May Adjournment — House of Commons, 2018-05-03
Topic: Labor
Karin Marguerite Smyth (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), who made a serious and important contribution We are here just before the recess, while our colleagues are across the country for the local elections. In the spirit of us all being here together, I would like to wish them all good luck in those elections. I am pleased to be joining my colleagues slightly earlier than I anticipated here in London before returning to Bristol, where we do not have elections this time round As hon. Members have mentioned, today is May day. It is also Workers Day, or Labour Day—indeed, may it be a very good Labour weekend. I draw the House’s attention to the fact that a former Tory-led Government tried to get the day moved to October, but fortunately that was thwarted, and we are hopefully all going to enjoy some sunshine. May Day means one thing for Labour, but it currently means something quite different for the Conservatives, as "mayday" is often a cry for help. In the three weeks since Easter, the Government have managed to have two national scandals and a resignation, so we look forward to a more peaceful time following the recess We have perhaps not had the quantity of debate today that we thought we might, but we have certainly had some good quality. My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) talked movingly about his constituent, Kim Voogel, from the Netherlands. He highlighted that the issue we have been talking about recently with regard to the Home Office is not confined to the Windrush generation, and I am sure the Government have listened to that. The work that is affecting people now is undertaken by several Departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions, and that is certainly something I have experienced. My hon. Friend also talked about Workers Memorial Day. It is a very important day and we do not pay enough attention to it. One of my earliest memories as a child is of returning from the Christmas holidays and learning that a family friend had been killed by a collapsing trench on a building site, leaving a very small family and devastating the community. We have moved a long way since those days, largely thanks to the work of the trade union movement, but this is a good day on which to commemorate the people who, sadly, have died on building sites in particular The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) talked about criminal barristers. I have a number of friends of middling years or younger who are barristers, and I think he made an extremely important point about what really amounts to a crisis at the criminal Bar. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) intervened to speak about legal aid, and I agree that the legal aid changes have not helped the situation. The legal aid system does a very important job and is much undervalued and under-resourced. I wish him good luck in continuing to raise that issue The hon. Member for Beckenham also mentioned "run, hide and tell". I am a former emergency planner for the NHS—I will come on to my career as a lifelong bureaucrat in a moment—and I am concerned that Members are not always as cognisant as we should be about the role that emergency planning plays in this place or about our duty to ourselves, and our staff and visitors, when it comes to understanding what we should do in a crisis. That is a really important point The hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) also spoke about Workers Memorial Day, and he mentioned the Taylor review. I highlight the fact that he is quite right to raise the confusion about the public sector pay cap, and the Government really have been dancing on the head of a pin about whether there is a cap any longer. This is about the wages of real people with families to feed, and it is important for them to have clarity about what they are to expect from their employment in the coming years The hon. Member for Gainsborough talked about defence and its importance as an insurance policy. He mentioned the 1983 election, which is not one that Labour Members remember very fondly, although it was my first election as an activist. He also made a serious point about learning lessons from the 1930s I was not going to speak about my lifelong career as an NHS bureaucrat before entering Parliament—I joined the service in the late 1980s—but I cannot resist doing so. It is a service, not a religion, but I recognise that it has not always performed in the way it should have done. I praise my colleagues, particularly in NHS management, who have actually done an excellent job over many years. We have one of the least managed systems in the world, in proportion to the size of the service, as has been proven in many studies over the years. I am very happy to discuss that with the hon. Gentleman, who I know is a very eminent former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee Not everything is always done well, of course, but the NHS has made massive strides in productivity in recent years. We are now concerned about the level of funding, including in relation to safety, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy). We have come a long way, and we must now be very careful that we do not go backwards with some of that work. I want formally to praise the marvellous work done by NHS managers across the country The hon. Member for Gainsborough may not know this, but there is a new all-party group on clinical leadership and management. I am very proud to be a part of it, along with the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). I do not know whether the hon. Member for Gainsborough is interested, but we are having an interesting meeting with the lead from NHS England after the recess, and if he wants to come along, I am sure he would be most welcome. As I have said, the hon. Member for Stafford reminded us about the importance of the Francis report. Making sure that those changes happened required clinical support, but also very dedicated senior and superior management support I very much look forward to coming back after the recess, when, as Members may not have noticed, we will debate the Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill.