Tag: Stephen Kinnock

Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech on Visas for International Doctors

The speech made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in Westminster Hall on 2 November 2022.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) for securing this important debate. His speech was an excellent example of a constructive critique of where his own party is on the issue, and he put forward some practical and thoughtful ideas. I hope the Minister has taken note. I suspect there is more chance he will take note of the hon. Member’s comments than he will of mine, but we never know. This debate is a great example of the cross-party discussion that we can have in this place.

Let me start by setting out the Labour party’s position on work-based migration in Britain, as it is important to set the context before drilling down into the specifics of the issue we are discussing today. In a nutshell, we support the points-based immigration system for migrant workers; it was of course the Labour Government in 2008 that introduced that system for immigration from outside the European Union. We are clear that there will be no return to the European Union’s freedom of movement. We want to build on and improve the points-based system currently in place. It is a very blunt, one-dimensional instrument that could be significantly improved.

Our long-term ambition is to make sure that every employer across the private and public sectors is recruiting and training more home-grown talent to fill vacancies before looking overseas, but we recognise that simply turning off the tap of labour from other countries without having the appropriate workforce structures, plans, training, skills and productivity strategies in place, our private sector and our public services will deteriorate, our businesses will struggle to meet the Labour party’s ambitions to make, buy and sell more in Britain, and we potentially risk jobs disappearing overseas.

We cannot have a situation like the one we have had in the farming sector over the past year, where 30,000 pigs were slaughtered and £60 million-worth of crops were burned. Indeed, we cannot have a situation in the NHS where we are short of doctors, all because our immigration system puts up red tape and barriers that prevent, or at least severely discourage and disincentivise, doctors who have come to the UK from overseas to do their three years of general practitioner training from staying on to fill critical vacancies in the job market. That is utterly counterproductive, not least because 47% of new trainees in England in 2020-21 were international medical graduates. Labour’s shadow Health Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), has been clear that it is madness for the NHS to lose GPs whom the British taxpayer has paid to train.

Successive Conservative Governments have already cut 4,700 GPs over the last decade, meaning that patients are finding it next to impossible to get an appointment. There is a chronic lack of doctors, nurses and healthcare staff in the NHS. Staff shortages are reaching dangerous levels, when the need for NHS treatment is incredibly high, with huge backlogs and millions of people forced to wait for treatment. Patients are finding it impossible to get a GP appointment in many cases, and GPs are leaving the health service at an alarming rate. Last year, one in six people who tried to speak to a nurse or GP were unable to get an appointment at all. The hurdles placed in front of international medical graduates are a barrier to our NHS filling vacancies and providing the medical care that the British public deserve.

A survey by the Royal College of General Practitioners found that around 30% of all IMG trainees consider not working as an NHS GP because of all the difficulties and red tape with the visa process. The first of those difficulties is that IMG GPs are not eligible to apply for permission to stay permanently until two years after completing their training. GP training takes three years to complete, and it is only after five years that IMGs can apply for indefinite leave to remain, in line with wider UK visa rules. That problem is unique to general practice: other medical specialty training takes a minimum of five years to complete.

The second difficulty is that international GPs must find employment with a GP practice with a visa sponsor licence before their existing visa expires in order to be eligible for a visa that allows them to stay and work as a GP after their training, and ultimately apply for permission to stay permanently. However, practical and bureaucratic obstacles can make that extremely difficult, because GP practices may struggle with the costs and bureaucracy associated with obtaining a licence to sponsor a foreign worker. The Royal College of General Practitioners warns that the cumulative effect of visa difficulties on IMGs is that some are

“feeling forced to take roles elsewhere in the NHS and others considering leaving the NHS, and in some cases the UK, altogether.”

The Government have so far been utterly intransigent on the issue of IMGs, and on tweaking the visa system to remove the red tape. Labour would look closely at the issue as part of our wider improvements to the points-based system. Those improvements would involve the Government working hand in hand with employers, trade unions and other key stakeholders to ensure that we have a properly planned, sector-by-sector approach, with a proper strategy that works for businesses, workers, the public sector, customers and patients alike. As part of that, we will review the length of work visas, processing times and the existing path to citizenship to ensure that they are all working for our economy and for the public.

Labour already has a long-term workforce plan for the NHS. That involves doubling the number of medical school places, which in turn will deliver more home-grown GPs. At the heart of the plan is the doubling of medical school places—an increase of 7,500—which means we will double the number of doctors trained in a year. Our shadow Health Secretary will also produce long-term workforce plans for the NHS for the next five, 10 and 15 years, which will ensure that we always have the NHS staff we need to get patients treated on time. The plans will not only provide good jobs for British workers and fill shortages in our NHS, but prevent us from having to do dirty deals, as mentioned earlier, with some of the poorest countries in the world—those on the WHO red list—and from recruiting medical professionals from impoverished communities that desperately need that medical knowledge locally. That is exactly what the British Government have done recently with Nepal.

In the short term, Labour has consistently pushed for a fix to punitive doctors’ pension rules. The fix would do away with the cap above which NHS workers incur additional tax burdens. That would support short-term recruitment and prevent the exodus of workers. The Government are yet to deliver on that.

The Labour party is committed to making the points-based system work, and to our NHS workforce plan. The current system is simply not fit for purpose, and at this time of crisis we risk losing newly qualified GPs because of unnecessary red tape. The Conservatives have broken promise after promise on GPs. Their 2019 manifesto promised to deliver 6,000 more GPs by 2024-25. The former Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), admitted that the Government are not on track to deliver that.

In contrast, the next Labour Government will put patients first, ensuring that they are able to get a face-to-face appointment when they want one, bringing back the family doctor to deliver continuity of care and implementing our workforce plans. The current Government are out of ideas, and we need practical solutions.

Steve Brine

It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman mentioned continuity of care, because he will be aware that that came up yesterday during Health questions. Would the Opposition introduce direct management of lists back into the GP contract from when it is next renegotiated? That is how we achieve continuity of care.

Stephen Kinnock

The key piece of our plan is to cancel non-dom status, which is estimated to generate approximately £3.2 billion for the Exchequer, and to use that money to invest in more GPs, doctors and nurses—indeed, doubling the numbers. We can have the best plans and legislation in the world, but we need the resources to deliver them. That is how we will pay for our plans and generate the kind of care that we need for our public. It is time for that Labour Government, so that we can clear the backlogs holding our country back, which we see right across Government, and get Britain’s public services back on track.

