John Hayes MP: speeches

Speeches

• 22 Jan 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Money) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady says that the right time to discuss the capacity of the judiciary and health service to deliver the Bill is presumably once it has completed its Committee stage, but should the Committee that considers the Bill have the impact assessment that allows it to scrutinise it line by line, mindful of the implications that it might have on our health service and our judiciary?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation: Reopening · Hansard source

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  I call the Minister of State for Border Security and Asylum. Minister, I hope that you might finish at 6.03 pm to allow the hon. Member for Windsor to say a few words at the end.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation: Reopening · Hansard source

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  Order. I will call the hon. Gentleman, although he has not bobbed throughout the debate despite the fact that I said that was the appropriate thing to do. With the exception of the Minister, the shadow Minister, myself and Sir Gavin, we are all new Members here, so it is important to respect the conventions and courtesies.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation: Reopening · Hansard source

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  Order. I am sorry, but there are Divisions in the House. We will suspend for 15 minutes for the first Division and an additional 10 minutes for each further Division. There are to be three Divisions, so we will return in 35 minutes.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation: Reopening · Hansard source

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  I’m going to take all the credit.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation: Reopening · Hansard source

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  I should have said before the previous speaker that if Members wish to speak, they need to bob.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation: Reopening · Hansard source

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  I would like to call the Minister at 5.53 pm, which will give her 10 minutes.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation: Reopening · Hansard source

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  The sitting is now resumed and can continue until 6.5 pm. I will call the Front Benchers to speak at 5.43 pm.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation: Reopening · Hansard source

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  Please finish just before 6.05 pm, to leave time for me to put the Question.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Knife Crime: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  I can see that a lot of people want to contribute on this important subject. Before I call the next speaker, I therefore suggest that you restrict yourselves to speeches of about five minutes. We will then get everyone in and have plenty of time for the spokesmen to speak and for the mover of the motion to say a few words at the end.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Knife Crime: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  Order. I have got two more west midlanders, and I am relying on them to make time for the Members for Strangford and for Worcester to get in.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Knife Crime: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  Order. I remind Members that if they want to attract my attention, they need to bob. But I can see they know that already.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Knife Crime: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  Before I call Sarah Coombes to move the motion, I ought to explain that this is my first time chairing a debate in Westminster Hall, so I expect you to be very gentle with me. If you are not—well, I am in the Chair.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Knife Crime: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  Order. Because of the character of the debate, I will prioritise Members from the west midlands. I hope hon. Members from other places will understand that. I think it is reasonable and fair.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Knife Crime: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  Before I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, I thank hon. Members for their brevity and their co-operation in making sure that all colleagues contributed. I want to leave some time for the mover of the motion to speak at the end.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Knife Crime: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  The winding-up speeches will begin at 3.30 pm.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Welfare of Doctors · Hansard source

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  May I ask the Minister to finish a little before 4.30 pm so that I can put the Question?

