Spy Cops Bill

This Bill is about the power of the state, and it is also about the rights of citizens. What we have today is a book of amendments, almost each and every one of which would improve the Bill, but unfortunately, it feels to me like a fait accompli by the Government. I am not surprised that the Government are not listening to civil liberties organisations, but I am pretty surprised that they are not even listening to the Intelligence and Security Committee of this House. The way in which the House is being led down the garden path is something worth speaking up against.

I would not be in this House if it was not for my experiences growing up with a dad involved in an industrial dispute for over two years – the experience of workers taking action and the challenges they faced. That was an unofficial dispute, opposing casualisation and insecurity, and it lasted two years. It is relevant because there is a real worry that these powers could be misused. What matters is what is in the Bill. Of course we all want appropriate powers to deal with criminality and the most serious crimes. However, the scope in the Bill for organising criminal conduct by the state is wide open to abuse, and it comes down to a triple-whammy attack on our civil liberties.

First, the Bill permits secret agents of the state to commit any crime to prevent what they consider to be disorder or harm to the economic wellbeing of the UK. Secondly, it does not include the necessary independent judicial oversight, so the agencies concerned will act alone in that decision making. Finally, the Bill does not limit those crimes at all. We have heard that the Human Rights Act will be applied to this legislation, but the Human Rights Act does not create crimes like other legislation does. Rather, it means that a Government can be found in breach of that Act, so the crimes in this Bill are simply not limited.

What would stop an agency deciding that an unofficial dispute constituted disorder or harm to the economy that it was worth taking action against? The Bill is written so badly and broadly that it is effectively a licence to criminally disrupt working people taking action to support themselves, their co-workers and their families, and we have seen this all too often in the past. The Bill paves the way for gross abuses of state power against citizens.

In Liverpool, we have a healthy suspicion of state power, because we have felt its damaging force too often in the past. We have experienced the 30-year fight of the Hillsborough families and survivors for truth and justice. We have had striking workers targeted by state violence, and trade unionists blacklisted and spied on for representing their members, and we are not alone. Campaigners fighting miscarriages of justice across our country, such as Orgreave, the Shrewsbury 24 and now Grenfell Tower, oppose this dangerous Bill.

I fear that my own party is being taken for a ride by this Government, because I will tell you what happens. You start with the idea that legislating for something that operates in the shadows must be a good thing. You then engage in good faith with a morally bankrupt Government arguing for vital safeguards, and once that Government finish stringing you along, you end up in the perverse situation of condoning laws that ride a coach and horses through our nation’s civil liberties and could even be used against the labour movement itself.

I am sent here by my constituents to stand up for their rights, freedoms and well-being, and that is what forces me to vote against the Bill tonight.

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Local Contact Tracing

It is very difficult to convey the real strength of feeling across Liverpool at the utter failure of this Government on care homes, PPE, and test and trace. Constituent after constituent has come to my office with heartbreaking stories. One was sent to south Wales on a 70-mile journey, two-and-a-half hours in the car with an autistic child, only to find that the test and trace centre had closed for the day because it had run out of tests. The petrol cost them £40 that they simply did not have.
The anger and frustration are not just at the fact that the response is failing, but that it is failing because the Government refused to enable and invest in local authorities and public health teams, and instead chose to pump billions into scandal-ridden Government contractors that have a record of failure after failure. Under the cover of this pandemic, billions of pounds of public money has been handed to faceless corporations, including Tory-linked firms, without competition or transparency, and without democratic accountability – or any accountability to the public, for that matter. It is money that should have been invested in our national health service and that should have left a legacy for the British people by building up the properly funded public services we can all rely on in the future, but instead it was siphoned off.

The most egregious example is the eye-watering £12 billion of public money handed to private companies, including Serco, for this failing test and trace system. The failures of Serco are well documented so I will not repeat them, but when I asked the Government what penalties will apply to private sector companies that fail to meet the terms of their contract, the answer came back and it was clear: none whatsoever. In fact, Serco is being rewarded for its failure with more and more lucrative contracts. The cronyism is well documented as well. Conservative Baroness and business executive Baroness Harding was appointed as the head of Track and Trace. The Serco chief executive officer is the brother of a former Tory MP, and Tory MPs are on the boards of companies winning contracts. If we have a problem with any of this, why not take it up with the Government’s anti-corruption champion – Dido Harding’s husband and a Tory MP? The whole thing stinks. This Government’s incompetence, cronyism and ideological obsession with outsourcing and rip-off privatisation have undermined our NHS and put lives at risk.

