Policing: Staffordshire

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Gareth Snell

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered policing in Staffordshire.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. Given the nature of the debate we are about to have, I want to make it clear to everybody listening, especially my constituents, that I believe Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove is a wonderful place to live. In spite of all the crime that I am about to touch on, nobody should be scared or worried about where we live. We are safe and secure; my issue is quite how safe and secure we are.

Before I move on to the debate, I will take a moment to touch on the life of PC Andrew Harper, and pay the respects of everybody in the House to someone who was so brave and who gave his life in defending his community. We all have police officers in our constituencies who, every day, stand up for us and protect our community. He was a brave man, and my thoughts and prayers go to his young wife, as I am sure do everyone else’s.

I am blessed—I think we are all blessed—by some of our local police officers. I have been lucky to work with three chief inspectors since I got elected—Ade Roberts, John Owen and Mark Barlow—all of whom have served my community well. I could not have asked more of their professionalism and support, especially when I was a brand new Member. They exposed me to different parts of my constituency and made sure that when I was dealing with terror arrests or more complicated, not straightforward crime, they were there to support me as a local politician, to ensure that I did not make things worse but helped to make things better. Their professionalism is reflected every day by their staff, and last month I had the privilege of spending a day with my local officers on shift.

This is where we start talking about some of the challenges in our community. I was briefed on how we are working on local gang crime, meaning gang crime involving young people as well as organised crime. I spent time with the police when they were helping run a food kitchen as part of an initiative to help the homeless and get them off the streets, because one of our local churches does not work in August and there had been a spike in the number of homeless people on our streets. I was then taken around the local hotspots, working with the police and seeing how they engage with some of the most challenged members of my community.

What made it so difficult for me, and for them, is that one of the roles that police officers have to play all too regularly is that of social work. Their job is becoming more and more about tackling mental health issues and working with those who are struggling most. To be candid, they are not resourced to do so. They do it with such passion and provide so much support because they care about the local community, but my concern is that they just do not have enough resources.

Although crime across my constituency is down by 6% over the past 12 months, serious and violent crime is increasing, and people are scared. Some of that is because of a lack of tolerance of crime; some parts of my constituency have never experienced knife crime before, and it causes concern when they do. Other parts have experienced some very difficult crime. None of this is the fault of the police, but last year we were the centre of the country for Monkey Dust, which led to huge spates of crime. People who were high on drugs were trying to get into older people’s houses or turning up at community events, with the police having to act as security guards rather than as police officers, which they are not resourced to do. This summer, there was a spike in antisocial behaviour in Clough Hall Park. It became clear that there is only one warranted police officer and one police community support officer per shift for one third of my constituency. Across the borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme, we have 10 police officers and 10 PCSOs per shift. It is not enough for the population.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend has touched on an interesting point. Does she agree that one of the most disappointing things, not just in Staffordshire but across the country, is that although the Government claim to have protected neighbourhood policing, they have actually made neighbourhood policing areas much larger? Although some places have the same number of PCSOs and police constables, they now cover such a great terrain that the impact felt in certain parts of the community is virtually nil.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I absolutely agree, and will touch on that later in my speech.

In my constituency, especially in Kidsgrove, we have never seen this level of crime before. One of my concerns is that a lot of the burden is falling on the police, when in fact it is cuts to local government budgets that have led to Clough Hall Park becoming a hotspot. Maintenance has not been done, so as soon as the first example of graffiti happened—as soon as investment in the park was lacking—that park became a crime hotspot, because young people did not think anyone cared about it. We have seen that time after time because of cuts to our local government.

There has also been a spike in knife crime in our wonderful, great city. One of our concerns about that—I think I speak on behalf of the three Members from the great city of Stoke-on-Trent—is that we had been blessed by not having previously experienced very much knife crime. We were lucky that it was not normal on our streets, yet it is now becoming a factor. I thank the Minister’s colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), for working with our police and crime commissioner and, more importantly, some of our local teachers, as well as for providing additional support to the three Members of Parliament from Stoke-on-Trent on how to tackle knife crime.

The reality, however, is that our police force is struggling. The demands on it are higher, and the briefings we have received from the Staffordshire Police Federation and Unison have made it clear quite how difficult things are within our force. We are told that morale is at rock bottom, especially among the support staff; our dialogue in this place is always about police officers, not police staff, but the ongoing rationalisation programme means that people are working more hours at a less senior level, doing the same job and getting paid less for it. The 101 waiting times in our city have regularly gone up to more than 20 minutes, and according to a freedom of information request from the Daily Mirror, a 999 call took eight minutes to be answered by Staffordshire police force. That is not the fault of the police; it is the fault of a lack of resourcing.

At its peak, Staffordshire had nearly 2,400 police officers. Now, we are told that the figure is somewhere in the region of 1,600. Since 2010, we are down 468 warranted police officers plus dozens of PCSOs. Kidsgrove police station has been closed, as has Tunstall police station. Burslem police station is no longer open to the public. In fact, if any of my constituents actively want to speak to a police officer, they have to get on two buses for an hour in order to walk into a police station, because we no longer have access. That police station is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), and as delightful as I am sure it is, it is not convenient for any of my constituents. We are the 13th biggest city in England, but we have no 24/7 police station access. I say this as someone who wishes I were still a young woman: if I were out and about at the weekend, there is no safe sanctuary in my city. If I felt vulnerable, the only safe place would be the hospital, which would require a taxi. That is a cut too far.

I have already touched on the issue of council cuts, but I think this gives the Minister an opportunity. There have been cuts not only to maintenance—which is wooden dollars, in my opinion, because cutting local government grants does not help the police budget when it then costs the police more money to make interventions—but to youth provision. There has also been no clear guidance on ensuring that local authorities work together to provide CCTV infrastructure, which would save them money and help Staffordshire police force.

I will now ask my questions to the Minister so that everybody else may participate in this debate; I am delighted to see colleagues present from across the House. How much of today’s announcement of £700 million is going to come to Staffordshire police force? Will there be any new police officers for Staffordshire police? When will we get them, given that we are so short now? What can the Minister do to encourage partnership working from other statutory agencies, not the third sector, to ensure that everybody is not leaning on the police budget? Our police serve us day in, day out. They put themselves at risk. They ensure that we, especially in this place, are safe and secure. At the moment, however, it does not feel like we have their backs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and to follow two excellent speeches from my neighbours, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton). I do not intend to repeat much of what has been said, because the stark numbers speak for themselves.

The number of officers that we have lost across Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire demonstrates that the police force is stretched. It has told us publicly that it feels that it is not giving our constituents the service that it would like to. It worries about being able to respond to crimes in a timely fashion or to do the important preventative work and high-visibility policing that reduces fear of crime and makes people feel safer, even though there may not have been anything to fear in the first place. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North referred to the number of police officers lost.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I misspoke. In fact, we have lost 568 or 571 police officers—it depends on reports—not 468. I was being far too generous to the Government.

[Gareth Snell]

As my hon. Friend points out, we have lost 571 police officers across the county. We have also lost a number of auxiliary support staff in forensics, criminal investigation and the detective arenas.

In fact, the figures provided by my friends in the Unison branch at Staffordshire police show that the number of forensic investigators is being cut from 24 to 12, which they have said will mean they will be unable to provide the level of support to the frontline police officers needed to gather the evidence to provide for CPS considerations on whether prosecutions are available. Those 12 places are being replaced with nine lower-skilled, lower-paid and lower-graded roles that do not have the necessary technical qualifications to provide support. The forensic investigators have made it quite clear that they want to be able to do their job, to help keep people safe. It is not just about frontline policing, but about the policy family and the public sector family around the police force that can allow for crime to be detected and criminals to be prosecuted.

My hon. Friend has also mentioned the current closure of police stations across Staffordshire. Chief inspectors and assistant chief constables have said to me that the demand for face-to-face interaction with the police is going down, and I fully accept that that is the case. Younger generations now wish to interact digitally through electronics, the telephone system and social media. That is a perfectly reasonable way to interact with the police force, but it should not be an either/or. It should not be that elderly people in my constituency living in Bentilee or Sneyd Green have to, as my hon. Friend pointed out, travel on two buses to the other end of the city to see a police officer.

Although I am grateful that we still have one open police station in Stoke-on-Trent, it is open only between 9 and 5—office hours. If people simply need to interact with the police for a non-crime or non-emergency-related issue, they cannot access the station at the weekend or in the evening. To me, that seems a perverse arrangement that does not make policing feel accessible, even though it might well be. Across the county of Staffordshire, with somewhere between 950,000 and 1 million people, only three police stations remain publicly open between the hours of 9 and 5. I do not care what people’s politics are—I cannot believe that anybody would justify to me that that is, for accessible policing, an appropriate access level for that many people dispersed across a county that is geographically quite different, depending on where one goes.

I represent arguably the most urban part of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. I have the city centre of Stoke-on-Trent and the council estate. If one travels down to the rural villages in the constituency of the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), which has no public transport infrastructure and where there is little ability to travel, suddenly there is no access to policing. Yes, there are PCSOs who do their best, but they are now stretched so thin. The PCSO who regularly visits my office to talk to me about the activity happening in the area will tell me that she will have to walk miles in the course of a day to respond to jobs. On several occasions, she has simply been told, “Don’t respond to that—it is not a priority,” because there are not enough people to respond to crimes.

Over the last couple of months, I have seen a change in the crime that we are dealing with in my constituency. As my hon. Friend pointed out, there has been an increase in knife crime in Stoke-on-Trent. Five years ago, knife crime there was so rare that I doubt whether we had even one or two instances. I have had three stabbings in my constituency in the last six weeks.