November 3, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech on Floating Offshore Wind Projects

The speech made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 18 October 2022.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) on securing this vital debate.

If the last 12 months have taught us anything, it is that if we are to better protect ourselves from rocketing energy costs, as a country we must become more resilient and less exposed to fluctuating global energy prices. The good news is that the UK is well placed to do that, but we need a UK Government who will grasp the nettle and realise our potential.

A Labour Government will turn the UK into a green growth superpower through our green prosperity plan, by creating GB Energy, a new publicly owned clean energy generation company that will harness the power of the UK’s sun, wind and waves. We will establish the UK as a clean energy superpower, delivering a zero-carbon electricity system by 2030 and guaranteeing long-term energy security. It is only through a publicly owned company that we can ensure that communities and people across the country feel the benefits of the power created on our own shores through cheaper bills, good local jobs and putting money back into the public purse.

To achieve clean power by 2030, we will need to quadruple offshore wind. Floating offshore wind will be crucial in helping us achieve that goal. The Celtic sea will be a vital next step in that journey. The deployment of 24 GW of floating offshore wind in the Celtic sea presents a major opportunity to establish manufacturing and logistical support in south Wales. Port Talbot is ideally placed to be the hub for that activity, and a catalyst for the growth of FLOW in the region. Unlocking the Celtic sea’s potential requires ports that are capable of constructing foundation substructures, component storage and turbine integration, and continuous maintenance of those turbines.

Port Talbot’s deep sea harbour, with the land around it fully available for development, makes it the only port with capacity to combine FLOW fabrication, assembly, staging and flotation. The harbour is sheltered from high winds by a natural bay, and the space, size and water depth means that it can easily accommodate the substructure construction for the largest turbines in sufficient quantity to meet long-term Celtic sea demand.

Port Talbot also has the key infrastructure to support that groundbreaking technology. We are centrally located and have excellent transport links, with easy access to the M4 and the rail network. We also have world-class steelworks and the existing manufacturing supply chains, which bring with them the vital workforce skills and labour pool, including port workers, heavy industry workers, and maintenance and servicing workers, to support the quality manufacturing and assembly jobs essential for FLOW to become a reality.

Local businesses already in the manufacturing supply chains are keen to bring their transferable skills to the table and be part of this new, cutting-edge technology. Such is the scale of the FLOW project that there is significant potential to attract new industries in the supply chain, to create thousands of skilled jobs and to open up a world of opportunity for my Aberavon communities and those well beyond.

In short, Port Talbot has the capacity to deliver this scale of growth. It is a daunting project, but we have the basic infrastructure right there; it just needs to be mobilised. We have the critical mass and established manufacturing base needed to make a success of this future industry, but it is not just Port Talbot that would benefit. The benefits would be felt right across south Wales and beyond. The Swansea Bay economy has the ability both to absorb the initial demand and to translate it into new economic activity, and the sheer scale of what we are talking about would require additional resources to support Port Talbot, with the ports of Swansea and, as the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire so eloquently pointed out, Milford Haven having the capacity to carry out vital supporting activities right through the supply chain, including integration, maintenance, and assembly of mooring and cabling components. This has to be a team effort if it is going to work.

A south Wales freeport centred around Port Talbot and Milford Haven has huge potential to support FLOW manufacturing, assembly, installation and associated supply chains, and those opportunities can be distributed between the ports of Port Talbot and Milford Haven, which complement each other and offer the prospect of establishing the energy and manufacturing coast in south Wales at the necessary scale. Freeport status for Port Talbot and Milford Haven would help to create an environment to attract inward investment for the manufacturing of components for FLOW and the development of wider industrial manufacturing. The proposed new port infrastructure at Port Talbot will be an attractive site for the co-location of manufacturing for offshore wind components, improving the logistics of the supply chain. Port Talbot will also offer access to new export markets as well as the industrialised economy of south Wales.

The ability to offer the benefits of freeport status for development land in close proximity to the newly constructed port infrastructure will provide significant advantages for potential investors seeking to establish new manufacturing capacity in the UK, but also across Europe. I have had extensive discussions with Associated British Ports, which stands ready to invest over £500 million in new and upgraded infrastructure to enable the manufacturing, assembly and launch of floating foundation substructures and the import, storage and integration of wind turbine components in Port Talbot. These plans would be transformative for my Aberavon constituency and the surrounding area, but support from the UK Government will be a crucial precondition for drawing in private sector investment so that the FLOW project can get off the ground. FLOWMIS co-funding would demonstrate the UK Government’s clear long-term commitment to developing the site and the sector, giving confidence to allow investors and other funding providers to back the project and unlock sizeable private sector investment potential.

There is no time to waste. As the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire pointed out, other European countries, such as Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, are also looking at investing in FLOW, so we must act now if we are to secure first mover advantage. We missed the boat with onshore and offshore wind in the past; other countries stole a march on us, and now they benefit from energy produced here. The largest onshore wind farm, which also happens to be in my Aberavon constituency, is paying for schools and hospitals in Stockholm. The Chinese Communist party has a stake in our nuclear industry, and millions pay their bills to an energy company that is owned in France. Such countries, rather than the local communities where the energy is actually being generated, also benefit from the manufacturing jobs that go with these industries. It is simply scandalous, which is why I am lobbying the Crown Estate to ensure that when it grants the lease for the Celtic sea, local benefits are maximised and we grasp the opportunity to build a homegrown manufacturing base to underpin these local industries. The manufacturing supply chain must stay in south Wales.

Worryingly, the Crown Estate’s announcement last week on the seabed licences lacked detail on the supply chain and the local content commitment that developers will have to give when bidding for seabed licences for FLOW development in the Celtic sea, and I urge the Minister to raise the issue with the Crown Estate as a matter of urgency. Under the current criteria, there is a real risk that the opportunity will yet again be missed to maximise prospects for local jobs and supply chains. The Crown Estate must therefore provide more detail on the local content commitment that developers will have to give as part of the bidding process.

The future of our country is in our air, sea and skies, and mother nature has truly given us a gift in Wales. We were the cradle of the first industrial revolution, and now Wales can be the cradle of the green industrial revolution, with Port Talbot at the forefront. Investing in Port Talbot as the hub for this game-changing form of renewable energy would turn south Wales into a green power superpower in the generation of renewable energy. I therefore urge the UK Government and all other key stakeholders to come together to ensure we grasp this opportunity with both hands.