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered compensation for women affected by changes to the State Pension age. It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this Chamber and, as I often do, to draw a very substantial crowd. The genesis of betrayal is trust—the kind of trust that underpins the democratic legitimacy of Parliament and on which the authority of the Executive is founded, and the kind of trust that our constituents, when they send us to this place to exercise our judgment on their behalf, rely upon. Their faith in us is that we will honour what we say we will do and that when we make pledges, they are not empty pledges but are meaningful. When trust is breached and broken, the whole of that legitimacy is undermined. That is precisely what has happened in the case of the so-called WASPI women—the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. I will use the acronym, because it has become a familiar one to any of us who have taken an interest in this matter, as I have over some time, and as have the public. This campaign is a campaign for no less than justice, to restore trust.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  I do agree, and the hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to know that I shall be speaking later in my remarks about the ombudsman’s report and findings, which will bring me to the constitutional matter I raised about the nature of accountability and scrutiny and how Governments are held to account, and whether ombudsmen are meaningful at all if their conclusions are entirely disregarded. He is right to raise that issue. I want briefly to describe the events that provoked me to challenge the previous Government on this issue when my party held the reins of power. I am not a recent convert to this cause; I made the same argument then—that we needed to recognise the justice of this campaign and act accordingly—but I did so knowing the events that have occurred. I will not go over things laboriously—because you would not want me to, Dr Murrison, given the number of Members who want to speak in this debate—but essentially, when pension ages were equalised, which was the result of two Acts of Parliament, the notice given to the people affected was inadequate. I am not an unbridled advocate of the case that every woman who thought that they were going to retire at 60, and then found that they would have to retire at 65, should be compensated. If a woman was young or middle-aged when that happened, there is a fair case that they had time to adjust—they could re-prepare; they could make different plans. However, if a woman was born in the 1950s and had anticipated retiring in two, three or four years’ time but then had to work up to five years’ longer, it is a very different matter, because many of those women, anticipating their retirement, had prepared for exactly that eventuality. Many of those women, of course, were no longer working. They had ended work to look after elderly parents; they were playing a caring role; or their skills were no longer relevant to the workplace, because they had taken time out of work, first to have children and then, as I have said, to embark on other social responsibilities. These were women who worked hard and had done the right thing, and they are not all, as they are sometimes characterised by their critics, drawn from the liberal bourgeoisie—who, as you know, Dr Murrison, I generally speaking despise.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is right and he encourages me to turn to the ombudsman’s report, which I have before me. Members will be pleased to note that, although I have inserted many tags into my copy of this report and the previous one, I will not refer to all of them. That would take forever. Suffice it to say that the ombudsman found “maladministration in DWP’s communication about the 1995 Pensions Act resulted in complainants losing opportunities to make informed decisions about some things and to do some things differently, and diminished their sense of personal autonomy and financial control.” The ombudsman’s remedy is set out at the end of the second report. Ombudsmen recommend recompense on a scale—a series of levels, from 1 to 6. The report is here for everyone who has not studied it in detail to see: the ombudsman recommended a level 4 response. That means “a significant and/or lasting injustice that has, to some extent, affected someone’s ability to live a relatively normal life.” It suggests that the recompense might be between £1,000 and £2,950.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Lady; I am slightly jealous that I have not managed to attract any kind of applause, but no doubt that will come at the end of my peroration. The hon. Lady is right: that generation of women, born after the war, did not have straightforward lives. That was a difficult time in this country, particularly for women. I talked earlier about their hard work and diligence, and their role as homemakers, mothers and grandmothers. They just deserve better; that is what has driven and inspired me to bring this debate. I will end on this note. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that I am mindful of the words of Edmund Burke, who said: “Your representative owes you not only his industry, but his judgement”. In the end, this is a matter of judgment. Do we think the issue matters or do we not? Exercising judgment, I leave him with this further quote, from J.R.R. Tolkien: “False hopes are more dangerous than fears”. We gave these people false hope. I fear that we will not now put this matter right by realising the rightful hope that they had in thinking they were going to retire at a certain time but then ended up doing so at an entirely different time due to a change of Government policy. That was because of nothing they did, nothing they changed, nothing they chose; it was a change in the law. I hope that when the Minister sums up he will recognise the strength of feeling across the House, and across this country: that this injustice must be put right, in the name of democratic legitimacy and the trust that I set out at the beginning of my peroration.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  With respect, I am going to conclude because I know so many want to speak; I do apologise. [Interruption.] All right, I will briefly give way, but it is the last time.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  I have been in this place a long time, as the hon. Lady knows, and she is here having first been endorsed by the electorate, then rejected, then re-endorsed. I have not had that difficulty myself; none the less, she will know that one learns and grows in this place. As I became more familiar with these arguments—I repeat this—I challenged the Conservative Government, my own party, on this issue, on the record, on the Floor of the House. It is not about this Minister; this is about any Minister who fails to recognise this matter.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to today’s debate. It has shown that the sense of injustice felt by the WASPI women is shared by Members on both sides of the House of Commons. Sadly, however—I am sorry to say this to the Minister—it is not shared by those in the driving seat who are making the decisions.

• 15 Jan 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  Well, it is not for me to second-guess the sentiments of the Prime Minister, but my right hon. Friend is certainly right to say that a number of promises and comments were made. I will talk about them in a little more detail, provoked by his very helpful intervention. I see in the Chamber today the former shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). He will know that the Labour manifesto in 2019 was fulsome in its support for the WASPI women, promising a generous financial settlement. It is perfectly reasonable to say that parties move on; the new Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, may have taken a rather different view. He may have taken the opposite view.