I know the Government take this issue seriously—as my hon. Friend pointed out, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), has met us and is acutely aware of our problems—but those leading on this in our constituencies are not the police, but the colleges, the schools and the third-sector groups that interact with young people. That is not because the police are not interested, but because the resource available to the police, and the capacity within the force, is simply not there to deal with something else on top of all the other parts that they are asked to do.

Although I am grateful that people such as Claire Gagan at Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College are taking such an active interest in the safety of our young people, that is not her job—her job is not to ensure that gang violence is dealt with on the streets of Stoke-on-Trent. She is not there to ensure that parents take responsibility for what their children bring into colleges on a day-to-day basis or to regulate gang activity across Stoke-on-Trent. She is doing it because she knows it has to be done, and the police are supporting that, but it is something that an old-fashioned police service should do.

The story of Stoke-on-Trent is that we are actually a safe place. I know that the testimony that has come out of this debate might suggest that we have problems, but, like all cities, we have our bad places and good places. I have been fortunate enough to work with some wonderful police officers, including Karen Stevenson, who looks after the southern part of my constituency, and Mark Barlow and John Owen, who look after the northern part with Superintendent Geoff Moore. They are wonderful people who are genuinely committed to neighbour policing in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, but they make it clear to us that there is so much more that they want to do. They can just about manage with what they are doing now, but they know there are things that they are simply not doing, and that—with the right resource, support and impetus from Government—they could do to make Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire a much safer place.

It is clear that part of this is about money. Some £38 million has been taken out of the Staffordshire police budget since 2010. The police and crime commissioner has tried to recoup some of that by raising the precept, but the precept goes only so far. When we have mainly band A council tax payers having to fund the 2% levy for adult social care and the 2.9% increase in council tax, and also having to try to pay for policing, the available pool of money to fund all this in Staffordshire simply does not exist, because of the demography and house type that we have in our city.

The Government will have to ask themselves: what more can they directly do? I know the Minister will respond by talking about the extra investment going into policing. More money for the police is welcome, but I ask the Minister to bear in mind that it is not just about more money for more police. One of the problems raised with me when I was out with the police on Operation Disrupt with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South—we very much enjoyed the chainsaw—was the question of where we would put more police officers coming into Stoke-on-Trent.

The police stations are no longer functioning and the police have moved into fire stations, so the fire stations are now at capacity. The community spaces in private finance initiative fire stations have been taken over. The chief inspector mentioned that she does not have the money to buy lockers for police to put their equipment in. It is all well and good having police officers, but we are not dealing with the long-term problems around police numbers if we cannot give them the resources, locker space, equipment, uniform and the training that they need to develop in their own careers.

It is not just the police numbers. Perhaps the Minister could explain how much of this new money will go into extra forensic investigators, extra detective support activity, digital crime prevention and the people who go out and tidy up crime scenes in homes after police have had to do raids. I recently had an incident in which, after one of the stabbings, the police had to follow a suspect into a private residence by kicking the back door down. The police had to pick up the bill for fixing that door and find the resources to replace it. These sorts of things have an impact on policing budgets and activity but are not simply sorted by having more police officers.

Of course, there is also the age-old problem of the magistrates and court system, which I know is outside the Minister’s immediate responsibility—I am sure he will be given that responsibility one day, as he demonstrates his brilliance in his Department. More police arresting more criminals means we need bigger custody suites, more custody sergeants and more space at magistrates courts to process those individuals who have been caught in crime.

I was told by a custody visitor only last week that police now spend more time waiting at the custody suite in Etruria in my constituency, because there are not enough custody sergeants to process all the people whom the police are rightly picking up for the crimes they commit. It means that they are not out on the street picking up the next lag who has done something wrong or providing the security that my older and vulnerable residents, and my communities, feel that they need.

I wonder whether I can tempt the Minister to comment on the fact that, out of every police and crime commissioner in the country, Matthew Ellis has the largest percentage office cost of them all—bigger than the West Midlands, Northumbria or South Yorkshire? It is a huge police force, and bigger than the Met. He spends £1.4 million, which, as a percentage of the money available to him, is almost 10% of his total. I wish the Minister would take that up.

I know the commissioner has said he is retiring at the next election, and I wish him well. I assume he is trying to get into this place—again, I wish him well—but surely every penny should be spent on trying to get more police, more frontline support and more officers out on the street, and not on public relations people sitting in a commissioner’s office.

Armed Forces Day

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Gareth Snell

Wednesday 26th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

It is an honour and privilege to speak in this debate, and a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham). I find myself in the unenviable position of being the first member of the Defence Committee to speak today, but I see two colleagues in their place: the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) and the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois).

I have the greatest privilege to be the chair of the all-party group on the armed forces covenant and a vice-chair of the all-party group for the armed forces, with responsibility for the “senior service”, the Royal Navy, as I enjoy reminding the First Sea Lord on a regular basis. It is a privilege to be able to talk about how wonderful our armed forces are: those who currently serve and their families who support them day in, day out; and the veteran community and the people we call on to look after them. This is an opportunity that all of us should enjoy.

