Tag: Sam Tarry

Sam Tarry – 2023 Parliamentary Question on Grassroots Club Rugby

The parliamentary question asked by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 26 January 2023.

Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)

What recent steps her Department has taken with the Rugby Football Union to help support the recovery of grassroots club rugby following the covid-19 outbreak.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)

Supporting grassroots sports is a key Government priority. It brings communities together and makes people happier and healthier. Through the sport survival package, rugby union received £160 million to ensure the survival of clubs at all levels during the pandemic. That was specifically designed to help those grassroots clubs. In addition, Sport England offered £23 million to support rugby union during the pandemic.

Sam Tarry

Local rugby clubs play a vital role in encouraging a healthy lifestyle, bring communities together and provide young people with an opportunity to develop friendships and skills for life. As the Minister knows, the pandemic has proved ruinous for many clubs, with clubs local to me in Ilford, Dagenham, Barking, Romford, Chingford and Wanstead all facing either closure or significant difficulties. The president of my local club, Ilford Wanderers, told me:

“We aren’t just losing players; we losing wholesale teams.”

That has been compounded this week by the controversial changes to the amateur games rules for rugby union regarding safe tackle height, announced without consultation. I seek the Minister’s assurance that funding will be ongoing and he will work with the Rugby Football Union on financial support to save those community clubs and ensure that this fantastic game, in all its forms, continues for many generations to come.

Stuart Andrew

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the significant contribution that rugby union makes in many of our communities. I pay tribute to the many thousands of volunteers who give up their time to ensure that these clubs survive. We work constantly with the RFU and Sport England to ensure that the best assessment is made of support that is needed for the sector. I will continue to do that and raise the points that he highlighted.

Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)

I welcome the news that more than 200 grassroots rugby, football and boxing organisations across England and Wales are to be awarded £5 million to put on local schemes. Does the Minister agree that, apart from the obvious health and wellbeing benefits, these schemes help to keep vulnerable young people out of antisocial behaviour and crime?

Stuart Andrew

My hon. Friend is right. The power of sport is significant and far-reaching: it helps with health and wellbeing and, as he rightly points out, can be a great avenue for helping people not to be tempted into areas of crime. That is why grassroots sports will be a key focus of our sports strategy.

Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)

We all love the game of rugby football union. In Wales this week, the Welsh Rugby Union was accused of sexism and misogyny. It is shocking and, unfortunately, reaches throughout the culture of Welsh rugby. Will the Minister and the Secretary of State reach out to the Welsh Government to provide their support and give the right guidance on setting up an independent regulator?

Stuart Andrew

Sexism, misogyny or any prejudice has no place whatever in any of our sports. As the hon. Member knows, sport is devolved, but I will reach out to colleagues in the Welsh Government and have a discussion about that. I am absolutely clear that our sports strategy will have inclusion at its heart.

Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)

First, may I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on last month becoming the new president of the Rugby Football League? I suspect that your form of the game will see a big influx of new players as the English Rugby Football Union seeks to rewrite the rules of the union game.

Does the Minister agree that, given 75,000 players, coaches and supporters of the union game have already signed a petition rejecting the new rules, the RFU should think again, work more collaboratively with the grassroots across all the home nations and ensure that all steps taken to improve player safety are consistent and workable and do not lead to a player exodus?

Stuart Andrew

My right hon. Friend raises an important point that a number of colleagues have already raised with me. As he will be aware, national governing bodies such as the Rugby Football Union are responsible for the regulation of their sport and ensuring that appropriate measures are in place to protect participants from harm and serious injuries. I can assure him that we continue to work with sports bodies, including the RFU, to ensure that player safety is prioritised, and I will certainly raise the points he has raised in my next meeting with it.

January 29, 2023
Sam Tarry – 2022 Speech on the NHS Workforce

The speech made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022.

For the first time in its 106-year history, the Royal College of Nursing has taken the monumental decision to take strike action. They have not taken that decision lightly, because no worker does, but this Government have pushed them to the brink. Ministers have had weeks to find a resolution, but they have rejected all offers of formal negotiations. As the RCN said, all meetings with the Government have seen Ministers sidestep the serious issues of NHS pay and patient safety. Do not be mistaken: they have the power and the responsibility to address this dispute, but they choose not to for self-serving political gains. They have seen that workers in rail, the Royal Mail, BT, universities and across the public and private sectors are now prepared to fight back because they are so sick of what this Government have been doing. They know full well that these disputes will have to end in pay rises for the workers of this country.

These are not the days of the miners’ strikes when the mines could just be closed because they were not needed any more. We are always going to need hospitals, we are always going to need railways, we are always going to need schools and we are always going to need universities. People are beginning to fight back and stand up, and it is time that the Government listened very carefully, especially in their so-called red wall seats.

At the height of the pandemic, every Thursday night the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary and Members across the House clapped for our NHS heroes and praised their immense effort on the frontline of the pandemic, but clapping does not pay a single bill. This dispute has highlighted the total hypocrisy at the heart of this Government. Once praised as heroes, nurses are now treated dreadfully. Ministers have sought to ratchet up the rhetoric, with the right hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) seemingly seeking to present NHS workers as hostile agents of a foreign power, ludicrously and disgracefully dismissing industrial action as “helping Putin.” Get real! These are nurses, not agents of a foreign power. The Health Secretary has said that pay demands are “neither reasonable nor affordable”, while utterly refusing to engage with nurses’ unions over their demands, only offering a paltry 3% pay rise when inflation is well above 11%. According to The Times, instead of looking for a resolution to this dispute,

“Ministers plan to wait for public sentiment to turn against striking nurses as the toll of disruption mounts over the winter”.

Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)

The hon. Gentleman talked about the difference between the pay offer and inflation. If all public sector workers were given a pay rise in line with inflation, it would cost the equivalent of a 4.5p rise in the basic rate of income tax. Does he support that, or would he pay for such big pay rises in other ways?

Sam Tarry

Our Front-Bench team have clearly set out a number of proposals, including taxing non-doms, which would seek to address the lack of funding in our NHS. I will not get into the specifics, but putting money into the pockets of ordinary people will clearly bring more revenue into the Treasury. The truth is that nurses have not had a real pay rise for more than a decade. The most experienced frontline nurses are now £10,000 a year worse off in real terms than in 2008, effectively meaning that they are working one day a week free of charge—how many days does the hon. Gentleman work free of charge?

Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point about nurses. He will be aware that their role has evolved significantly and they are often now asked to do more training and more work on the same pay. Does he agree that it is unfair to demand more while paying the same?

Sam Tarry

Absolutely. My little sister is a nurse who works in palliative care in Southend, Essex. During the pandemic, her job was to help lots of people to experience the least suffering as they met the end of their life. The mental health of nurses has been broken, there is increased stress, and bank staff are being used—all as a result of nurses being so devalued that the Government have taken away their bursaries. We have a huge crisis, but one obvious fix would be to sort that out. Of course I agree that we have to listen and value our nurses.

Paul Bristow

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Sam Tarry

I will make some headway, because plenty of other hon. Members want to speak.

It is not just about pay: workforce shortages are at unprecedented levels across the NHS. The latest figures reveal that there are now more than 133,000 vacancies in England alone—more than a third of which are in nursing—which is an all-time high and a record for this country under the Government. The vacancy rate in registered nursing is running at nearly 12%, which is an increase from 10.5% in the same period of the previous year. A key factor in the failure to attract and retain enough staff is the Government’s inability to provide workers with a decent pay rise. Some 68% of trusts report that staff are leaving for better terms and conditions elsewhere.

Paul Bristow

The hon. Gentleman spoke about nurses’ pay and how they deserve more. We would all like to give nurses more money, but how does he account for the fact that the Welsh Labour Government are giving exactly the same pay award as proposed by this Government?

Sam Tarry

I cannot speak for the Welsh Government, but if we look at their record—the times that they have been returned to office with a stonking majority, and the fact that there are no strikes on their railways, which they had the guts to take into public ownership; they called it what it was—I would much rather be living under them than the appalling Government we have.

The impact of those shortages on existing staff is enormous. Reports by Unison have repeatedly highlighted the acute strain that understaffing has put on the workforce, with stress and burnout rife among NHS staff. That predates covid, which demonstrates the immense damage done by a decade or more of Conservative Governments and the failure of successive Governments and Prime Ministers to invest in the workforce or take workforce planning seriously. As the RCN has said, the dispute is about not just pay, but patient safety, which is key for all of us. Staffing levels are so low that patient care is being compromised; only paying nursing staff fairly will bring the NHS to a point where it can recruit and retain people to address those issues.

I have visited my local hospital, King George Hospital, on many occasions and I have heard about the impact of staff shortages and pay cuts on staff and patients alike. Recently, for once, I went to open some new services in paediatric emergency and radiology—something positive after 20 years of campaigning for our local NHS in Ilford—yet the staff were still overstretched, run ragged and demoralised. They just want the support that they need to care for their patients, which means pay recognition and ensuring fair practices at work without undermining their working conditions.

I spoke to staff who, during the worst of the pandemic, received food donations from the local community just to get by. That should never, ever be allowed to happen and makes it even more sickening to hear about the outright corruption on the other side of this House and the despicable corrupt PPE deals with people like Baroness Mone. People in Ilford are sick and tired of that because of the attacks on our local services. We even had to stand up and campaign for our local ambulance station not to be shut down under the Government’s measures.

Conservative Members seek to present nurses’ demands as unreasonable and undeliverable, and have asked nurses to tighten their belts even further, while they have allowed the pay of the wealthy to explode. This year, FTSE 100 CEOs collected an average of 109 times the pay of ordinary workers—that is part of the answer to where we get the money to pay the people who actually keep our country off its knees. Where is the Government’s commitment to pay restraint when it comes to high pay and those sorts of people? How many Conservative Members have fat cat salaries and executive directorships, and coin it in left, right and centre?

Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)

You all have second jobs!

Sam Tarry

I do not think a single person sitting on the Opposition Benches has a second job.

The truth is that NHS staff pay demands are reasonable and fair. Nurses’ pay is down by £4,300 and paramedics’ pay is down by £5,600. One in three nurses cannot afford to heat their homes or feed their families. NHS staff are at breaking point. When I met NHS Unite members from Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospitals—I welcome any hon. Member to come with me and speak to them, because they are just across the river from this House—they were justifiably furious about the way that for too long, they and their colleagues have been exploited and abused by the Government, as they see it.

Staff are the backbone of the NHS, and if they break, so does the NHS. As the RCN general secretary said:

“Nursing staff have had enough of being taken for granted, enough of low pay and unsafe staffing levels, enough of not being able to give our patients the care they deserve.”

Allowing the NHS to collapse will cost the country considerably more, financially and in national wellbeing—as we are already seeing on the Government’s watch—than the rightful pay demands of NHS staff. If our NHS is not providing the care that we need, the costs are far greater, as is economically demonstrable.

Many hon. Members on both sides of the House believe that the NHS is our greatest institution. We cannot take it for granted and it is well worth fighting for. Conservative Members have the power to stop this dispute; to sit down with the trade unions; to face the nurses and NHS staff; and to negotiate a fair deal to prevent misery, ensure patient safety and save the NHS. If the Government will not do it, they should resign now, because a Labour Government will save the NHS and support NHS staff.

