Letter from Parliament: Tony Lloyd MP

Date published: 20 August 2023

Parliament is now in recess until the 4th of September but my constituency office in Rochdale remains open. I shall hold advice surgeries as usual though by way of zoom or telephone, and constituents who want to use this facility are welcome to do so. Should you wish to get in touch, my contact details are at the end of this report.

Bibby Stockholm: Tory asylum chaos

Many will have seen recent news headlines about migrants who had to be removed from the Bibby Stockholm barge, after traces of Legionella bacteria were found in the on-board water system. Legionella bacteria can cause Legionnaires’ disease, a type of pneumonia which can be breathed in via tiny droplets of water suspended in the air. Around 5%-10% of cases are fatal and for with underlying health conditions, it poses risk of serious illness. It is a stroke of luck that no one was harmed, and it is a sad, yet concerning, fact that this is the type of startling incompetence we have become accustomed to with successive Conservative Home Secretaries.

 

 

It is concerning because it means some headlines slip under the radar, such as the revelation that an Australian company, Corporate Travel Management which was previously slammed for its handling of Covid quarantine hotels, was quietly handed a £1.6bn contract covering the new asylum accommodation ships like the Bibby Stockholm. The government has refused to release details on numerous occasions about the projected cost of these asylum vessels but insisted they will be cheaper than using hotels that are currently costing £6m a day. The reality is the barges come on top of costly hotels, not instead of them. £1.6bn is an incredibly expensive contract with no clarity on whether proper procedures have been followed. The Tories are spending more and more taxpayers’ money on their total failure to fix the asylum backlog they have created.

Climate change: act now to prevent future disaster

Record temperatures have hit across southern Europe, North Africa and other parts of the world causing death and economic chaos. Even here in the UK, we’re seeing temperature records being broken on a regular basis with unseasonal warmth or huge rainfall. But worse is happening in other parts of the world, floods, droughts, forest fires and more. We have seen the destruction of life and property in Hawaii in the richest nation on Earth – no one is immune. Closer to home, Spain is suffering from a drought which is destroying agricultural output and costing billions of Euros. Worse could happen if failure to act brings flooding, unbearable temperatures and food shortage to our shores.

Experts agree that we can still do something about it, but we have little time to make the difference needed. The Independent Commission on Climate Change warned the government that it is not doing enough nor acting quickly enough. It warns that we cannot wait for a general election to make the decisive choices that will put us back on track. So how is this government responding? Not well enough, we know. This government set 2030 as the cut-off date for the sale of petrol and diesel cars. The PM has now refused to commit to that policy although senior Tory Minister, Michael Gove told us the date is “immovable”. We can’t have this inconsistency at the very top.

Vehicle and particularly battery manufacturers need certainty to plan their investment strategies. Even with the London and Greater Manchester clean air zones, badly as the first seems to have been handled, it was government policy to impose them. What people resent is not cleaning the air – we all want that – but that the cost falls on a small number of us, some who can’t afford it and putting businesses at risk. This could have been easily avoided if government had paid for a car scrappage scheme. Our children need us to act now to prevent future disaster. We can’t afford political advantage or even incompetence to frustrate what simply must be done.

Strep B awareness

I'm calling for greater awareness of group B Strep, the leading cause of severe infection in babies, as new data shows that two-thirds of new and expectant mothers did not receive any information about the infection. Group B Strep is the most common cause of life-threatening infection in new born babies yet most of these cases could be prevented. The training that midwives receive must ensure they’re fully supported to inform expectant parents about prevention and testing, and it’s equally vital that parents are empowered to make informed choices about their ability to protect their baby and what signs of infection to look out for.

Save our railway ticket offices

I'm urging people to respond to a public consultation which outlines plans to close our rail network’s ticket offices. Locally, this will close the office at Littleborough. The consultation closes on the 1st of September. For many, ticket offices provide a place of safety for both staff and passengers. The presence of staff often deters abusive and anti-social behaviour yet where railway stations are unstaffed, they do not offer that possibility, even with CCTV cameras available. Would-be passengers will be deterred from using them. For disabled passengers, ticket office staff are usually the only staff present when they require assistance. The Royal National Institute of Blind People recently found that only 3% of people with sight loss said they could use a ticket vending machine without problems and 58% said it was impossible.

