Figures released this week show inflation reaching nine per cent in April whilst for the poorest household this figure is closer to eleven per cent. This means the price of weekly essentials (like food, energy, and transport) is going up, hitting the poorest households the hardest. Already one-in-two Hackney children live in poverty when housing costs are taken into accounts – struggling Hackney families are being pushed to the brink. The Government’s response is to bury its head in the sand. It is refusing to see the urgency of the issue.
Parliament returned this week and began with the Queen’s Speech, which sets out the Government’s legislative agenda for the next parliamentary session. It was delivered by Prince Charles this year who announced the Government’s plans for 38 new bills. Sadly many of them are just headlines with no detail – like levelling up. I spoke in the Queen’s Speech and highlighted the real poverty in Hackney, which levelling up does not address. Hackney is the seventh most deprived borough but is only in the ‘priority two’ group in the Government’s Levelling Up Fund.
The Prime Minister has been referred to the Privileges Committee of the House of Commons, which looks into allegations that MPs have misled Parliament. This is the first time a sitting Prime Minister has ever been referred to the committee. Even the Prime Minister’s own backbenchers were lining up to criticise him for his shameful behaviour partying during lockdown.
The Prime Minister and Chancellor have both been fined by the police for partying during lockdown. It beggars belief that when we were unable to visit dying relatives or even spend Christmas with our loved ones there were boozy parties going on in the heart of Government. The Prime Minister has failed to own up to his own involvement in these events, preferring to deflect responsibility to others.
The Government finally published the much-delayed Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) review, which you can read here. Large headline funding figures were briefed to accompany the publication of the report, but much of this is not new funding.
This week the Chancellor delivered his Spring Statement. He unveiled an increase in the threshold for paying National Insurance and a tax cut in two years’ time. These announcements do nothing to help people struggling now. I challenged the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury directly on this. See here and here.
I was appalled to read the City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership’s review into the incident with Child Q. This was a young black girl who was on her period and was strip-searched by police officers at her school without an appropriate adult present because she allegedly smelt of cannabis. Read the report in full here.
Ukrainian refugees have been through hell and back but are still being put through more difficulties by the Home Office. I pressed the Home Secretary, Priti Patel MP, on what security risk a 90-year-old woman fleeing war in Ukraine poses, or people in their sixties, or mothers with small children? See here. The Government’s approach to Ukrainian refugees just underlines the chaos at the heart of the Home Office. It needs to urgently get a grip.
The Home Secretary, Priti Patel MP, updated the Government's position on visas for Ukrainians refugees. Ukrainians fleeing war will no longer be subject to procedural hurdles such as English language requirements or minimum income tests. I've been working with my frontbench Labour colleagues urging the Government to simplify the visa process for Ukrainian refugees since the outbreak of war. This is now a welcome step, but the Government has been slow off the mark.
President Putin’s unprovoked and unjustifiable attack on Ukraine is a crime against peace. The Government has announced a package of severe sanctions targeting the Russian economy and the military and political elite. But the malign influence of corrupt Russian money in the UK has been clear for some time. The Government has been too slow to act against this dirty Russian money and it must urgently get its own house in order after concerning reports of suspect Russian donations to the Conservative Party.