October 19, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech on Ukraine

The speech made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 22 September 2022.

I rise to pay tribute to the unparalleled courage and steely determination of the Ukrainian armed forces, to condemn the barbaric imperialism of Vladimir Putin, and to call on the UK Government to go further and faster in their work to isolate the Kremlin. The Ukrainian armed forces have done what nobody thought was possible. Their audacious and expertly executed counter-offensive on the north-eastern front has seen them take back in six days what it took Russia six months to conquer, and the Putin occupation has become a humiliating retreat. His forces are demoralised and shambolic, weaknesses that will certainly not be addressed by calling up a few hundred thousand extra amateurs. But let us be clear: we should never have allowed things to get to this point.

For more than 20 years, the west was naive and complacent in its response to the authoritarianism and imperialism that was becoming the dominant world view in Moscow, but the weakness of the reaction to Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was particularly unforgivable. Indeed, it is striking that seven of the Russians now subject to British sanctions were awarded so-called “golden visas” after the invasion of Crimea. This negligence was based on the deeply mistaken view that trade should take precedence over geopolitics and the utter failure to recognise that, if you give a bully an inch, he will always take a mile. With a brutal war now taking place in a country that is just a few hours from London, with our energy bills going through the roof and with Russian state- sponsored assassinations on the streets of Britain, we have truly learned our lesson the hard way.

As director of the British Council in St Petersburg at the time of the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning, I witnessed at first hand the iron fist of the Russian Federation under Putin. The relationship between the UK and Russia had utterly broken down. The Russian state had already attempted to close my office once and my staff were soon being subjected to terrifying harassment and intimidation. It was utterly chilling, but none of that compares to what our Ukrainian allies are facing now.

Although it has been heartening to see the west coming together since 24 February to take a more robust and resolute position, we must go further and faster. More must be done to isolate Russia, as that is the only way in which we will see the Russian people beginning to turn against the Kremlin in meaningful numbers. We must do all we can to support those brave anti-war protesters we saw on the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg last night.

First, let us look at the army of lawyers, bankers, accountants and estate agents in London who are doing the Kremlin’s dirty work. They set up the shell companies that enable dirty Russian money to flow through our country, enriching the corrupt Russian elites who have profited handsomely from the reign of Putin and who are bankrolling his war machine. The Government must ensure that the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill closes these loopholes and closes down the facilitators who have turned London into the money laundering capital of the world. However, as a Foreign Affairs Committee report of this June pointed out, for sanctions to work, enforcement bodies need teeth. Currently, Britain spends just 0.042% of GDP on funding economic crime enforcement bodies, so it is unsurprising that money laundering prosecutions have dropped by 35% in the past five years. In addition, the British overseas territories are awash with dirty Russian money. Under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, public registers of beneficial ownership were meant to be in place by the end of 2020, but the new date given is the end of 2023. This is too slow, and it is a gift to Putin’s cronies.

Secondly, we were all deeply touched and inspired by the fact that well over 200,000 households volunteered to host Ukrainians fleeing the horrors of war, but somehow the Government managed to turn that uplifting story of British generosity into a bureaucratic nightmare. Now, as the cost of food and energy spirals, there are real fears that many Ukrainians will be made homeless. The Home Office and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities must therefore grip the issue with urgency.

President Zelensky is the leader of the free world. He is on the frontline in the global battle between democracy and autocracy. His people and armed forces have stood firm and resolute in this battle, and thousands of them have tragically made the ultimate sacrifice. We owe them a debt of honour and gratitude that simply must be settled. Of course there is an economic cost, as Putin will continue to weaponise Russia’s energy supplies to Europe, but we cannot put a price on freedom. We on the Opposition Benches therefore urge the Government to strengthen and intensify their support for the heroes of Ukraine both on and off the battlefield.

September 23, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Tribute to HM Queen Elizabeth II

The tribute made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 9 September 2022.

I rise today on behalf of the people of Aberavon to pay tribute to our late Queen and to send my deepest sympathy and condolences to the royal family at this time of loss and grief.

The Queen will always be remembered by our nation and by the world as the epitome of loyalty, humility and grace. She always put service to her country above all else, and we shall never forget her duty-first, no-nonsense approach to everything that she did. Her unique talent lay in her ability to connect with the nation and to reflect our thoughts, our hopes and our fears. She inspired affection and respect, and she was a source of comfort to us all.

The last seven decades have been times of seismic political, economic and social change, and throughout these turbulent years Her Majesty was a beacon of consistency and stability. She never failed to steady the ship. She was the personification of keeping calm and carrying on. Indeed, her leadership during the pandemic was testament to this. In echoing the immortal words made famous by Dame Vera Lynn, “We will meet again”, she evoked in her typically understated manner the stoic spirit and measured optimism that guided us through that period of crisis and hardship.

On behalf of my Aberavon constituents, I thank the Queen for all that she gave to our country and I convey my very best wishes to King Charles as he assumes his new responsibilities and begins writing the next chapter in our national story. Long live the King and long live the Prince and Princess of Wales.

September 10, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

The speech made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

The winner of the current leadership contest will be the fourth Conservative Prime Minister since 2016. The Conservatives really have turned government into a game of musical chairs, to the point where the world’s oldest political party is not a credible or coherent organisation at all. It is a coalition of chaos led by a Prime Minister who embodies the vacuum of moral purpose at its heart.

They say that a fish rots from its head, but let us not forget that every single Conservative Member is complicit. They propped him up and defended the indefensible, so the entire fish is rotten. That is why it makes no difference who wins this leadership contest, and it is why a general election, and a fresh start with a Labour Government is the only viable option for our country.

We cannot in all good conscience allow this man, a man who put our national security at risk by holding clandestine meetings with a former KGB officer, to carry on squatting in Downing Street over the summer. This zombie Government are set to limp on in parallel with the frankly embarrassing leadership contest, which not even the candidates want to see played out in public. They are dodging scrutiny, and no wonder. They are offering hundreds of billions of pounds in unfunded tax cuts, but nothing for the millions of families who will face a choice between eating and heating this autumn. There is not a word on boosting productivity or driving the modern manufacturing renaissance that our country so desperately needs, and no mention whatsoever of the Conservative party’s backlog Britain, with the Passport Office in meltdown, A&E queues off the scale, courts mired in delays and a broken asylum system costing the taxpayer £4.7 million a day.

Backlog Britain is not simply the result of the Government’s failure to plan for the end of lockdown. The multiple system failures we now see are the result of 12 years of Tory incompetence and indifference. Growth, investment and productivity have stagnated since 2010, and our public services have been hollowed out, leaving our country profoundly lacking in the resilience we needed to weather the covid storm. The Government’s failure to invest has impacted on our national finances, on workers’ pay packets and on our public services, and it has left our private sector vulnerable to major shocks such as the pandemic, the war and the Prime Minister’s botched Brexit deal.

We should be in no doubt that authoritarian states such as China and Russia have been waiting in the wings, ready to pounce and to exploit our overexposed and vulnerable assets and supply chains. Labour has a plan to make, buy and sell more in Britain. After 12 years of a stagnating Tory economy, low growth and broken promises, we need a fresh start, not just a change at the top.

July 25, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

The speech made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 27 June 2022.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley).

As a patriot, I find that many things make me proud to be British, but perhaps what makes me proudest of all is that so many people and so many Governments across the world see Britain as a law-abiding country that plays by the rules; as a country that is a consistent, reliable and trustworthy international partner; as a country that treats its allies with respect and always defends the rules-based international order; as a country that acts in good faith and has a sense of fair play hardwired into its DNA; and as a country that is capable of tremendous feats of statecraft such as the Good Friday agreement—one of the proudest achievements of any Labour Government. Yet here we are this evening, debating a Bill that takes a unilateral wrecking ball to an international treaty that the Prime Minister himself signed and described as “an excellent deal” just 30 months ago.

Let us be clear: this Bill fundamentally undermines our reputation as a nation that upholds the rule of law. This really matters, because geography is destiny. Whether the Conservative party likes it or not, what happens on the European continent is of pivotal importance to Britain’s security and prosperity. When Europe thrives, we thrive; when Europe slumps, we slump; and when Europe fights, we fight.

Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and, obviously, speaks on the basis of great experience internationally. I presume that he is about to refer to the events in Ukraine. Does he agree that not only is the Ukraine war a very pressing issue on which we need to co-operate fully, but there are many other international crises with which we are currently dealing as a country—including the climate emergency—and that it is therefore vital for us to work in partnership with our colleagues?

Stephen Kinnock

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. He understands that foreign policy begins at home, and that if you do not have your own house in order, your ability to project influence, to build alliances and to speak with moral authority is fundamentally undermined.

From trade to diplomacy, from defeating Putin’s barbarism to tackling the climate emergency, and from scientific co-operation to responding to the rise of an increasingly authoritarian China, our democratic partners and allies across the channel should always be at the heart of our foreign policy. However, instead of recognising that basic reality, Ministers are stuck in what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), the shadow Foreign Secretary, has called

“a fever dream of 2016”.

Rather than seeking constructive solutions, they pick fights with our closest neighbours and introduce this deeply destructive Bill, which is a clear breach of international law, and which is designed solely to inflame tensions and chase Daily Mail headlines.

With inflation soaring, with the country facing a cost of living crisis, with war on the European continent, this is the worst possible time for the Bill to arrive; so why are the Government doing it? Who in their right mind would seek to sow division when, now more than ever, we need to be standing shoulder to shoulder with our European friends and partners? The explanation is clear. The Prime Minister has made a calculation, and, as usual, his calculation has nothing to do with the national interest and everything to do with saving his own skin. The Prime Minister knows that it is the European Research Group and its fellow travellers who are calling the shots, and he knows that he must have their support if he is to continue to squat in Downing Street. Just like his two predecessors, he has found that his fate now lies in the hands of the ERG, and just like his two predecessors, he seems foolishly to believe that he can appease the members of the ERG by throwing them some red meat from time to time.

It really is extraordinary that Conservative Prime Minister after Conservative Prime Minister has failed to learn a simple lesson of 21st-century British politics, which is that you can never satisfy the members of the ERG. No matter how much red meat you throw to them, their hunger will never be sated: they will always come back for more. Right now they are once again at the height of their powers, because the outcome of the no confidence vote has maximised their leverage and given them a Prime Minister who, when they order him to jump, responds by asking, “How high?” Not only that; it has given them a Foreign Secretary whose leadership ambitions depend on their support.

So the planets have aligned for the ERG—but for our country, not so much. Out there in the real world, the impacts of the Prime Minister’s botched Brexit deal are being felt by working families and businesses across the country. Our exporters are suffocating under mountains of red tape, import frictions are driving inflation up, and next year we are forecast to have the lowest growth of any country in the G20, apart from Russia. The fact is that the Conservatives are unable to point to a single net economic benefit of the disastrously bad deal that they negotiated—not one.

Indeed, when the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency was asked to name a single benefit of the Prime Minister’s botched deal, the only thing he could come up with was the fact that the road signs in the Dartford tunnel could be changed from metres to yards. You could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is almost as absurd as the apparent legal basis for this Bill, which we are told is the doctrine of necessity, which requires “grave and imminent peril”. But if the peril is so imminent, why have the Government chosen a route that will involve months of passage through Parliament? We know the answer to that question too, because the only thing that is in grave and imminent peril is the Prime Minister’s job.

The fact that the Prime Minister’s botched Brexit deal is so clearly failing to deliver any of the economic benefits that were promised is bad news not only for the jobs and livelihoods of the British people but for our relations with the European Union and our international reputation more broadly. The more obvious it becomes that the deal is fundamentally flawed and failing, the more the Prime Minister and others who heralded it as a triumph when they signed it will start looking for scapegoats, pointing fingers and lashing out. They will blame the EU. They will blame those who voted remain. They will blame the civil service and they will blame the judges. In short, they will create a smokescreen of sob stories and grievances, which they hope will obscure their own profound incompetence. They will use the passage of this Bill and other ruses such as the Bill of Rights and the Rwanda plan to whinge and rant about the saboteurs and the conspirators, because they will always try to play the victim card. They will never stand up and take responsibility, and there is nothing patriotic about that.

To sum up, the purpose of this Bill is not constructive; it is deliberately destructive. It is not seeking to solve a problem; it is seeking to fuel grievance and shirk responsibility. It is not diplomacy or statecraft; it is a piece of reputation-trashing vandalism, and this House should treat it with the contempt that it deserves.

June 30, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech on the HM Passport Office Backlog

The statement made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in the House of Commons, on 14 June 2022.