December 9, 2022
Sam Tarry – 2022 Speech on Public Ownership of Energy Companies

The speech made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 31 October 2022.

It is an honour to speak under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Murray. This winter, more than three quarters of UK households will face fuel poverty. Many will have to make impossible choices between putting food on the table or keeping the lights on. We are now at the dystopian point where local councils are forced to open warm banks to prevent people from freezing to death in their own beds. Unfortunately, this was the harsh reality for many across the country long before this current crisis. The UK is ranked sixth highest in long-term rates of excess winter mortality out of 30 European countries; that is literally thousands of people dying from fuel poverty because of extreme costs every single winter.

According to research from National Energy Action, the UK experiences mortality rates of, on average, 32,000 more deaths in each December to March period than across the rest of the year. Of these, 9,700 deaths are directly attributable to the avoidable circumstances of living in a cold home. That is about the same as the number of people who die from breast or prostate cancer each year. How shocking is that? The scale of the surge in fuel bills represents the gravest threat to living standards since the second world war. This winter, as fuel poverty skyrockets and inflation hits a decade-high peak, the impact on families cannot be overstated. Unless dramatic action is taken by the Government, countless people could even die, and that responsibility will lie in the hands of the Government and their friends in the energy lobby.

Thinking locally, my inbox is full of desperate pleas from my constituents—from carers, pensioners, local businesses and ordinary people who have not the slightest clue how they or their business will survive this winter. Sadly, they feel incredibly let down by the people in this House and this Government. They think that their pleas are not being recognised, heard or even valued.

Ilford is a proud and diverse working-class community. I have lived and worked there most of my life, and I am proud to still call it home now. It represents the best of our country: its diversity, industry, entrepreneurialism and communal spirit. However, working-class communities like Ilford are suffering—they are being left behind to freeze this winter. The Government tell us that we must all tighten our belts during this crisis and be prepared to make tough decisions and sacrifices. Why do these tough decisions seem to fall on working-class people every single time, when many at the top think that things have never been so good?

This year, Britain’s oil and gas giants are taking home record profits. Last week, Shell announced profits of £8 billion—double its profits for the same period last year. In August, the big five posted quarterly profits of £50 billion. These energy companies are literally profiteering off the backs of the unimaginable suffering of millions in the UK, paying out huge multibillion-pound dividends and bonuses to their wealthy shareholders. It is an immense cost, and it is hurting people.

It is not as if those companies are running an exemplary service for which they should be rewarded. While supporters of privatisation may claim that it benefits consumers and lowers prices, the opposite has been true. Even before the current energy crisis, domestic energy bills had increased by 50% since energy was first privatised by Margaret Thatcher. The UK energy industry is now so bloated and out of touch that it is unable to deliver for the citizens of this country. I argue that it has, in fact, stifled innovation and held back the fight against climate change. Because the market is so desperately out of control, the UK has lost a decade of potential progress on decarbonising buildings, and that has made the task of decarbonising before it is too late all the more challenging. It is hardly cost-effective for the taxpayer, either. Since June 2021, this Government have spent more than £2.7 billion to bail out these failing energy companies.

It is indeed a great energy rip-off. It has sparked palpable public outrage, with people organising on WhatsApp and the internet about not paying their bills in the same way as with the poll tax revolts in the ’80s. People are sick and tired of being taken for mugs by the ultra-rich who are ransacking the economy and making even more money on a daily basis.

There is clearly an alternative. Private UK energy providers must be replaced by a single publicly owned energy company that is run in a way that involves workers and—more importantly—consumers alike. It is the right thing to do for the families who have been suffering for so long. Bringing those energy companies into public ownership, or, as Labour has proposed, starting a new company that could begin to take control and offer better services for all at cheaper prices, would allow us to put a freeze on any further price increases for the remainder of this Parliament—at least until the end of 2024. There could be cuts to current charges and the company could deliver a moratorium on disconnections.

Bringing energy companies into public hands would also generate huge revenues for the state. Analysis by the TUC shows that the Government are missing out on between £63 billion and £122 billion of direct income over the next two years because of past decisions to privatise power plants and the resulting lack of UK public ownership of electricity generation.

Bringing energy companies into public hands would also truly put Britain back at the heart of the battle against climate change—the biggest issue facing humanity. Indeed, the election in Brazil was won partly on that basis. Research by We Own It found that state-owned utilities invest far more in renewables, as they can make use of the state’s ability to plan for the long term and ensure that more ambitious climate targets become a reality.

UK public energy would accelerate the deployment of new clean power. It could include developing new technologies where the private sector is slow to scale up—priming the pump for the private sector to get with the programme—such as floating offshore wind or zero-carbon hydrogen. It would also deliver thousands of good, green, unionised jobs. Evidence commissioned by GMB suggests that where public bodies invest in renewables directly, orders are far more likely to be placed through UK supply chains, ensuring that we all benefit from the climate transition. Nine out of 10 countries leading the green transition have a state-owned company of some description—why do we always choose, through sheer ideology, to do things differently, when there is something that could work for our country and our people?

The energy companies have proven, time after time, that they cannot be trusted to keep bills at affordable levels or to keep executive pay under control. Public ownership could generate billions for the Treasury. It could be the linchpin for a genuinely revolutionary green industrial strategy that could deliver jobs and transform communities from the top of Scotland to the bottom of Cornwall. It could protect millions across the country from the very worst whims of disaster capitalists who are looking to make a quick buck out of the suffering of others.

Some 66% of the public believe that energy should be brought into public hands. I hope that His Majesty’s Government and the Minister will listen and take action. The ability to make a difference on the issue is in their hands, but I suspect that it will be a Labour Government—hopefully soon incoming—who will begin to deliver the change that this country needs.

November 1, 2022
Sam Tarry – 2022 Speech on the Government’s “Plan for Growth”

The speech made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 19 October 2022.

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda).

Last month, the Government engaged in one of the worst acts of economic self-destruction in living memory. Overnight they plunged the pound to historic lows, mortgage interest rates skyrocketed out of control and six major pension funds faced total collapse. In just five weeks, they have imploded the economy, destroyed our global reputation further and thrown countless more families into debt and destitution. One former US Treasury Secretary even described it as one of the worst macroeconomic decisions ever taken, suggesting that

“The U.K. is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market.”

Research by the New Economics Foundation found that the trickle-down Budget pushed the income of the poorest 10% a further £900 under the cost of basic living supplies, while boosting the incomes of the richest by £5,000 above cost; a move totally divorced from reality. Now, with the damage already done, they have announced an embarrassing set of U-turns. They are already signalling a return to the savage and failed policies of austerity, which will decimate our infrastructure and public services, and make working people poorer the length and breadth of Britain.

Despite all that, the Prime Minister and the former Chancellor were right about one thing: the economic policies of the past decade have utterly failed to address the biggest challenges faced in our society. Indeed, successive Tory Governments have overseen the worst growth in GDP per head since records began. According to figures by the ONS, the UK is the only G7 economy yet to recover to above its pre-pandemic levels. That is 12 years of stagnant wages that have resulted in what the TUC referred to as the worst pay crisis “since Napoleonic times,” with real incomes still well below 2010 levels at the time of the outgoing Labour Government.

UK inflation is on course to rise to its highest peak in half a century and 45 million people are about to be plunged into full poverty. Many will struggle to put food on the table and keep the lights on this winter. Low-income households will see the gap between income and the cost of living increase by 40% next April, with three in four households unable to cover rising costs. People in Ilford have borne the brunt of this economic crisis. My inbox this week was full of desperate cries for help from constituents who have no idea how they are going to make it through another grim winter, with so many forced into debt and further below the poverty line.

The Chancellor’s attempt to mend the damage done by his predecessor is nothing more than a return to the age of austerity that damaged our economy so deeply, instead of the strategic long-term investment that is so badly needed in the UK. Yet again, a Tory Chancellor has warned that “more difficult decisions” are yet to come to cope with the economic crisis that his own party has inflicted on the country. His new advisory panel is entirely made up of members of the financial sector, including former Chancellor George Osborne’s chief of staff, now a member of Blackrock, the designers of the LDI—liability driven investment—schemes that very nearly imploded the economy two weeks ago, as well as a representative from J.P. Morgan. That is hardly reflective of the needs and wants of the wider public. Where are the representatives of the rest of the economy, the TUC or the low-paid workers set to be hit the hardest?

The Chancellor has unsurprisingly already told us that cuts to vital services are seemingly inevitable. Again, it looks like working people up and down the country are going to be asked to tighten their belts even further. Why do these “tough decisions” always seem to fall on working class people, when so many at the top have never had things so good? Indeed, energy giants are set to make up to £170 billion in excess profits during this crisis, while ordinary households struggle to pay the bills, and we may well be heading towards rolling blackouts. CEOs are now collecting an average of 109 times the pay of ordinary workers, with chief execs of the UK’s 100 biggest companies seeing their pay increase by a staggering 39%, well above pre-pandemic levels. Isn’t it about time that the very richest and their oligarch allies, who got us in this mess in the first place, shoulder some of the burden?

Getting more cash in the hands of everyday people would lead to exactly the kind of high growth that the Government claim to want, with far better health and education outcomes as a result.

Wages must rise, at the very least, in line with inflation across the board, and those bearing the brunt of the cost of living crisis need a pandemic-style bail-out for their energy bills. The IMF has suggested that it would cost about £30 billion to compensate the poorest 40% of households for price rises this year—still a fraction of furlough costs and £10 billion less then Shell and BP made in profit last year alone.

The energy giants will continue to raise their mark-ups as long as they are allowed to do so, and they cannot be trusted to keep bills at affordable levels. It is high time that they are replaced by a single publicly owned energy company, run by workers and held to account by consumers. We need a genuinely transformative green new deal, working hand in hand with a coherent, progressive industrial strategy to rebalance the economy away from the City of London and create millions of high-skilled, well-paid, unionised jobs—forging a greener, more just society and putting Britain at the heart of the fight internationally against climate change.

October 20, 2022
Sam Tarry – 2022 Statement on Deselection

The statement made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, on 11 October 2022.

I am utterly crestfallen by the result in the Ilford South selection last night. Not for myself, but for the good people of Ilford who deserve better than to have been at the centre of a manufactured political circus.

I am extremely concerned about the result, which does not reflect the feeling my campaigners met on the ground talking day in day out to members, or the extensive meticulous data we gathered on the campaign.

I am taking some time to consider what’s next, but in order to be assured of the integrity of the result I am asking the party to share with me the full information of who cast electronic votes, by what method, and when they were cast, which I understand is available in the ‘anonyvoter’ system.

In the meantime, I will continue to represent the people of Ilford South the way I have done for the past three years – with integrity, generosity and inclusivity. Thank you to my amazing team of volunteers on the ground who are the best of Ilford.

Sam.

October 12, 2022
Sam Tarry – 2022 Comments on Deselection as MP for Ilford South

The comments made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, on 10 October 2022.

I’m incredibly disappointed in this result, mostly for all my committed volunteers and the wonderful people of Ilford South. I intend to issue a further statement tomorrow on the process and outcome.

October 11, 2022
Sam Tarry – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 9 September 2022.