On Sunday, in my great city, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), there will be our Armed Forces Day parade. It is a wonderful event and I hope they stay in sunshine—not least because Saturday is my birthday. It will be a wonderful event, as it is every year, with hundreds and hundreds of children who will visit—

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

For your birthday!

[Ruth Smeeth]

I am being heckled by my hon. Friend. It is indeed my own birthday party.

What is so wonderful about our Armed Forces Day parade is the intergenerational conversations that happen, with our service personnel, our veterans community and our cadets—sea, air and Army—talking to each other and telling stories. This is what is so important. They are a community and a family, and we need to respect them at every opportunity.

Locally, we are privileged to have our own veterans community, the Tri Services and Veterans Support Centre, which is based in Newcastle-under-Lyme but serves all of North Staffordshire. It is run by Geoff Harriman, who does a huge amount of work for our veterans. It has been established for only three years, but five D-day veterans visit every week for a cup of coffee or tea and a biscuit, and tell their stories. Given recent anniversaries, I feel it is incredibly important that I name them so that they are on the record: Bert Turner, Harry Gould, Jim Wildes, Daniel Harrison and Norman Lewis.

I would like to tell the House the story of Bert Turner. Bert was in Bomber Command and was shot down twice during world war two. He is a D-day veteran. He delivered Paras—I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) is in his place—on to the field during D-day. His stories are extraordinary and they are all true. Day in, day out he flew sorties to ensure that we were safe. He gave up his time, even when he was shot down and could probably have taken slightly longer to recover. He got back in a plane to keep fighting with his comrades. He is an inspiration to all of us. He was also one of the people who went to Normandy for the D-day commemorations, and we thank the Royal British Legion and everybody who arranged his transport. His story and others have to inspire the next generation. That is why twice a year with the local cadets in Stoke-on-Trent—I am proud to be their honorary president—we arrange “Vets and Cadets”; we have pie and peas for our veterans and cadets, so that the war stories continue.

Children’s Social Care Services: Stoke-on-Trent

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Gareth Snell

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered children’s social care services in Stoke-on-Trent.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. It is not a pleasure to be having this debate. Children’s services, and the role that councils play in protecting the most vulnerable children in our societies and communities, should be taken away from the party political arena. The Ofsted report that was received by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, showing the failures across the local authority area to help the most vulnerable people, is worthy of discussion with the Minister in order to work out how we can put that system back together. The report is one of the saddest things that I have had the displeasure of reading in my short time as a Member of Parliament.

We know that when it comes to engaging and working with young people, Stoke-on-Trent is now a city of two tales. The Minister will be acutely aware of the excellent work being done by Professor Liz Barnes and Carol Shanahan under the opportunity area, and I am sure he will agree that they are exemplars of good practice across the country, and of how people can achieve very impressive things when they get their act together. The flipside of that—the other side of the coin—is a children’s services department that has now been rated “inadequate” in all four areas of the Ofsted report, which has highlighted some shocking outcomes that prompt the question whether the local authority is fit to continue running that service, and whether the individuals who are responsible for running it at cabinet level are fit to continue in public office.

I do not wish to draw too much on the politics of it, but I want to read out a few of the findings from the Ofsted report, which will set the context for what we are discussing this morning. It starts by saying:

“Children are not being protected…Vulnerable children are not safeguarded in Stoke-on-Trent…There are insufficient fostering placements to meet local need and many children are placed in unregulated placements. The local authority knows that some of these placements are unsafe.”

It states:

“Too many children come into care in a crisis or wait too long to be reunited with their families.”

It also says:

“As a result of poor leadership, management oversight and an absence of clearly evaluated performance information, services for children have seriously declined since the last full Ofsted inspection in 2015.”

That is a damning indictment of a children’s services department, regardless of who is running the council. As a result of those shortcomings, young people are suffering in my constituency and across Stoke-on-Trent.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. The reality is that very few Ofsted reports—thankfully—are as bad as the one that has been written about Stoke-on-Trent City Council. However, I want to praise the individual social workers. It has been made clear that they are working extraordinarily hard and achieving good things, but are not being well managed and are not being supported to deliver. Their casework involves over 25 cases. Does my hon. Friend agree that this shows that there has not been the appropriate management or political leadership focus on this area, and that they have abandoned the professionals, who are trying to do their best?

[Gareth Snell]

I could not have put it better myself. My hon. Friend has rightly pointed out that, as a local authority, Stoke-on-Trent has a level of casework that is higher than the national average. Each individual within that team is managing more cases than the British Association of Social Workers would deem acceptable for any authority, let alone one such as Stoke-on-Trent, where demand is higher than the national average.

The part of the report that I found most shocking stated:

“Support for vulnerable children, including those at risk from child sexual exploitation, going missing…private fostering and extremist ideologies”

was failing. The report basically says that young children in our city are at risk of being groomed for child sexploitation and criminal exploitation. I do a lot of work in this place on modern slavery, and I am appalled to know that not only is it happening in my city, but it is happening in my city because the one authority that is ultimately responsible for dealing with that has failed. I hope the Minister will pick up on that later, not because I want to kick about the council—we will do that in the forthcoming local elections—but because, fundamentally, something must change in Stoke-on-Trent so that we are no longer rated “inadequate” across the four areas when the Ofsted inspectors next come in, and so that I can look into the eyes of my constituents and say, “Yes, your children—if they ever end up in the care system—will be safe and looked after.” That is something that I cannot do currently.

[Ruth Smeeth]

Although my hon. Friend may not want to bash our councillors, it is important to make it clear that we did not have that rating when we were last inspected in 2015. In fact, we were rated “good”. As Ofsted has made clear, these services have seriously declined since the last full Ofsted inspection in 2015. The majority of recommendations made at that inspection, and at a focused visit in 2018, have not been actioned. It seems that the council has actively disengaged from the process and not followed the Government guidance in this area.

[Gareth Snell]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point; I agree wholeheartedly. The report makes it quite clear that there has been a marked decline in the provision of children’s protective services in Stoke-on-Trent since 2015. That coincided with the last round of local elections, in which the City Independent group took control of the local authority. If we are being honest, its record of attendance at the corporate parenting panel demonstrates its disinterest in this area. Of the 16 meetings that one councillor could attend, she attended zero, and she is responsible for the funding of children’s services across the council—eight apologies, and eight non-attendances.

We should make it clear—I will ask the Minister later on—whether there is anything that the Government think they can do to ensure that councillors that have responsibility for these very important areas, including both adults’ and children’s social care, are compelled to attend those meetings, to further their understanding of what is going on. From councillors who have been on the corporate parenting panel, where they have heard from caseworkers who feel under pressure and stretched, I know that information was available at that time to the local authority members who make these decisions, had those members chosen to attend. The fact that they chose to attend none of those meetings shows the interest they have in that service. As a Parliament, we should talk collectively about how we can reinforce to people in decision-making roles their responsibilities.

I want to touch briefly on another comment in the report, which said:

“The response to children and young people who may be at increased risk due to contact with extremist ideology is not robust”.

Stoke-on-Trent is a city in which we have had our problems with both the far right and organised Islamist terrorism, and we need to ensure that we protect our young people from both extremes. The report clearly states that young people are not being protected from extremism activity in a place where we know it is taking place. I do not understand how any local authority or councillor can stand up and defend the report in the way that Councillor Janine Bridges did by saying that things are much better under her watch than they have ever been.

The report sets out in black and white one of the starkest arrangements for protecting young people anywhere—not only in the west midlands, but in the country. I wonder whether the Minister could help me better understand at what point Government step in to start to resolve some of this directly. Frankly, I have no faith that the City Independent group that currently runs the council with Conservatives has either the political ability or the determination to resolve this, other than saying that everything is all right. That has been made quite clear in the leaflets that are being delivered around the city ahead of local elections, which say how wonderful children’s services are. It beggars belief that there is this lack of connection between what is written in black and white by the authorities that are responsible for this, and what is written by the people who have taken decisions that led to this chronic failure in the first place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

There is an improvement board, but unfortunately, given the timing of the report and the purdah period for the local election cycle, no one will tell us what is going on with it, what actions it is taking and whether it is looking to Staffordshire County Council, which I hold up as an example—it is run by a good Conservative administration, which has taken responsibility for these issues and is dealing with them. This is not about Labour and Conservative party politics. There are perfect examples around the country of good Tory councils doing this well, and examples of Labour councils doing it well. This is an example of a council doing it badly, and the leadership refuse to accept that.

[Ruth Smeeth]

Does my hon. Friend agree not only that the council is doing it badly and has dismissed the report, but that it has failed to acknowledge the impact on families in our city and has not said sorry? Councillor Janine Bridges and Councillor Ann James have acted as if this has nothing to do with them, despite the fact that both of them have been responsible for delivery for the past four years. During that time our children, including homeless children, have not received the support that they are due under statutory provision. Homeless 16 and 17-year-olds do not always receive a timely or thorough response to meet their needs. We have young people on the streets and a political leadership that will not even say sorry.

[Gareth Snell]

That sums up why there is so much frustration with this process. Our city has problems. None of the MPs who represent it, including me, my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), who would have been here if he was not restricted by his Parliamentary Private Secretary role, would hide that fact. We saw the same when the Care Quality Commission did a system-wide review and found that older people were being left in their beds covered in urine for days because of a social care failing in Stoke-on-Trent City Council. Our frustration stems from the fact that, unless the problem is so stark and is written in black and white in a report that is so damaging that it requires a political intervention at this level, or is splashed in the headlines of our newspapers, nothing gets done and nothing gets changed. There is no remorse, no apology, and no sense that anything that the council was responsible for was its fault. It is always the fault of the Government, of everybody around them, and of the agencies not doing their bit. It is about time that people such as Councillor Bridges, Councillor James and their partners in the coalition took responsibility for the decisions that they have taken over the past four years, which have led us to this place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is right. We are highlighting some of the starkest parts of our society. It is a constant badge of shame for me that, when we highlight the awful parts of our society, they always manifest themselves in Stoke-on-Trent in a way that is even worse than they had to be. If we got the basics right—if we got the bread-and-butter politics right and had given a damn about the people we are there to serve—some of this would not have happened.

I am sure the Minister will say that every child service department is now stretched because there is increasing demand. He will say that it is a demand-led service, and the local authority has no immediate control over the demand. I accept that, but if we know the demand is there—if there is a constant reporting system that says, “There is a problem with this system”—and people choose not to act on it, choose not to attend corporate parenting panels, choose to divert funding to other departments, choose not to engage with the Local Government Association, choose not to participate in county-wide programmes, choose to defer the decisions that they should be making to officers, choose not to turn up to reports, and choose not to say sorry, that is a pattern of behaviour of failure. That is not a coincidence or a coalescing of misfortune; it is a pattern of behaviour that has led to systematic failure.

I sincerely hope that the work being done by officers, the social work team and the people who are coming into the local authority is effective. A commissioner has been appointed to establish whether this should stay with the local authority or whether it should become a trust. For what it is worth, even though it is an appallingly run service, I hope the Minister will take heed of what we suggest: we think it should stay with the local authority. We genuinely believe that, once the election is out of the way—whatever the outcome—there will be a renewed appetite to fix this. I have always been a believer that local authorities should clear up their own messes. I appreciate that that is his decision, not mine, and the commissioner’s report will guide him. We have some responsibility for this. We will hold whichever political party is running the council responsible for fixing this, and we know that the Government will do so, too.

I ask the Minister to address these points. Where there are clear examples of councillors not engaging in their executive-level functions, what can we and the Government do to ensure that they take those responsibilities seriously? This is not just a matter of funding; there is clearly a cultural issue. What can the Government do to help change the culture in Stoke-on-Trent? If there is a plan, I will happily work with them to deliver it. Importantly, what does the Minister believe we can do to ensure that when Ofsted comes in next time, it does not give us a catalogue of failures that shows that young people in Stoke-on-Trent have been let down?

Beer Taxation and Pubs

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Gareth Snell

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my friend, the chairman of the APPG on beer, the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood). It is an honour to serve as his deputy and as the Labour lead in the House on the issue of beer.

I must declare an interest—not one in the register—in that I am the hon. Member for the Titanic brewery, the best small brewer in the United Kingdom.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I’ve got the pubs.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I think I am going to be heckled throughout by my hon. Friend and neighbour.

Titanic has benefited hugely from small brewer’s relief, which I will touch on in a moment. First, I would like to put on record my thanks to Keith and Dave Bott not only for the support that I receive from them, but for the investment they have made in my community. They have ensured that small brewers have had a voice in this place, and others, for many years.

It is a pleasure to talk about a B-word that has nothing to do with Brexit. I think we can all agree that we have spent enough time on that for a little while. Instead, I would like to talk about the value of pubs to our society.

While the sector supports more than 1 million jobs in the country, and we heard various statistics from the hon. Member for Dudley South about it, we need to touch on the other things that the pub sector delivers, such as the impact on loneliness—especially providing somewhere for older gentlemen to go—and on our communities.

Speech, Language and Communication Support for Children

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Gareth Snell

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and thank you for letting me indicate my wish to speak at such a late stage. I congratulate the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) on securing this important debate, and on the tenacity with which she has pursued this issue pretty much every time I have been in the Chamber for questions and she has been able to raise it. The perspicacity of her speech demonstrates that she clearly has this issue in her heart; it is not something that she is doing simply because she can.

I want to touch on the Stoke Speaks Out scheme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) mentioned. It is a wonderful scheme, which Janet Cooper and her team have run for a number of years. The purpose of the scheme is to identify at a very early age young people in Stoke-on-Trent for whom speech and language could be a barrier to their overall development, aspiration and further opportunity.

The team at Stoke Speaks Out do wonderful work, but they have the never-ending problem of constantly having to reinvent the service that they are trying to deliver in order to qualify for new rounds of funding from various different funding agencies and bodies. The reality is that they have a model that works. It has been statistically proven to work, and they have a quantified dataset that shows that their interventions cause improvements. In fact, the baseline for readiness in Stoke-on-Trent schools in 2016 showed that only 35% of our young people were ahead or on track for speech standards, but after intervention by the Stoke Speaks Out team that figure had risen to 54% by July 2017. I think we would all agree that that is a remarkable achievement in such a short period of time for an organisation that was operating on a shoestring.

This is not an issue with our schools. The schools in our city are rated good or outstanding overall. This is a community issue and a societal issue, and it is a problem that is often missed. The most pertinent point that the hon. Member for Taunton Deane made was about early intervention outside school years. We have a disproportionate number of young people in Stoke-on-Trent for whom the 30 hours of nursery provision or pre-school arrangements simply are not available, because of work arrangements or the hours threshold. That means that a lot of young people go directly from a home situation into a reception class. Headteachers around the constituency consistently tell me that young people benefit from provision in a nursery school setting, and that there is a marked and quantifiable difference in readiness for speech and language skills between children who come into school aged four and those who have been through nursery provision aged three.

The simple fact is that early intervention teams within the community health team cannot pick up every case where somebody may have an issue with speech and learning development. Stark statistics suggest that around half the young people in the constituencies of Stoke-on-Trent North, Stoke-on-Trent South and Stoke-on-Trent Central have up to a 12-month delay in their language skills by the age of three. As the hon. Member for Taunton Deane pointed out, that is a huge impediment to their future success.

Schools also talk to me quite readily about the fact that they struggle to get some parents to engage with at-home reading. That is sometimes down to parents not making the effort—we must be honest about that—but it is also because adult literacy rates in some parts of my constituency mean that parents do not have the confidence to sit down and read with their children from a very young age. Again, that can cause issues around how people parent. The hon. Member for Taunton Deane rightly pointed out that the “digital corner parent”, as we call it in our house, sometimes has a much greater presence in the young person’s life than it should, to the extent that a headteacher in one of my schools said that one of their problems was children coming in with American accents, because they watch American cartoons and TV, and that has become dominant. In some of my local schools, the words “soda” and “elevator” are now more commonly used than “pop” and “lift”, because that is the way that some parents arrange things.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I hate to interrupt a narrative about American television, but one of the most important things that Stoke Speaks Out has done is to deliver 3,000 free books to children across our city as part of the Stoke Reads project. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is as vital for parents as it is for children, as those parents start reading to their children?

[Gareth Snell]

I thank my hon. Friend for her inevitable intervention. She is right: the more we can get parents reading, the better. My predecessor, Tristram Hunt, did a piece of work with every primary school child in Stoke-on-Trent Central. He arranged for them to receive a copy of H. E. Marshall’s “Our Island Story: A Child’s History of England” as they transitioned from primary to secondary school, so he could be certain that they would have something to read over the summer period. Those small things can go on to develop language skills.

There is also a wonderful organisation in Stoke-on-Trent called Beanstalk, which arranges for volunteers to go into school and read with children. I believe that the mother of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is a volunteer with that programme. Whenever I go round schools I see teachers and headteachers who have used their pupil premium money in very innovative ways to get young people reading and understanding where language comes from. I must admit that I was somewhat confused when my seven-year-old daughter came home, having done phonics in her year 1 class, with “oohs” and “aahs” and lots of new language sounds that I certainly did not learn when I was at school.

UK Research Centre for Ceramics

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Gareth Snell

Wednesday 21st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. As chair of the all-party group on ceramics, I think there is no more important issue to discuss in the House than the future of the sector—

[Gareth Snell]

Six hundred and forty people disagree.

[Ruth Smeeth]

Well, they are wrong!

What are the hon. Gentleman’s views on celebrating the work that is already being done by the Ceramic Innovation Network, which is leading in this area? It is led by Lucideon, which is based in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), and is supported by organisations such as Steelite, Churchill and Dudson—I have to get my local companies on the record—which secure more than 20,000 jobs in our great city.

Healthcare: North Staffordshire

Debate between Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent and Gareth Snell

Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman asks the excellent question of what cause we attribute the situation to. I am hesitant to give an answer that points the finger of blame. One reason why north Staffordshire and Staffordshire as a whole have failed to remedy the problem is that there has been a game of pass the buck in determining who is responsible for not achieving what. That means that nobody has taken responsibility. One issue in Staffordshire is industrial disease, which has caused us not to meet A&E waiting times because people who cannot get the secondary healthcare they want present to A&E with their problems. That means that we have missed both the four-hour and 12-hour A&E targets. Although we have met six of the seven targets on cancer waiting times, we are still short on one.

The hon. Gentleman’s question is pertinent because we have a hospital that already has a deficit and has been challenged to make £60 million of savings this year and a further £70 million in the next two years, and North Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent clinical commissioning groups have decided that the best way to help that hospital, when it is struggling to meet those targets, is to fine it an additional £10 million. I do not understand the logic of taking a fine of £10 million from an organisation that is already struggling to deliver the services with the cash that it has.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, in spite of all the efficiencies that are being made by the chief executive of our hospital, the reward is that the percentage cuts are deeper at Royal Stoke and University Hospitals of North Midlands than at any other hospital in the country? That is not a reward for the efforts that are being made to provide decent healthcare provision for our constituents.

[Gareth Snell]

I am usually pleased to see Stoke-on-Trent at the top of a leader board, but the one that my hon. Friend highlights is not one that we should be proud to top. She demonstrates the perverse and farcical nature of a funding system that targets those who have the least by penalising them further financially. That will simply compound the problem in the healthcare system in north Staffordshire, which will impact on the wider Staffordshire health economy and cause greater problems for her constituents, my constituents and the constituents of the hon. Member for Stafford.

To give credit where it is due, the Government have offered £530,000 of additional funding to help with the potential crisis this winter. Again, that shows the perverse nature of the funding situation. On the one hand, we are asked to make huge cuts in the tens of millions, yet the Government recognise that the winter will be challenging and offer half a million pounds back. It seems that money is circulated around the system, but those who need it most—the constituents we represent—are unable to get the support they need.

The problems with A&E in Stoke-on-Trent have been compounded by the loss of 168 community care beds at various community hospitals around north Staffordshire. The decision was made by the clinical commissioning group 18 or so months ago to move towards a “My Care, My Way—Home First” pathway, whereby people would be discharged from the hospital straight to their home, without the need for a step-down continuing care facility. We were told that that would revolutionise the way care was provided in north Staffordshire. However, we know that one of the things that is causing delays in our A&E and financial problems in our hospital is that the number of people who are declared medically fit for discharge but are unable to leave an acute bed because no care package is available in the community sector is growing. The hospital will tell us that. Stoke-on-Trent City Council is recruiting more care workers, but the package of care needed for those people is becoming more and more acute, and more and more difficult, meaning that private providers are simply turning away potential patients because they do not see them as profitable customers.

The community care bed scenario highlights what I think is a grave travesty in the way the health sector is now run. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 created clinical commissioning groups. In Staffordshire, we used to have three primary care trusts. They came to the conclusion that working as one cluster was the best way forward; that pooling their resources and working collectively for the greater good of the 1.1 million in our county and city was the way forward. The Health and Social Care Act then created six clinical commissioning groups, who have now decided that the best way forward is to have one accountable officer and to work together for the benefit of the 1.1 million residents who live in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire. I ask the Minister how is it possible that we have gone from a system of three PCTs to one PCT and from six CCGs to one accountable officer for CCGs—with all the money spent on reforming those services—when clinicians, Members of Parliament, councillors and patient groups were telling the Minister and the Government that that was the best way forward?

We now have a situation where NHS England has decided that the original consultation on the closure of those beds was not up to standard and ordered it to be re-consulted on, meaning that 168 community care beds will sit mothballed this winter—not formally decommissioned, but mothballed—while a second consultation takes place on whether they should exist at all. At the same time, the Government recognise that there will be an acute pressure on A&E in Royal Stoke Hospital that requires a half a million pound investment.

[Ruth Smeeth]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most ludicrous parts of the game that has gone on with our community health beds is that the nursing staff who provide the services have been made redundant in advance of the end date of the consultation? Even if the consultation finds that the beds are necessary, the staff have been made redundant in advance of the decision. That is a ludicrous way to treat the workforce.

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I could not agree more. As a former trade union official with Unison, I think the way the staff have been treated is simply unacceptable. It is also an additional cost burden. Staff have been made redundant at a cost to the clinical commissioning groups, which may find that the work they were doing is brought back into use if the consultation suggests the beds should exist. Again, I ask the Minister to provide some rationale as to why that is an effective use of public money in a healthcare system that we all agree is overspending and needs to find a way of closing its budget gap.

It is all too easy to point at Royal Stoke Hospital and say, “The hospital is the problem; fix the hospital and everything else will sort itself out”. That is partly true, but there are also issues around our capped expenditure programme. Over the next two years, Staffordshire is being asked to take £160 million out of its broader healthcare economy spending. A sustainability and transformation plan identified a deficit of almost half a billion pounds by 2022, yet the way to deal with that appears to be a disjointed approach to solving little problems in little areas without any reasonable thought about the way forward and how this can be redressed.

I go back to the community care beds. They provided a platform whereby people who were in an acute expensive setting could be discharged, at a point of being considered medically fit for discharge, to a provision that was designed to give them the care they needed before they transitioned to their home, a private care provider or a council-run care facility. That allowed them to make the change without the prospect of them re-presenting, at the expense of the acute system, because they had been discharged too quickly. Again, this is money circulating around a system that is identifiable as waste in many people’s considerations of what waste is, while at the same time it is being manufactured by the decisions of the CCG.

The CCG’s decision on community care beds was referred to the Minister under paragraph 29(6) of the 2013 regulation almost a year ago. Letters from myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth), which were countersigned by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly), Baroness Golding and the former Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, Mr Flello, have gone unanswered. I have raised the issue here as a point of order and at business questions, and I have asked the Secretary of State directly when we will get that response, but to date we still have had none. That is almost a year of referrals from the two tier 1 authorities and of unanswered parliamentary requests. It is creating an unacceptable level of uncertainty in the economics of the health service in Staffordshire.