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COVID: Maternity/paternity leave

Even before the pandemic struck, the system of support did not work as it should. There are too many inconsistencies in the support provided to employed and self-employed parents – or biological and adoptive parents, as we heard – causing some to miss out on vital support that is incredibly important at that time in their lives. The existing flaws have been exacerbated by covid-19, leaving many families in hardship and struggling. The Government’s response to the petition and subsequent report acknowledges that we are living through unprecedented times, but it does little more than express satisfaction with maternity and paternity support as it was before. The number of signatories to the petition speaks to the importance of parents’ and children’s wellbeing at this time, and to a real frustration with the inadequacy of the current provisions and the Government’s failure to provide sufficient additional support in the light of the pandemic.

The Petitions Committee’s report explains why the Government’s claim to provide among the most generous maternity support in the world is quite simply untrue, and why it is challenged by UNICEF, as has been mentioned. The report calls on the Government to capture data on the uptake of parental leave, as well as pay, so that any future review of parental leave arrangements can consider the extent to which parents from all groups are able to use their entitlements, and whether to extend leave or provide hardship grants in the light of that evidence. The Minister should take on board that important call. The UK has seen rapid growth in self-employment in recent decades, so it is of great concern that significant disparities exist between employed and self-employed women. Self-employed women already face additional challenges and reduced incomes after having children. If both parents are self-employed, only the mother can claim an allowance and there is no paternity or shared leave for fathers, which means that caring responsibilities fall to the mother. The entitlements available to self-employed women compound rather than address that inequality. Unlike statutory maternity pay, maternity allowance is treated as unearned income and deducted from universal credit, sometimes leaving women up to £5,000 worse off. Can the Minister give any justification for that unfair discrepancy? I call on him to set out how the Government will address it.

That is just one of the many inequalities in entitlement brought about by an inconsistent welfare system, combined with an increase in precarious work. The Government have pursued an agenda of creating a deregulated gig economy, rolling back workers’ rights and fostering insecurity in work, which has left us in the worst possible position as we now face the devastation wreaked on the economy by coronavirus.

Following the announcement by the Prime Minister and the chief medical officer in March that pregnant women are clinically vulnerable, employers that were unable to make the necessary adjustments to ensure workplace safety were required to send them home on full pay, but many pregnant women were unlawfully put on statutory sick pay, which affected their maternity pay and other entitlements. Labour has previously called on the Government to discount covid-related spells on SSP for the period when earnings are used to calculate statutory maternity pay to ensure that pregnant women do not have their maternity pay cut as a result of being on SSP. It is unacceptable that the Government have refused to do that, and I ask the Minister to reconsider.

In fact, the Minister said that the women affected should simply bring an employment tribunal claim against their employer, despite knowing that that is not a realistic option, given the small window of opportunity for doing so and the huge and growing backlog in employment tribunal cases. Citizens Advice says that its advisers are seeing worrying cases of pregnant women who feel that they have been selected for redundancy because they need more stringent health and safety measures, and demand for the organisation’s discrimination advice page has increased fourfold.

I echo the report’s recommendation that the Government should consider extending to six months the period in which pregnant women and new parents can bring claims before the employment tribunal. Last week, the Ministry of Justice published new figures blaming the 31% rise in outstanding employment tribunal cases on an increase in unemployment because of covid-19. It also warned the Government that the decision to end the job retention scheme and replace it with a job support scheme will lead to a further spike at the end of October.

Given that one in four people are already living under regional lockdowns, and that a second national lockdown is a very real possibility, the issues highlighted by the petition, the report and this debate will not go away. It is not acceptable for the Government simply to restate that the support available is generous and sufficient. The evidence submitted to the Petitions Committee inquiry shows that that is not the case. Substantive ministerial action is needed and I call on the Minister to set out what steps the Government intend to take, considering the problems facing pregnant women and new parents that hon. Members have detailed today. It is simply unfair that too many have lost their leave during this period of lockdown, so the Government should look to what action can be taken. The issues raised here will not simply be dealt with in this debate; they require action from the Government.

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