I wish to place on record my tribute alongside so many who have spoken today already and offer my personal condolences to His Majesty King Charles III on behalf of all of our communities in Ilford South.

Like many parliamentarians across the House, I have always had a profound respect for the Queen and for the role that she has performed within our nation. I have admired the sage advice and wise counsel that she gave to so many leaders over the course of the past seven decades.

As the son of an Anglican rector and canon of Chelmsford cathedral, someone who has grown up in the Church and someone who has grown up in the churches of Ilford, I have understood so much, as part of my life, the role that the Queen has performed as Head of the Church of England. In a constituency such as Ilford, where people really do do God alongside their politics, with so many people of so many faiths attending religious institutions on a daily basis, she has been held fondly in the hearts of so many—for her religious beliefs and her faith, and also, of course, for her public service.

The Queen’s longevity is perhaps encapsulated best in the fact that the first Prime Minister she swore in, Winston Churchill, was born in 1874, while the current incumbent of No.10, whom she greeted just days ago, was born in 1975, a span of more than 100 years—an entire century—which is truly astounding. She was also an inspiration to our nation; a steadying influence for millions to look up to amid the turbulence and flux so often in British politics. She was the anchor that so many needed during times of crisis. I remember very clearly witnessing the strength that she had in the wake of the 7/7 bombings that hit London, on the streets of our capital. She was able to show her tenderness in meeting the victims of the terrorist atrocities, while, at the same time, stating defiantly that

“those who perpetrate these brutal acts against innocent people should know that they will not change our way of life.”

And they did not.

The Queen was also an inspiration for our war generation—my great-grandparents and grandparents who served fighting the Nazis—shining a light on the role that women performed tirelessly in those war years. I remember reading one story about how, aged just 18 in 1944, she begged her father, King George, to let her join the war effort. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the King resolutely refused to let her do so. However, undeterred, she continued to plead with her father until he finally relented and let her join the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She was soon donning a pair of coveralls, driving a military truck, and working as a mechanic. In doing so, Queen Elizabeth became the first woman in the royal family to join the armed forces, and the first serving monarch to do so in more than 1,000 years.

In the immediate aftermath of the second world war—in fact the day after VE Day on 9 May 1945—Elizabeth took part in a tour of some of the bombed areas of Ilford, in recognition of the terrible conditions that east London and that part of Essex had endured under the relentless bombing raids of the Luftwaffe. On her walkabout, on which she was joined by King George, the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, she was shown Ley Street in Ilford—it is not far from my constituency office—which was next to the bombed-out local cinema.

Throughout her time as monarch, Elizabeth was supportive of the people of Ilford. I recall one of her last trips to Ilford, on which she visited Valentines mansion in Valentines Park to mark her diamond jubilee in 2012. Crowds thronged to the park, and the love and respect that people across every generation had for the Queen was abundantly clear. As Head of the Commonwealth, the Queen was held in particularly high regard by my constituents, many of whom have origins and heritage in the 54 countries to which our Commonwealth extends.

I will quickly relay a memory of meeting the Queen when I was a young scout in the 2nd Seven Kings troop in Ilford, and seeing at first hand the work that Elizabeth did as patron of the scout movement. I recall fondly climbing to the top of a tree in Gilwell Park to see her walk past. My scout master asked me to come down, and to speak to her directly. Even at such a young age, the work that the Queen did as patron of the scout movement was an inspiration.

In closing, I send my heartfelt condolences. The Queen’s death casts a long shadow over our nation and everyone in the Commonwealth, but the lessons that she taught us will live on for many years to come. God rest the Queen, God bless all who mourn her, and long live the King.

September 10, 2022
Sam Tarry – 2022 Speech on Standards in Public Life

The speech made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 7 June 2022.

It is somewhat ironic that we are debating standards in public life, given the Prime Minister appears to have no standards and no moral compass whatsoever. It is now blindingly apparent to our constituents that, after many months of rule-breaking, the Prime Minister is fundamentally dishonest, or has at least given the appearance of being dishonest. He is constantly mired in scandal and feels so entitled that he believes his own rules do not apply to him. That is not just Opposition rhetoric or a mere one-off; it is a pattern of behaviour that has emerged not recently but over the past two decades.

A perception of dishonesty, if not actual dishonesty, has been repeated time and again in this House, and it is bringing our democracy into disrepute. My constituents are pretty angry about this. My constituent Dani is angry and contacted me to communicate her disgust at this behaviour. She described her young daughter, who was very unwell during lockdown and who suffers from a rare condition called listeria monocytogenes meningitis and severe mental trauma from her ordeal. She told me:

“I can’t express my anger and disappointment that Mr Johnson thinks it’s acceptable to make up excuses the way he…has done. I no longer have faith… Please pass my story on to whoever that would want to hear it. As I also am raising awareness about listeria meningitis because it’s a strand that is not known much about… Let’s get a Prime Minister in that would treat us as equals. And not feel the need to lie to us. I watch everything, and it doesn’t sit well when we all know his apologies are worth nothing.”

Another constituent, Anuja, wrote:

“At a time when I was forced to go into labour…with my son on my own without a birthing partner, Boris Johnson and his colleagues thought it was an appropriate time to host a party going against all rules they had set themselves. A few days after I gave birth, my closest Uncle passed away and not only were we unable to attend his funeral, his immediate family were not allowed to see him one last time and had to part ways with him all on their own with not a single shoulder to cry on.”

How much more needs to happen before Conservative Members, specifically the 211 who voted to keep the Prime Minister in office, decide to take action and oust him? He has the support of less than a third of the House of Commons. In 1979, before my time, Prime Minister Callaghan, with the support of 310 MPs, called a general election on that basis. Our current Prime Minister has less support than any Prime Minister in living memory.

