Clive Efford MP: speeches

Speeches

• 3 Sept 2026 · Building Homes and Renewing Communities · Hansard source

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  It was a pleasure to join my right hon. Friend at Greenwich council’s development of 435 council properties in my constituency for the launch of the social and affordable housing programme. Some 70,000 homes are planned, and that is welcome and overdue. However, my constituency and ones like it have a lot of sports grounds, and as we push for more land, the temptation is for owners of those grounds to lock the gates, in the hope that they will make a windfall from developing those sites. Will my right hon. Friend reassure my constituents that that will not be allowed under the programme to build the housing that we need?

• 6 Jul 2026 · Payment Scheme · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to the Paymaster General for getting us to this point. It is time to move on, but there are still concerns, as I have mentioned already. I hope that those will be taken on board as we move forwards because, as he set out, the community out there are concerned about the pace with which payments are being made, particularly now that we are into the claims from those affected. It is time for test and learn to move us on and to ensure that those payments are made as soon as possible. I urge that the ongoing dialogue, to which my right hon. Friend referred when he made his original statement in response to the inquiry report, continues and that those people’s voices are heard. I am grateful for the meeting he had with me following the Backbench Business debate. I raised all the issues that I raised in that debate, and I am also grateful that he will come back to me about those issues. I will not go through all of them again today and will instead give other hon. Members the chance to speak, but it is important that they are taken on board. My right hon. Friend referred to the pace of payments, which is important, and to the evidence. We have to take note of the fact that so many of the people infected and affected have had to campaign for 40 years or more to get to this point and to get justice. It is unlikely that they will have evidence—the payslips and all sorts of evidence—that they were living with their parents at the time when a sibling was infected. It is not possible for people to provide that depth of information so late on. We have to be considerate in the way that we approach that. My right hon. Friend and I have debated and discussed unethical testing, and we differ on this issue. I, along with those people who were the children who were deliberately infected, feel very strongly about this. It is a sobering fact that they were deliberately infected by the state that should have been there to care for them. For them, the compensation is not about the money but about the degree of recognition within this scheme of just exactly how badly treated they were. The level of payments for that should be much higher than they are. I welcome these regulations. It is important that we move on as fast as possible now that we have them in place. Again, I congratulate the Paymaster General on all the work he has done.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Payment Scheme · Hansard source

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  There are still concerns among the community about the regulations before us today. The Minister knows that the regulations were laid on the day of the Backbench Business debate on 18 June. That meant there was no opportunity for Ministers to take on board the points that hon. Members were making on behalf of their constituents, who still would like to see the compensation scheme tweaked. Through his ongoing dialogue with the community, does he accept that there must be an opportunity for that tweaking to take place in response to some of those concerns?