I beg to move,

That this House censures the Minister for Safe and Legal Migration, the hon. Member for Torbay, for his handling of the crisis at Her Majesty’s Passport Office; and directs him to come to the House, no later than 20 June 2022, to apologise for the tens of thousands of people who have waited more than six weeks for their passport.

I will start from the outset by saying what this debate is not about. It is not about the hard-working staff who have been so badly let down by the management and the Government. There are countless examples of the fact that the infrastructure that holds our country together is creaking—indeed, in some cases, at breaking point. There can be no doubt that the frankly shambolic state of the Passport Office is an example of the systemic failure that has been designed and delivered by successive Conservative Governments since 2010, because by the time covid hit us in early 2020, a decade of underinvestment had left us with our defences down, lacking resilience and ill prepared for an external shock such as a global pandemic. NHS waiting lists were already at record highs and there were already more than 100,000 staff vacancies. A steady stream of Conservative Chancellors had failed to grow the British economy in line with western competitors, thus depriving the Exchequer of an eyewatering £12 billion of potential income that could have helped us through the pandemic—or indeed £30 billion if the growth trajectory that was established by the last Labour Government had continued.

Manufacturing had been at best ignored and at worst actively undermined by successive Conservative Governments, with 230,000 job losses in manufacturing since 2015 alone, thus leaving our country staggeringly overdependent on China for everything from personal protective equipment to lateral flow tests, and culminating in the disgraceful spectacle of the Government wasting £8.7 billion of taxpayers’ money on PPE that did not even meet the required safety standards. A toxic Tory decade of incompetence and indifference left us in early 2020 with a high-tax, high-inflation, low-wage and low-resilience economy, so that when the pandemic struck, we were left stranded in the storm without so much as an umbrella for protection.

But the catalogue of failure that left us in the lurch when covid struck has been matched only by the litany of errors that characterised the Government’s chaotic approach to planning for the end of lockdown restrictions.

Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)

Speaking as the last passport Minister for the Labour party, we saw the problem coming when the banking crisis hit, with a dip in passport applications, and had a plan for what would happen. This Government seem to have no plan and understanding that after two years of no travel there would be an increase in passport applications. Does my hon. Friend not think that the Government were asleep on the job?

Stephen Kinnock

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A Government who fail to plan are a Government who plan to fail, and that is what we have seen throughout this process. We have seen nothing but a Government who are asleep at the wheel, and the British people are paying the price. The catalogue of failure that left us in the lurch is exactly as she says.

Of course, this failure to plan applies to the Passport Office, as set out in the motion before us, but it also applies across Government. The Government are presiding over a country that is mired in bureaucracy, red tape and waiting lists, crippling our economy, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds in emergency spending, and preventing the British people from simply getting on with their lives.

Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)

At the risk of making the shadow Minister come back to the actual topic of the debate, which is passports, his motion outlines that the Minister should apologise to anyone who has waited more than six weeks for their passport. Is he aware that for at least a year the official Government policy, and HMPO’s policy, has been a 10-week wait, so would it not have been better for him to check the website instead of coming here and being opportunistic?

Stephen Kinnock

On the causes of this, it is absolutely vital to recognise that the lack of investment in our public services is what has fundamentally left us exposed, and these are the problems we are facing today. On the hon. Gentleman’s specific point, the fact of the matter is that there should be an apology to people whose holidays have been wrecked and who have not been able to get to job appointments, funerals and weddings within the timeframe that we are discussing today.

Crime was already at record highs going into the pandemic, but now the court backlog is so long that in 95% of cases victims of violent crime will be waiting more than a year for their day in court—a direct result of Conservative Ministers cutting one pound in every four from the justice budget. Those who need an operation on the NHS can enjoy the luxury of 6 million people on NHS waiting lists, or, if they are in too much pain, they can take their sleeping bag down to their local A&E department for a 12 or 13-hour stay. If you want to go on holiday, you had better hope that you have ridden your luck in the game of pre-flight bingo we are all now forced to play as we cross our fingers and turn up at an airport—that is, of course, assuming that you are lucky enough to receive your new passport. Welcome to backlog Britain.

Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)

I am sure the hon. Gentleman will share my dismay at learning that a professional seafarer was forced to miss the crew change on his vessel having waited for 11 weeks to receive a replacement for a damaged passport, specifically because of this Government’s inefficiency. This is a professional seafarer who is a key worker forced to miss his crew change. It is not just a matter of holidays—it is affecting people professionally as well.

Stephen Kinnock

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. There are holidays, weddings and funerals, but there are also direct impacts on people who have needed to go on work assignments abroad. There is the seafarer that she mentioned. There are so many examples of why, when public services are failing, that directly undermines productivity in the private sector. That is why this debate is so important in terms of our economy.

This brings me to a very particular catalogue of failure delivered by the Home Office and a Home Secretary who is completely out of her depth. Under the current Home Secretary, the Home Office is simply not fit for purpose. Crime is up by 18% while prosecutions have collapsed. The six-month asylum waiting lists have hit 73,000 because the number of asylum decisions made under the Home Secretary has halved, costing the taxpayer £4 million a day in emergency hotels alone. The Passport Office delays are causing sleepless nights for thousands of families nationwide.

So today Labour Members will be voting to demand an apology from the Minister to the British people for the abject failure of the Passport Office to meet the standards that it has promised and that the taxpaying British public expect and deserve. The Government had two years to prepare for a spike in passport applications once travel restrictions were lifted. Ministers were warned repeatedly about the possible backlog but they failed to plan and so inevitably failed to deliver. Indeed, the Government’s own data shows that the number of full-time HMPO staff has dropped by 681 over the past five years. After a really tough couple of years, British families deserved a well-earned break, but thousands have missed out.

Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. This is an important issue. We want to get these passports sorted. However, this backlog has been unprecedented. I did not look at my kids’ passports until very late in the day, after the covid restrictions were lifted, only to find that they were out of date by a number of months. But I was able to get them expedited—not any more so than anybody else—and we got them done. The system actually worked. I hope the hon. Gentleman would agree that one way we can advance the system today is to make sure that civil servants return to working in the Home Office, not from home, because the security checks that need to take place need to be done in that secure environment, not from home, where they cannot be done so efficiently.

Stephen Kinnock

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on getting those passports. I have to say that he was one of the lucky ones. The reality is that it was absolutely clear that at some point the travel restrictions would be lifted and there would be a surge in passport applications, and there was plenty of time for Ministers to meet Passport Office officials and make a plan for when that happened. That is basic common sense, basic logic and basic planning. It is the opposite of the incompetence and indifference that we have seen from this Conservative Government.

Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)

Does my hon. Friend agree that much of the system is broken, because people are phoning up for appointments that they cannot get, and travelling to Belfast from London, or from Yorkshire to London, to get their passport? Information issues, as well as not getting passports in time, are leaving people high and dry. The Home Office is a Department that should be in special measures.

Stephen Kinnock

I thank my hon. Friend. What an utterly absurd position to be in that somebody who lives and works in London has to go to Belfast to get their passport processed. What kind of crazy, upside-down world are we living in when that is happening?

It is not just about holidays, as I was saying. People have missed vital work interviews and assignments abroad, weddings and funerals. They have not been with crucial identification needed for renting accommodation and the like. I have been inundated with emails from Opposition Members about these very situations faced by their constituents—usually hard-working families who have had their dreams shattered or their nerves shredded. This morning, my Aberavon office is dealing with seven new cases that came through last night alone. I will talk through just a few examples of these nationwide cases so that the Minister can get a clearer picture.

Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)

The point that the hon. Member is making is the most significant one we should make here today. Yes, the Home Office has shown itself to be unfit for purpose at the moment, but these delays in passports and visas—we are also seeing it with driving licences—are having an enormous impact on the lives of ordinary people up and down this country. Every constituency is inundated with people whose lives have been turned upside down by Home Office incompetence. Does he agree that it is past time it did something about it?

Stephen Kinnock

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The cost of this issue is not just in broken-hearted families who were not able to go on long-planned holidays, or to go to weddings and funerals; there is a direct cost to the British economy and to productivity, and the huge cost of people having to pay through the nose for fast-track applications. The cost, when it is finally calculated, will be eyewatering.

To give a few examples of the nationwide cases, one family in County Durham had to cancel a dream holiday of a lifetime just before Easter, at a cost of £6,000, because they had been waiting 10 weeks for their six-year-old’s passport to come through. The guidance at the time of application was that it would take a maximum of three weeks.

Two parents from north Wales had been living and working overseas in France for two years and were due to return home once the father’s visa had expired, with their rent agreement ending this month. They applied for a passport for their new-born baby in mid-February but, four months on, they have still not received that passport, meaning that they have been forced to pay for a hotel at huge personal cost because they are unable to travel back to the UK.

Another set of parents in the west midlands were desperate to get their two-year-old boy, who was having medical difficulties, away on holiday. Despite applying for a passport on 2 January, poor communication from the Passport Office meant they were still waiting several months later.

In my constituency of Aberavon, one individual applied for her first adult passport on 26 February, yet had to cancel her plans to attend a wedding on 4 June. Another of my constituents applied for a passport on 23 March, yet is still waiting 12 weeks on and does not know whether they will be able to travel on 21 June. What does the Minister have to say to those families? Will he apologise to them from the Dispatch Box today?

These failures date back further than the past few months and are about not just resources, but levels of Home Office competence. One man living in east London applied for his first adult passport in September 2021. He was told to send his old passport back. Then, after 12 weeks, he was told that the application had been cancelled. The Passport Office maintained that his old passport had never been received. The man was then advised to make another application free of charge. That application was rejected. Then, after several weeks of telephone and email exchanges, he finally received confirmation that the old passport had been received with his original application and that his original application should never have been cancelled. He was advised to make a third application, which he has done. You could not make it up.

Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)

Like Members from all parts of the House, my office has been inundated with queries from constituents distraught at the fact that they either cannot go on holiday or could lose the cost of holiday travel. The situation is chaotic, unacceptable and must be resolved immediately. Does my hon. Friend agree that this could be resolved by the Government if they improved staff retention by meeting the Public and Commercial Services Union’s pay demands, worked with the PCS to end insecure agency staff and outsourcing, and completed the roll-out of the digital application programme as soon as possible?

Stephen Kinnock

Is it not extraordinary that the Government’s response to the crisis we are seeing is to cut the civil service by 90,000 jobs? In what world is that going to work, when we clearly need more resources, and people focused on customer-facing services? We need to build morale, not destroy it, and we need to show people that they should have good jobs on which they can raise a family. Instead, it is about cutting, undermining and passive-aggressive notes from the Secretary of State for Brexit Opportunities, I think he is called, put on the desks of his civil servants. It really is a disgrace.

Some applicants are having to travel the length and breadth of Britain to get an appointment. One man, as has been mentioned, had to travel all the way from London to Belfast to get his passport sorted. Others are having to pay extortionate costs for fast-track passport services or face losing hundreds of pounds. The number of monthly fast-track applications has more than doubled since December 2021. In April 2022, British families spent at least £5.4 million on fast-track services. The Passport Office’s own forecasts show that it expects to receive more than 240,000 fast-track applications between May and October this year, amounting to up to £34 million.

Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)

My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of fast-track applications. My constituency office, like his and no doubt like those of every other Member, is inundated with application cases, but even the fast-track applications are only just coming in under the wire, causing lots of anxiety and lots of work for my staff. What does he therefore have to say about the ability of the private contractors operating passport services? The Home Office has known for some time that this privatised system is deeply inadequate in how it operates passport services.

Stephen Kinnock

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is referring to the two main companies, I think, which are TNT and Teleperformance. In both cases, the level of performance is abject. The question is: to what extent are they being held to account by the Government to ensure that they are delivering? I believe that TNT is on the record saying that its performance is meeting the service level requirements. I would like to see what those service level requirements are, because frankly it is an abject performance.

James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)

Like the hon. Member, I have had examples of constituents who have had cases and been delayed, and I am grateful for the support that the Minister has given me to help to get those cases resolved so that people have been able to go to weddings and other life-changing events. I thank the great teams working in Portcullis House to unblock these things. I encourage all Members to take that help up. Does the hon. Member recognise that, by the end of this month, more passports will have been issued this year than in the whole of last year?

Stephen Kinnock

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is nice to know that his friend the Minister is helping him out, but the reality is that our inboxes are groaning with issues, failure and the chaos and shambles we are seeing. Because of failure to plan from the outset, we have a bottleneck and a crisis. We hope eventually that the system will catch up, but the pain, heartbreak, missed appointments and missed weddings and funerals have already happened, and the British public cannot get them back. Those moments have passed and that is why this is too little, too late.

Thousands of people have had to wait more than 10 weeks for a passport, making a mockery of the Prime Minister’s initial claim on 25 May that almost everybody was getting their passport within four to six weeks. I am sure he will come back and correct the record, although I am not holding my breath on that. Ten weeks is of course the new target introduced by the Home Office when it failed to meet the standard, long-established Government target of just three weeks. More than 30,000 people are waiting more than six weeks and they deserve an apology from the Minister.

The performance of the Home Office simply is not good enough. Ministers are not doing their jobs and the system is simply not working. The Home Office is currently paying millions of pounds to failing outsourced contracts across the Passport Office, including a courier service that is so incompetent that it loses hundreds of passports every year. The Home Office awarded TNT, the US-owned company that is part of FedEx, a £77 million three-year contract to deliver official travel documents in 2019. It has since been criticised for missed deliveries, poor communication and long delays. Meanwhile, Teleperformance—an ironic name, we have to say—the French private company providing private call centre services, has been criticised by the Immigration Minister himself for providing a service that is, in his words, “unacceptable”.

It is therefore utterly staggering that the Prime Minister’s answer to the problems facing the Passport Office is, in his words, to “privatise the arse” off the Passport Office. Why? If the blame lies with the contractors, rather than the performance of the Ministers dealing with those contracts, how can more privatisation possibly be the answer—unless he feels that the performance of his own Ministers is so poor that he no longer trusts them? We would not disagree with that assessment, because we firmly believe that the buck stops with Ministers and that the Home Secretary and her Ministers need to step up their leadership and recognise that they got the planning for the end of restrictions badly wrong.

There is plenty of evidence that the Home Secretary failed to plan. In April 2021, the vaccination programme was being rolled out and restrictions were lifting, but Passport Office numbers decreased by 5%. This year’s increases are too little, too late; they should have been in the pipeline since last year, as experts were warning of delays throughout the pandemic. Interestingly, Ministers refused to directly answer my recent written question about how many calls the Home Office had had with Teleperformance contractors and TNT to plan ahead in the run-up to lockdown restrictions being lifted. Perhaps the Minister can provide a fuller account of those discussions today, if any took place.

The PCS says that the Home Office originally estimated that 1,700 new staff members would be needed to deal with the backlog but, as far as we know, only around 500 have been recruited, many of whom are agency staff without the full training. Agency staff inevitably cost the taxpayer more money, which is a clear case of how the failure to plan is putting yet more strain on the public finances.

It is not just staffing levels that have caused the problem. It was staggering to learn recently that the new digital application processing system for passports was supposed to be fully implemented three years ago, but staff are still using the older, clunkier application management system. The Home Office will reportedly be paying penalties for failing to implement the new system, but it is unclear what those penalties will amount to. The new DAP system would increase the speed of passport processing, so this is a major error that is again costing British holidaymakers and other travellers dear. To make other things worse, at this time of backlog Britain, the Prime Minister’s second not-so-bright idea is to cut 91,000 civil servants, whom we desperately need to put everything they have into reducing delays and cutting waiting lists.

I have some specific questions for the Minister. What specific steps is the Home Secretary taking to improve the performance of the Passport Office, Teleperformance and TNT? By what date does the Minister expect all passports to be delivered within the 10-week window? How many of the staff brought into the Passport Office are agency staff? What training has been given to agency staff brought in to deal with the surge? Is that training fit for purpose?

Why is the Passport Office still using the legacy AMS? When was AMS originally planned to have been replaced by DAP? Are there any penalty costs for still using the legacy AMS? If so, what are those penalty costs and who will they be paid to? What is the timeline and final implementation date for DAP to be fully functional, and what is the end date for AMS? How many staff are currently engaged in working on the development programme of DAP? How many people were engaged in working on the development programme of DAP on 31 March 2020, 31 March 2021 and 31 March 2022? Why have there been delays in fully deploying DAP and is there a plan to recruit further people to develop and facilitate that? I ask again: how many meetings did the Minister have with the contractors throughout 2021 in preparation for international travel reopening, and what was discussed at those meetings?

The Home Office is simply not fit for purpose under this Home Secretary. The Department has already been placed in special measures twice, with the Ministry of Defence taking over Border Force operations in the channel and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities managing the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Unless the Home Secretary ups her game, the Passport Office may be taken off her hands as well. More immediately, we need the Minister to apologise to all those people who did what was asked of them throughout the pandemic, worked hard and earned their trips abroad, only to have their hopes dashed and their nerves shredded.

From NHS waiting lists to our courts, from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to passports, from chaos at our airports and lorry queues at Dover to our broken asylum system, everywhere we look, our country is bogged down in delays and chaos. The year is 2022 and this is backlog Britain. Let us hope that the Minister will do the decent thing today and apologise, and then let us hope that the Government will at least start trying to get their act together, because the British people deserve better than this.

June 15, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech on Achieving Economic Growth

The speech made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

In the recent local elections, the Conservatives lost almost 500 council seats across Britain as the public delivered their verdict on the Conservative Government’s performance at Westminster. Voters expressed their dismay at the Chancellor’s refusal to get a grip on rising inflation or offer families support through the cost of living crisis. This Gracious Speech provided the Conservatives with an opportunity to reset by introducing legislation to meet three major challenges: tackling rising household bills, starting to grow our economy again and building into our economy the all-important resilience that we require at a time when hostile foreign states such as Russia and China are on the rise.

The Conservative Government have offered none of those things, so the entire Gracious Speech has fallen utterly and spectacularly flat. Despite the Government’s promise in the opening sentence to

“help ease the cost of living for families”,

there was nothing of the sort to be found in the speech. With household energy bills rising by £700 a year and inflation outstripping wages, we needed a Government who were ready to tackle this crisis head-on. Instead, the Conservatives are raising taxes on working people, and in this they are an outlier: no other Government are responding to the cost of living crisis by hammering working people with more taxes.

The Labour party has a clear plan. First, we would scrap the national insurance rise. Then we would reduce energy bills by as much as £600 per household per year, expand the warm home discount, and support the businesses that are hardest hit. That would be paid for by a windfall tax on the spiralling profits of oil and gas giants which, by the admission of BP bosses themselves, have

“more cash than we know what to do with”

and are effectively “a cash machine”.