This situation goes far deeper than partygate. The Prime Minister recently abused the ministerial code by redrafting it to reduce the potential sanctions for Ministers who break rules, and he was castigated by the former local government ombudsman, who served on the Committee on Standards in Public Life for five years until last December. Jane Martin went on to say that Mr Johnson had wrongly used a report by her committee as a spur to weaken the code.

I remind the Minister of the comments made by previous speakers about ACOBA. The Government are yet to respond to Lord Pickles’s letters, sent in July and September, about Dominic Cummings’s breaches of business appointment rules. That is exactly why today’s motion to back the full package of recommendations by the CSPL would strengthen transparency and integrity, and improve accountability in our democratic institutions. It is only by making those necessary changes, in particular, with the independent integrity and ethics commission, that we can safeguard our democracy and look our constituents in the eye. This would, I hope, mean that debacles such as the Owen Paterson scandal could be avoided in future. The Prime Minister not only defended Mr Paterson’s clear and egregious breach of lobbying rules, but, disgracefully, attempted to remove the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for doing her job. That is behaviour we would expect to see in an authoritarian state, not in one of the oldest and proudest democracies on earth. So it is no surprise that the Prime Minister’s own anti-corruption tsar resigned yesterday for those repeated failings.

Just last weekend, the Prime Minister was making obscene hand gestures to shocked members of the public who had taken it upon themselves in the Morito restaurant, Hackney to question his actions. That is the latest in a long line of well-documented offences. What we have seen in the past couple of years is something that, I am afraid to say, has been part of the Prime Minister’s character for nearly two decades. In 1990, he was secretly recorded, in a previous job, agreeing to provide the address of the News of the World reporter Stuart Collier to his friend Darius Guppy, who wanted to arrange for the journalist to have his ribs cracked as revenge for investigating his activities. That is the true mark of the man behind the door of Downing Street.

Then we come to the Prime Minister’s record in public office. In perhaps one of the most scathing assessments of his time as Foreign Secretary, a London Conservative mayoral candidate, Steve Norris, pointed to ill-informed comments of the now Prime Minister that undoubtedly led to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe facing many years in incarceration. Mr Norris’ telling comments were that, in addition to being “lousy on detail” during his time as London Mayor, his consistent failure to “read the paperwork” was exactly the sort of behaviour that led to his sloppy and inaccurate comments about Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe. He is not a jovial character, as many of us have been led to believe; this behaviour has affected people’s lives for decades, most angering, recently, those hundreds of constituents who did abide by the rules and were not able to be with their loved ones, attend weddings or attend funerals in times of need over the past few months and years.

The Prime Minister has said that it will take a tank division to drag him out of Downing Street, which means that, even after last night’s vote, he still is not going to leave of his own accord. So I urge colleagues, on both sides of this House, to continue to explore all options to force this position—to make a change—so that democracy and integrity can be restored, and so that this House can rightfully be restored to its place as a pre-eminent symbol of democracy around the globe. If there is an appearance of dishonesty in our Prime Minister, at a time when the country needs to be navigated through the most economically uncertain years ahead that we potentially face, with misery already being caused to millions, surely that trust has to be restored in one way or another. We cannot have someone with their hand on the tiller steering this country who has no trust, from not only this House, but from the vast majority of people in this country.

June 9, 2022
Sam Tarry – 2022 Speech on Transport

The speech made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 19 May 2022.

Sorry to surprise you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We swapped the buses issue.

Words matter. Days after the Prime Minister came to power, he said something crystal clear to communities across the north and the midlands:

“I want to be the Prime Minister who does with Northern Powerhouse Rail what we did for Crossrail in London, and today I am going to deliver on my commitment…with a pledge to fund the Leeds to Manchester route.”

Some 60 times—60 times—the Conservative Government committed to delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail in full. Conservative Members stood on a manifesto pledge to deliver it and the eastern leg of HS2 on three—three—separate occasions. Just last year at the Conservative party conference the Prime Minister said it all again. This was a once-in-a-generation chance to transform opportunities across the whole country, rebalancing the economy and making it work for working people. These schemes would have created more than 150,000 new jobs and connected 13 million people in major towns and cities in our industrial heartlands. But last year, those promises were torn up and the Government do not even have the decency to admit it. They promised HS2 to Leeds. They promised Northern Powerhouse Rail in full and a new line from Leeds to Manchester. They promised the north that it would not be forgotten. But the one thing we know is that we cannot believe a single word the Prime Minister says.

This week, across the north, that is being repeated once again. On Monday, thousands and thousands of passengers saw their services cut back, and towns and cities across the north are paying the price. Let us take Wakefield: three services to the nearby cities of Leeds and Wakefield have been removed altogether; the hourly Huddersfield to Wakefield train has been replaced with a bus service that takes twice as long; and services from Keighley, Dewsbury, Halifax and Hull have all been cut back. Just six months ago, the Prime Minister’s Government said that they would

“protect and improve services on existing lines”

and

“not neglect shorter distance journeys”,

saying

“levelling-up cannot wait.”

They are brazenly breaking the promises that they made to communities time and time again. These towns and cities deserve so much better.

What has the Transport Secretary said about those cuts? Absolutely nothing, to date—he is missing in action. Perhaps he is still waiting for the missing Wakefield to Huddersfield train that is never going to come. He is probably flying on his private little plane. In the middle of a climate and a cost of living crisis, it is senseless to force people off public transport and cut them off from jobs and opportunities. It is time for him to step in and stand up for local communities with a commitment to get services to above and beyond pre-pandemic levels.

The story on buses is no different.

