thing. When will we see the plastic bottle deposit scheme actually introduced in this place, and when will we see it reflecting the material used, rather than just the one-size-fits-all model that, unfortunately, has been adopted in Scotland?​

    With fast fashion and the inability to repair, we have not just straws and cotton buds being thrown away, but almost everything we can consume being thrown away. We are creating and destroying at alarming rates.

    Jim Shannon

    To take the returnable plastic bottle option a stage further, if we are to make that happen we need to have the co-operation of the giant supermarkets and similar. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that that would be a way forward?

    Lloyd Russell-Moyle

    It is. Actually, I was on a phone call with the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) earlier today, and many of the producers were saying they welcomed and wanted to move towards that sort of scheme, which I was very pleased to hear.

    As I have said, we are creating and destroying at alarming rates, but we must design a more circular economy. Where are the Government on the right to repair? That is another issue now being talked about globally—the right to have items repaired, rather than throw them away, whether they be electrical or composite plastic items. The Government are also a signatory to the sustainable development goals, No. 12 being the implementation of a 10-year framework for programmes for sustainable consumption and production. It says that developed countries must take the lead, so what lead has DEFRA made on changing production patterns, rather than just these particular regulations? I contend that simply banning plastics, although a welcome step, is not enough in creating sustainable production patterns, as agreed under our international obligations.

    I would like to ask the Minister some specific questions about the regulations’ implementation. What guidelines will be given to local authorities on the enforcement of these regulations? What resources will be given to local authorities to ensure that they are enforced? Will there be annual reporting on the compliance visits, on the problems found and on the responses to complaints from the public about unlawful retailing of straws and other plastic products? Finally, when will the Government bring forward their plan for extended producer responsibility, rather than piecemeal SIs?

    As we face a climate and ecological crisis, we must stop making piecemeal changes. We must have some hard conversations about changing corporate and consumer behaviour. Our short-term convenience must not come at the cost of our planet and future generations.

  • Lloyd Russell-Moyle – 2019 Speech on Immigration

    Below is the text of the speech made by Lloyd Russell-Moyle, the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown, in the House of Commons on 28 January 2019.

    I guess I should declare an interest. My partner is Hungarian, my neighbour is Czech and my lodger was French. American Express has its European call centre in my constituency. I helped to push and worked on the legal base of Erasmus+. I have lived in Belgium and worked in Berlin, and I am an EU citizen with EU rights. At this critical time in our country’s history, it is of course disappointing, but not very surprising with this Government, that the Bill represents another colossal stealing of those rights from many EU citizens who might not happen to be here on the right date or at the right time.

    There are many problems with the Bill. It removes the right of EU citizens to enter the UK without the leave of the Secretary of State. Even if the process will be “simple and easy”, it fails to address honestly the open border in Northern Ireland; we will, of course, end up having a diverging EU immigration policy within the island of Ireland. It fails to give assurances against the exorbitant fees that we currently charge many people coming to the UK, and that we might now charge EU citizens. It fails to give reassurances to visitors who may come to the UK but want to change their status, and it might mean that they have to do the same ridiculous run around that non-EU migrants have to do when they have to leave the country of reapplying through a different immigration system and come back in. The system is currently farcical for non-EU migrants, and the Bill will introduce that farce for EU citizens as well. The Bill moves us to a race to the bottom on migration issues, rather than seeking the best, and that is the problem with it.​
    I want to draw particular attention to clause 4, which will give Henry VIII powers, allowing the Secretary of State swathes of power to make determinations without oversight by this place. Have we learned nothing from Windrush or the disregard with which the Government treat many migrants? I would not trust this Government—in fact, I would not trust many Governments—with the right to decide on immigration without being fettered by Parliament. How is it appropriate that the Government, who have shown themselves to be so inept, should give themselves these swingeing powers? They cannot be allowed to deny EU citizens their rights in this way.

    Of course, things have got so bad generally with immigration. When I write to the Immigration Minister about immigration issues, she does not bother writing back to me; she gets a civil servant in the liaison team to send me a bog-standard, pro forma letter. She will not even engage on the issue. That is what the Minister has come to, and that is what the Government have come to—dispassionate about individual issues, worrying only about the number on the visa or the number of migrants. It is wrong, but now they want to extend that system to others.

    My constituents speak of injustice. Last month, a man who had worked here for 20 years—he has an NHS pension and two medical businesses—was rejected for permanent residency by the Government. He was an EU citizen, but despite spending £1,000 on an immigration lawyer to fill in the paperwork, the Government said that the right boxes had not all been ticked. We will appeal that decision, and we will be successful, but he had 23-odd years of national insurance payments. The Government could have looked that up instead of worrying about which boxes were ticked. The Government do not worry about the people when they are what matter.

    Many people have lived in the UK for much of their lives, but spent three or four years away working. A German citizen, for example, might have been raised and schooled here but spent the last four or five years out of the country. They will now have to fulfil all the immigration checks, even though they see Britain as their homeland. I was granted EU citizenship in 1992, as were most of us. My brother was born an EU citizen. I fail to see why people who were born with citizenship rights should suddenly have them taken away. If we have to go down this route, we should at least say that everyone who was born before exit date will continue to have EU citizen’s rights for the rest of their lives. That is the only fair thing to do when people are being deprived of their rights.

    The other danger is the huge costs we are seeing. It can cost an employer and employee £8,000 if they are coming from outside the EU, with the NHS surcharge alone being £2,000, even though the person will pay taxes and contribute to the NHS. It costs only £127 for the Home Office to process the application, yet the charge for leave to remain is £1,220—a profit of 1,000%. It is disgraceful. The Minister is frowning, but those figures are from the Home Office.

    We must vote down the Bill tonight because it is wrong in principle and wrong in practice, and we must stand up for what is right.