However, we would also look to the long term. As well as taking those immediate crisis management measures, we would fix the foundations of Britain’s economic model. Despite the Government’s latest attempts to shift the blame, it is clear that the roots of this cost of living crisis are not global but national. The reality is that the Chancellor is presiding over a high-tax economy, and that is because, for more than a decade, the Conservatives have presided over a low-growth economy, based on insecure work and chronic underinvestment, driving a productivity crisis. Indeed, Britain has a 20% productivity gap with other leading nations. There has been chronic underinvestment by consecutive Conservative Governments in research and development, but the impact of that has been a real shortfall in investment by the private sector in the UK, compared with Europe. Figures from the OECD show that Britain’s private sector investment as a share of GDP is the lowest among the 36 members assessed.

At the heart of the decline in productivity has been the decline in our manufacturing sector. Since 2015 alone, the Government have lost more than 230,000 manufacturing jobs. The result has been an increasingly unbalanced economy, in favour of London and the south-east, and proof that the Conservatives are not levelling up, but levelling down. Communities across Britain’s proud industrial heartlands in the midlands, northern England and South Wales—home of my Aberavon constituency and our Port Talbot steelworks, of which we are immensely proud—are struggling to get a look in.

What we need is a modern manufacturing renaissance. It is far easier to drive productivity gains in the manufacturing sector than to do so in services, but this is not manufacturing based on the old industries of the past; it is modern, it is green, and it is in the high-tech industries of the future. Those are the industries that deliver the good, meaningful, productive, well-paid jobs on which people can raise a family on, and they are the jobs that will get our economy firing on all cylinders, throughout the UK. We need to get Britain making and exporting at levels that reflect our true potential.

That is why the shadow Chancellor’s “make, buy and sell more in Britain” policy is so important. A Labour Government would change procurement laws so that the British Government must buy British by default. A Labour Government would introduce a green steel deal, creating a world-leading steel industry to power us through the century ahead. A Labour Government would back 100,000 businesses with start-up loans to boost British small and medium-sized enterprises. Labour’s plan is to build a better post-covid economy, to drive growth and truly get our economy firing on all cylinders, with good jobs at its heart.

Let us contrast our approach to work and good jobs on which people can raise a family with the Conservatives’ axing of the long-promised employment Bill, which was expected to outlaw the type of dreadful business practice that we saw when 800 P&O Ferries workers were sacked and replaced by foreign workers paid less than the minimum wage. Labour would outlaw that practice immediately, across the board.

A modern manufacturing renaissance will not only help to boost growth and help us to build a vibrant, modern economy for the future; it will also help us to build that resilient economy for the future—a Britain that can stand more firmly on its own two feet. By backing British manufacturing, we can reduce supply chain pressures caused by the behaviour of authoritarian states such as Russia and China, and by the covid-19 pandemic. In that regard, an energy security plan is also crucial. Frankly, it is staggering that China owns 33% of the Hinkley Point nuclear power station.

There is too little in the UK Government’s new agenda that actually gets to the core, underlying issues that underpin this cost of living crisis. A wasted decade of low growth has left us with a weak and insecure economy that is ill-prepared for the challenges and turbulence of an uncertain world. Building that economy is the job of Government. Politicians are not bystanders in this. The Chancellor is not a victim. The Tories have become the party of high taxes and low pay because they are the party of low growth and insecurity. We believe that Britain deserves better. A Labour Government would help workers and families through this cost of living crisis and deliver the resilient, growing, sustainable economy that will get our country fit for the future.

May 19, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech on Foreign National Offender Removal Flights

The speech made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2022.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement.

The first duty of the British Government is to keep the British people safe, and the Home Office has a responsibility to make sure that rules are fairly enforced, but Ministers are failing to do so and they are blaming everyone else for their failings. The Home Office must deport dangerous foreign criminals who have no right to be in our country and who should be returned to the country of their citizenship, which is precisely why the last Labour Government introduced stronger laws to that effect. The Home Office also has a responsibility to get its deportation decisions right. As the Government have themselves admitted, during the Windrush scandal the Home Office made grave errors in both detention and deportation decisions, and it is currently failing on all counts.

The Opposition are committed to the principles of an immigration system that is firm, fair and well managed. First and foremost, it is deeply troubling that a number of expert reports over recent years have pointed to how Home Office failures have resulted in fewer foreign criminals being deported than should be the case. Indeed, in 2015, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration stated that one in three failures to deport foreign criminals was a result of Home Office failure. Fast-forward to 2022, and the latest immigration figures show that the Home Office is still failing miserably in this regard.

Under the current Prime Minister and Home Secretary, there has been a stark decline in the number of foreign national offenders being returned and deported. In the year ending September 2021, 2,732 foreign national offenders were returned from the UK—20% fewer than the previous year and 47% fewer than in 2019, the year before the pandemic began. Foreign national offender returns had already fallen to 5,128 in 2019. Even more staggering is the fact that, according to a 2019 Public Accounts Committee report, the Home Office had to release six in every 10 migrant detainees whom the Department wanted to deport, and it simply could not explain why this was happening.

The PAC also raised concerns about the need for earlier and better legal advice, which would make it more likely that decisions were accurate and robust, rather than being overturned due to poor decisions later in the process. The Minister will know that the Windrush report identified “low-quality decision-making” and an “irrational…approach to individuals”, and the follow-up report stated that

“there are many examples where the department has not made progress…at all”

on this matter. The level of sheer incompetence is not only a threat to our security; it ultimately erodes the confidence of the British public and foreign nationals alike, because the system fails to fulfil the basic crucial principles of being firm, fair and well managed. The Minister refers to rape, but it is this Government who have presided over rape prosecutions falling to a shameful 1.3%.

The Home Office needs to get this right, but the Minister’s statement was long on bluff and bluster but contained absolutely no substance whatsoever. Perhaps he could therefore answer the following questions: how many foreign offenders have absconded in the last 12 months? What specific steps have been taken to learn the lessons of the Windrush scandal to ensure that this shameful episode is never repeated? Does the Home Office actually have a plan that will address the currently shambolic nature of the deportation system?

The British people deserve better than this. Rather than coming to the Dispatch Box to engage in a frankly rather childish and petulant rant, based on the blame game and finger pointing, the Minister should instead be coming to this Chamber to set out what the Government are actually going to do to fix this broken system.

May 19, 2022
Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Comments on Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak Being Fined for Breaking Rules

The comments made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, on Twitter on 12 April 2022.

Using the war in Ukraine as an argument against ousting Boris Johnson right now does not hold water. Conservative MPs forced Thatcher to leave office in the middle of the Gulf War, and they also played a key role in getting rid of Chamberlain in May 1940. Johnson has to go.

April 12, 2022