Sara Britcliffe (Hyndburn) (Con)

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will welcome the £34 million being given to Lancashire County Council to improve bus services. That is exactly what the Government are doing for areas like mine.

Sam Tarry

Any investment is clearly welcome, but the problem is that the amount of money that transport authorities across the country were asked to bid for came to a total of £9 billion. The hon. Lady’s authority was one of the lucky ones to have received funding, because the actual total amount of money dished out was only £1.3 billion. The reality is that dozens and dozens of transport authorities have been completely let down on the funding of buses.

Since the Government took power, 134 million miles of bus routes have been lost, and bus coverage in Britain is currently at its lowest level in more than 30 years. According to the Campaign to Protect Rural England—hardly a left-wing think-tank—that has led to the creation of transport deserts in communities up and down the nation. In response to the challenge laid down before us, the Prime Minister announced a national bus strategy, which he painted as the biggest sector shake-up in a generation. More than a year on from its release, the Government’s ambition, which was limited from the outset, has declined even further. The cash—this speaks to the hon. Lady’s point—went to fewer than half the 79 English areas that were eligible and told to apply. Many areas, from Hull to rural North Yorkshire, from Plymouth to Swindon, will not see the lower fares and much-needed improvements to bus services that the Government promised. This is not me saying this; these are facts. The strategy offered nothing for those looking for a bold vision to reverse the loss of millions of miles of bus routes across the country since the Government have been in power. It was a missed opportunity to revolutionise the bus industry and ensure that funds were properly directed to deliver the transition to clean, green vehicles they promised.

Daniel Kawczynski

Bearing in mind we are now spending over £63 billion a year on debt interest payments, where would the hon. Gentleman get the additional money to pay for all of this?

Sam Tarry

The Government said we should be ambitious and local transport authorities therefore said the investment should be £9 billion. My view is that investment grows the economy and creates jobs. HS2 could have guaranteed jobs for hundreds of thousands of rail workers for decades to come. Not investing now is clearly short-sighted.

Robert Largan (High Peak) (Con)

I had the pleasure of serving on the Transport Committee with the hon. Gentleman. The leader of his party, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), voted to block HS2. Was he letting down the north?

Sam Tarry

We stood at the past two elections on a very clear manifesto, which the current leader of the Labour party backed. Our current strategy, which the leader of the Labour party backs, states very clearly that we back it. It is not us who have proposed that HS2 should be cut; it is the Government who have implemented that cut to the eastern leg.

The hon. Gentleman does not have to take my word for it. Tory councils have joined the backlash against what the Prime Minister has done over his pathetic bus funding plan. Conservative Don Mackenzie of North Yorkshire County Council said:

“We knew the Bus Back Better budget had been severely curtailed, but I expected to get some money, not nothing at all, so I’m very disappointed.”

In Shropshire, the Conservative cabinet member for transport said she was “devastated”, adding:

“We are at a complete loss as to why we have been completely overlooked.”

It is a sad and sorry tale that so many Conservative councils across the country are being let down by their own Government.

The sad truth is that, for too long the Tory party has overlooked buses. Some 5,000 services have been lost since they came to power—a staggering quarter of all bus routes in the entire United Kingdom. Far from a bus transformation, many will continue to see a managed decline. The underfunding by the Government has become so severe that a recent report by the former UN special rapporteur Professor Philip Alston highlighted a broken and fragmented system, with skyrocketing fares, plummeting service standards and disappearing routes depriving bus users of an essential public service. The report even went as far as to say that we are failing in our fundamental human rights obligations by allowing this essential service to deteriorate so severely.

Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for giving way—I do appreciate it. Does he agree that some of the issues he highlights, which are affecting councils across the country, are the result of continual multibillion-pound settlements having to be directed to Transport for London to bail it out because of the Labour Mayor’s previous poor decision making?

Sam Tarry

My former colleague on the Transport Committee knows that that is a very scurrilous question. The money spent in London supports tens of thousands—and as many as 50,000—jobs outside the capital. For every pound spent in London, over 50p is then spent outside London, so every time money is spent in London, it benefits the wider economy.

Chris Loder

Even during the pandemic, over 18 months —this was even on the TfL website—there was an “extraordinary” funding settlement of £4 billion to bail out TfL because of some of the poor decisions made by the Mayor of London, so I hope the hon. Gentleman will recognise that things are not necessarily as clear as he suggests.

Sam Tarry

The reality is that the problematic, poor decisions were made by the chap who is now in Downing Street: the former Mayor of London. He is the chap who cut £1 billion off the budget that was given to TfL every year. TfL was the only major, and probably the biggest, transit system in the western world without any direct Government subsidy until the pandemic. If we ask a transport system to wash its own face—to pay for things only through fares—and 90% of that fare revenue disappears, how on earth can we expect that system to survive? Let us have some serious economics here, not the economics of jokesters.

As I said, the underfunding by this Government has become so severe that the UN special rapporteur has highlighted that it is hitting our poorest communities—communities such as those in Dorset. The report even went as far as to say that the Government were failing the fundamental human rights of people in rural communities. I know that the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) is passionate about badgers, but he needs to be more passionate about buses and speak to the Prime Minister. The worst part of all this is that the same working people who have such shockingly bad services are bearing the brunt of the Conservatives’ cost of living crisis.

Many people are paying 50% more on rail and bus fares to get to work than a decade ago. In March, the Government announced that they would go further still, with a brutal 3.8% rail fare hike for millions of passengers, and with bus fares rising nationwide. As the Minister said, it is great that there is a sale, but as he well knows, £7 million of tickets is a drop in the ocean of fare revenues.

Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)

A lot of people have some sympathy with the idea of spending more on transport infrastructure, but the hon. Gentleman has not outlined any concrete proposals. Does he actually have any plans to spend more money, or is this just hot air from the Opposition Front Bench?

Sam Tarry

Actually, the last Labour manifesto probably had the most comprehensive plan ever put forward at an election for running our rail and other transport networks. It is interesting that a lot of the ideas now being implemented by the Government are watered-down versions of what we put forward then. Instead of having weak lemonade, is it not about time that we had the full pint and something serious?

Incredibly, the Rail Minister had the cheek to say that the eye-watering rail fare hike would make rail more attractive. Many will wonder what planet Ministers are living on if they think people can afford that. Up and down the country, families are really paying the price for decisions made in Downing Street.

While the Conservative party punishes local communities with sky-high fares and substandard services, Labour is fighting across the country for better, cheaper and more affordable transport. In towns and cities nationwide, our leaders in power have a plan to turn the page on a decade of decline, putting communities back at the heart of public transport and transforming it for good. The vision of these Labour leaders is simple: to build buses quicker, cheaper, greener and more reliably. Last year, Andy Burnham decided to move to franchising, with a clear vision that talked of

“a world-class, integrated transport network which can unlock opportunity for all; providing access to jobs and education, reducing pollution, attracting investment and reducing isolation.”

Similarly, Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire has promised to put “people before profit” by introducing

“simpler fares, contactless ticketing, and greener buses.”

In addition to investing millions of pounds in new routes and services, both Mayors are set to cap bus fares at £2, saving passengers up to £1.50 in West Yorkshire and, in some cases, more than £2 in Greater Manchester. That is the difference that Labour in power is making.

Chris Loder

It is important that the House notes that the Labour Mayor of London required continual multibillion-pound bail-outs from this Conservative Government—funds that would otherwise be invested in other parts of the nation. The Labour party is advocating making the same mistake again in Manchester, the west midlands and other places. The hon. Gentleman is advocating a fixed fare, with costs being completely unmanaged and the Government therefore being required to bail out the cost deficit again.

Sam Tarry

I had the misfortune of catching a bus in Manchester about a decade ago, when we had a variety of competing transport companies charging more than £5 a fare. That is clearly not right. All around the world, progressive administrations are making transport affordable. If we are serious about climate change, we need to get people on public transport, whether that is buses, trains or trams. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, finances in London are all to do with the crash in ridership on the tube and the wider TfL system. I am happy to see passenger levels start to rise again, and to do so very quickly, because of the work of our Labour Mayor.

What communities up and down this country need is a Government who match their ambition, not a Government who tell them to be ambitious and then give them hardly any money. We need a transport system that is fit to tackle the climate catastrophe unfolding before our eyes, and that works for the passengers and communities who rely on it. Labour would wrest our rail networks back in full from inefficient private operators. We would put into public hands the parts of the railways that the Government have not. We would give communities across the country London-style powers to reform bus networks, keep fares down and improve services. We would invest in our vital transport infrastructure to boost economic growth and rebalance the economy, which will create thousands of good, green, long-term, unionised jobs. Unfortunately, unless the Government match their communities’ ambition on local transport, they will have failed millions across the country, and their hotchpotch agenda on levelling up will not be delivered. Instead, it will lie in tatters.

May 22, 2022
Sam Tarry – 2021 Speech on Foreign Aid Cuts

The comments made by Sam Tarry, the Labour MP for Ilford South, in the House of Commons on 13 July 2021.

The Government’s decision to renege on their international obligations rides roughshod over those ring-fenced commitments and puts at risk the lives of millions across the globe. That is not in our national interest, and it is certainly not in our national security interest, and that is before taking into consideration our moral duty as a nation to alleviate global poverty.

Damningly, several former Prime Ministers, who proudly upheld our country’s aid commitments, have voiced their concerns about this Government’s handling of their international aid obligations. Indeed, we heard earlier that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) has committed to voting against a three-line Conservative Whip for the first time ever, so powerfully does she feel about this issue.

When the right hon. Lady spoke in this debate, she was crystal clear on what the aid cuts would mean, “fewer girls will be educated, more girls and boys will become slaves, more children will go hungry and more of the poorest people in the world will die.” A damning indictment from a former Conservative Prime Minister.

The UK has a long and proud track record of stepping up to support those in need. We cannot abandon our responsibilities to those around the world who are most poverty-stricken, least of all in a global pandemic. The UK is currently the only G7 country to commit in legislation to spending 0.7% of gross national income on international development, a target set by the United Nations, and it is the second largest international development donor behind only the US. That is right and proper, and it is a fact.

The extended families of many of my Ilford South constituents directly benefit from UK aid, lifting millions out of illiteracy and poverty and providing so much support to some of the poorest communities around the globe, including in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka.

However, instead of leading by example, this Government are now, shamefully, the only G7 Government to cut their aid budget this year. There can be no clearer argument against cutting aid than the devastating impact on the covid response. In April this year, when the delta variant was ravaging India, vital coronavirus research centres—including a project tracking variants in India—had their funding reduced by up to 70%, prompting the project lead to say that the cut would not only make vital projects unviable but would, in effect, kill them dead.

In May, the Tropical Health and Education Trust criticised the UK Government for slashing £48 million in global healthcare funding as part of their wider cuts. Indeed, the NHS’s plans to donate 6 million items of personal protective equipment to healthcare workers fighting new variants across the world were held up, yet again preventing the containment of the virus.

We have a duty to act, and we must do so now before it is too late for millions who rely on direct aid. This is not about giving a man a fish to feed himself but about giving him a net to provide for himself. It is about our historic obligation to lift up the global south using our nation’s far greater resources.

I welcome the actions of Conservative Members who will join us today in voting against this callous and awful manoeuvre by the Government.

July 15, 2021