Liberal Democrats MP for Eastbourne since (elected).
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300
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As currently published
| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lib Dem | MP | Eastbourne | – present | elected | — | Party history |
Every entry the member has in the Register of Members' Financial Interests, as Parliament currently publishes it. The wording and values are the member's own declarations; nothing here has been assessed by this site.
Totals add only the entries that declare an amount received: payments for work, donations, gifts, and funded visits (register categories 1.1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). Ongoing employment is listed but not added, because its figure is a rate rather than a sum received. Each entry is dated by when the benefit happened, not when it was registered, and placed under the party the member sat for on that date. A member who changed party therefore has a separate total for each.
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Two brave Eastbourne families are fighting for improved regulation of supported accommodation, after their respective relatives were found dead in the accommodation that was meant to be supporting them. Will the Minister meet them, and me, to discuss how we can better protect vulnerable people in supported accommodation?
Saving lives at sea is not a political choice but a moral duty that we are all proud that our RNLI has been undertaking for over 200 years. RNLI volunteers are infinitely more patriotic than those who seek to abuse them. Will the Minister share with us how he will better protect and afford safety to those valiant RNLI volunteers in places like Eastbourne and across the country so that they can continue their life-saving work?
Too often, antisocial behaviour on our streets comes with a racist edge, and tackling it starts with naming it, something that shamefully the wannabe Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick)—I have informed him that I would be referring to him—could not do this weekend when asked whether calling the Leader of the Opposition a “Nigerian scammer” is racist. Will the Minister say what he could not, and outline what the Government are doing to tackle racist antisocial behaviour?
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire); she is a legend for securing this debate and giving us all the opportunity to speak about this issue, which blights our communities. One hundred and fifty years ago, the fastest vehicle on Eastbourne seafront was a horse-drawn bathing machine taking people down to the sea. Today, it is an illegal e-bike or e-scooter, jockeyed by a balaclava-wearing rider. The same is true of places such as Terminus Road—our high street—and Kings Drive, where the pavement is ruled no longer by the Eastbourne mobility scooter but by the vehicles we are discussing. Sussex police recorded a 53.7% rise in reports of illegal e-bike and e-scooter use in the year to June, and seized 321 vehicles between January and July. Many, including my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor), have rightly said that we are fans of active travel and encouraging people to use more environmentally friendly means to get from A to B, but a dangerous minority of riders and vehicles are putting pedestrians at risk and giving responsible users of active travel a bad name. More than that, failed e-bike and e-scooter batteries have been responsible for devastating fires, such as that in Whitley Road in Eastbourne. The fire service has said: “We have seen people forced into jumping from windows as they can’t get out of their front doors as the bike or scooter which has caught fire is in front of it.” There are enormous safety risks. Other jurisdictions are showing the way and leading on the issue. New York City, which banned the sale of uncertified e-bikes, saw deaths from battery fires fall in two years from 18 to just one. In New South Wales, Australia, police now test bikes at the roadside and crush illegal ones on the spot. I hope that the Minister will consider granting our police and law enforcement the same kinds of tools and regulating this sector adequately.
Of course, there are financial costs, but there are costs to human life and livelihood as well. I hope the Minister will recognise that and commit to meeting representatives of Sussex police, which holds the national brief for road crime, to look at how we can best tackle the issue in Sussex and Eastbourne.
Debate and discussion about issues of benefits, entitlements and calculations can often be relegated to the mere spreadsheet, but we all know that there are individuals who sit behind each and every one of those awards and numbers. One of those people—an individual who I have mentioned more than I have mentioned anybody else when speaking in the Chamber—is Pauline Cole. Staff Sergeant Pauline Cole served our country during the Aden emergency in 1967. She was a trailblazer and she told her story in her book, “Army Girl: The Untold Story”. I believe the Minister has a signed copy of that book. Pauline was funny, fierce and utterly determined, as the Minister got to experience at first hand. She also carried the cost of her service for the rest of her life. Her service left her with skin damage and post-traumatic stress disorder. The military tribunal rightly recognised that reality and awarded her compensation for those lifelong conditions. That compensation was meant to acknowledge her pain, her injury and the quality of life that she had lost. It should have given her a little bit more security and dignity in her retirement. Instead, the opposite happened. Because military compensation is treated as income when calculating pension credit, which Pauline was receiving, most of what Pauline won at tribunal was effectively clawed back by the Department for Work and Pensions.
I completely agree. No one should be penalised for serving their country, although that is effectively what happens under the current system. I will come to some of the other benefits that the hon. Gentleman refers to shortly.
I agree with the Chair of the Defence Committee, who I know has worked on this issue for some time. I think his suggestion needs to be done sooner than the next armed forces compensation scheme review. We also need to remember that the war pensions scheme, from before that system—before 2003—needs to be looked at. I hope the Minister will be able to give us some commitments to that effect later, and I will spell them out specifically.
Yes, and then I will make some progress.
I agree. I will talk later about the armed forces covenant and the new legal duties that will be on the Department for Work and Pensions and other Departments from the new year. Let me animate what my hon. Friend describes with the example of what happened to Pauline. Her pension credit fell from £77 a week to just £11 a week on being awarded military compensation. Let me put that very plainly, just as others have done: she was financially punished for being injured in the service of her country. That was not an abstract loss. The material impact was that Pauline was, in the end, forced to leave her home because she could no longer afford to keep up with the living costs. That is what this policy and the status quo mean for people like Pauline. I made Pauline a promise that I would fight this injustice on her behalf. I used my first ever question in Prime Minister’s questions to raise the case, and I met the Pensions Minister to press it further. It is with huge sadness that I say that Pauline died on 30 November last year, without seeing the justice that she was so determined to secure. At her funeral, I renewed the promise that I made to Pauline to her sons, Les and Simon Haffenden, and to everyone who loved her, and I am here tonight in an endeavour to keep it. That is why, earlier today, I tabled the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme and War Pension Scheme (Report) Bill—that is a bit of a mouthful, so Pauline’s law will do. However, this is not just Pauline’s story. According to the Royal British Legion, some 144,000 veterans and their families receive compensation for injury, illness or bereavement caused by their service. Over half of our veterans are over 65.