 

 

Some services would be harder to access for all passengers if staffed ticket offices were replaced by ticket vending machines, such as refunds, discounts, seat reservations and bus connections. It is vital that staff have clarity about their job security and that vulnerable passengers have certainty that they will not be forgotten as changes are made to the way our stations operate. People can send their comments in response to these plans by sending an email to ticket.office.network@transportfocus.org.uk or by post to FREEPOST (no stamp needed) to RTEH-XAGE-BYKZ, Transport Focus, PO Box 5594, Southend on Sea SS1 9PZ by the 1st of September.

Cost of living support

Charities and community organisations carrying out vital work to help people in need are invited to apply for a major national support package. The Community Organisations Cost of Living Fund will focus on those organisations delivering core subsistence-level provision around food, warmth, shelter, safety and associated advice.

I welcome this support although it is the government who caused the problems that need addressing. I welcome this support and I would encourage organisations to apply to ensure that support gets to those who need it most. For details on the eligibility criteria and how to apply, click the link below.
 

Read more: Cost of living support: funding to support charity and community organisationsPublished: 14 August 2023

 

76th Pakistan Independence Day

 

 

On Monday 14 August, there was a good turnout for the 76th Pakistan Independence Day flag raising as the flag was hoisted outside Number One Riverside. In Rochdale, there are many people who come from Pakistan or who have strong family ties with Pakistan, and we recognise the importance of these ties.

 

 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

On the 6th and 9th of August 1945, two atomic bombs detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only two cities in this world to directly witness the destructive power of nuclear weapons. Even in these times of fraught international relations, common sense says we should work towards progressively lowering nuclear tensions and aiming for a nuclear-weapons-free world.

 

 

Serbia-Kosovo relations

Attempts to disrupt democratic elections in Kosovo by Serbia has rightly been criticised. I joined Parliamentarians around the globe in writing to the UK's Foreign Secretary, the US Secretary of State and the EU's foreign affairs chief, urging them to recognise that inaction in the past led to the tragedy of the Balkan Wars, and to take action now to deter that same behaviour.

Belarus

The 9th of August was the International Day of Solidarity with Belarus. Three years ago, we saw a Presidential election in Belarus that was neither free nor fair. These years on, the regime continues to detain many Belarusians as political prisoners. We must show the Lukashenka regime that we are all watching.

 

 

Before Parliamentary recess, I co-sponsored the following Parliamentary motions.

School libraries and librarians

According to the 2023 report by the Great School Libraries campaign, 14% of primary schools in the UK do not have a library, whilst the number of UK secondary schools with a library on site has dropped by 10% since 2019. Urgent work must be done across the UK to enable school leaders to develop school libraries so that pupils can take advantage of the benefits they can deliver in relation to learning, reading, writing, wellbeing and happiness. Every school in the UK should have a library with access to a professional librarian, library staff or a school’s library service.

Access to State Pension for people diagnosed with a terminal illness

Those with terminal illnesses cannot currently access their State Pension until retirement age, even for individuals who have made full National Insurance contributions. Poverty rates are disproportionately high amongst the terminally ill and research by Loughborough University has shown that granting State Pensions to this group would almost halve the rate of poverty while costing only £144 million per year, just 0.1% of the annual State Pension bill. I join calls on the Government to allow early access to State Pensions for people diagnosed with a terminal illness.

The two-child benefit cap

One in 10 children live in households affected by the two-child limit, that is 1.5 million children. The two child limit, along with the benefit cap, have contributed to the rising levels of child poverty and common sense says that they are poverty-producing policies. The two-child limit must be scrapped. It would lift 270,000 households out of poverty at a cost of just £1.4 billion, far less than the government’s £5 billion claim.

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Parliament is now in recess until the 4th of September but my constituency office in Rochdale remains open. I shall hold advice surgeries as usual though by way of zoom or telephone, and constituents who want to use this facility are welcome to do so. Should you wish to get in touch, here are my contact details. 

• 01706 356542
• tony.lloyd.mp@parliament.uk
• Tony Lloyd MP, House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA