Domestic Abuse

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The National Domestic Violence Helpline is run by two organisations, Women’s Aid and Refuge. As the noble Baroness will be aware, both those organisations have been given additional funds as a result of the Chancellor’s Statement today—£1 million each. A principal focus of the work will be looking at early intervention. We want to learn the lessons from that so that we can refresh the Government’s strategy for violence against women and girls, which is due to take place in the next few months.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I remind your Lordships of my declaration of interests, because I work with two charities that are involved, among other things, with victims of domestic violence. I have worked for over 40 years on this issue and even I am shocked at the number of women I meet now who are homeless, whose lives have been riven with addiction and who are on the edge of the criminal justice system, nearly all of whom have been victims of sexual, physical or other abuse. Will the Government have another look and make sure that right across the board—not just in the Home Office but in the Department of Health, the Ministry of Justice and other departments —they recognise the importance of this? Many of these women have never talked to anyone but their lives have been ruined.

[Lord Bates]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right, and I pay tribute to her work over many years in this area. She will recognise that the number of places in refuges, which is the subject of ring-fenced funding of £40 million—there through this Government—has increased so that there are now 3,472 places available. The number of rape advice centres—also funded by the Ministry of Justice—has also increased by 15. But again, it is a collective effort to make sure that we all tackle this most abhorrent of crimes.

Northern Powerhouse: Airports

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend raises a question that he has asked before, and I will give him the answer that I have given before. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has given an assurance that we will make a decision before Christmas. The other thing that my right honourable friend has underlined is that we need to consider the findings of the Airports Commission’s report extensively. It is an extensive report. We need to look at it in a detailed manner to ensure that there is no subsequent judicial review on any proposal taken forward.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

Does the Minister recognise that the north has already lost out because of slow decision-making over an airport in the south-east? Teesside’s Durham Tees Valley Airport no longer has any connectivity with London and the connectivity at Newcastle has been severely reduced. This affects our economy. The north-east is still the largest manufacturing region in the country, but much of our work is with Japanese companies. They wonder how on earth they are to get there, when they cannot do so directly when flying into a London airport.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I do not agree with the noble Baroness’s conclusion, although I do agree that there was a lack of investment in the north. The previous Government and now this one have given the commitment to ensure that there is investment, with £13 billion of transport investment going forward in this Parliament. As regards connectivity from north-east to north-west, the noble Baroness is aware that Transport for the North has extensive connectivity plans and I am sure that she welcomes the fact, as I do, that we now have regional airports such as Manchester serving not just the domestic European community—she throws her arms up, but I do not agree with her. The Chinese President himself made a positive announcement, which I think that she should appreciate.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

As this is obviously one of those areas of government policy that a great deal of effort and thought has gone into, I am sure that the Minister will be able to satisfy us. I look forward to his explanation of why this is palpably a better system and how it will work smoothly.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

My Lords, I want to speak about a particular aspect of the work of the National Policing Improvement Agency: training. I confess that I also speak from a very specific point of view as Harperley Hall—the NPIA’s newest building, as well as most recently refurbished building, for training—is within two miles of my home. I was the constituency Member of Parliament for much of Harperley’s existence and my father was the MP before that when Harperley Hall served Durham constabulary. I therefore know Harperley very well.

I would not expect the Government to maintain a facility simply because it is in the north-east, where we have real challenges in terms of employment, particularly of highly skilled workers. Harperley is an absolutely beautiful place in the most beautiful place in the country—the foothills of Weardale, although I know that that, too, is irrelevant to today’s debate. However, it is attractive to those who go there because it provides a chance to concentrate on the training and the tasks in hand.

Harperley Hall now concentrates on forensic training, and I am sure that the Government will want to ensure that every force in the country has nothing but the highest quality forensic training. How will the Government ensure that in the new structure? Forensic training constantly moves forward and improves, and while I am not going to attack what happened to the Forensic Science Service, because my own party set that in train while in government, it is true that at the moment there is some anxiety, at least about the performance of some of the players. What lessons have the Government learnt from the changes made to the provision of forensic science services? How many cases over the past couple of years have struggled in the courts because of mistakes? We all know about the problems around the tragic death of the MI5 officer when people thought they had DNA evidence, but in fact it had been contaminated. Is that the only case or are there others? Have the Government learnt from that and will they seek better assurances on quality control for forensic training?

I have had the privilege of attending several awards ceremonies for different forces throughout the country. I recall going to one held at Durham University for Harperley Hall a year after the 7/7 bombings. The knowledge and understanding of forensics was absolutely critical to that investigation, and people who had graduated from Harperley Hall had been very much part of it. I am convinced that the Government think that this is important, so how are they going to maintain the quality in forensics training that they currently enjoy if places such as Harperley Hall are not going to continue? How will the Government ensure that what Harperley Hall does so well is maintained? At the moment, it trains people from virtually all the forces in the country, as well as taking on important work internationally by training other forces. That establishes good contacts between police forensic experts in this country and others around the world. Those contacts, let alone the knowledge that is shared, become critical in monitoring, examining and controlling terrorist activities. It is important to keep those contacts going, and I think that a national service helps towards that.

Who will undertake the research and development that drives improvements and developments in forensic science and thus in forensic training? That is a very important point. We have seen forensics change incredibly in my lifetime, certainly in the past 20 years, and training, of course, has to keep up with that. I have had the privilege of seeing some of this at Harperley and it is always great fun for folk such as me, who are real amateurs, to see what magic the forensic people are delivering, but I always know, even when I am enjoying it, that it is much more serious than that, because it is a critical weapon in tracking down offenders of all natures. We must not lose that facility.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

I thank the Minister for that. It is of course not a police force establishment these days but an NPIA establishment. I just hope that it will find a future within the new structure. I sincerely plead for Harperley Hall not simply because it is in the north-east but because it does excellent work on behalf of this country which has saved lives and improved the quality of forensics work both here and across the world. I do not believe that as a country we can afford to lose that. I hope that the Government have some warm words for us this afternoon.

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I agree with the conclusions of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, that the abolition of the NPIA is hasty, ill thought out and potentially extremely damaging. I want to build on a question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, about training. What is the future plan for Bramshill House? There it sits, a grade 1 listed building, a place at which I was present when one of the Minister’s friends, Kenneth Clarke, was Home Secretary. He arrived late for a meeting, having just been appointed, to say that he was sorry he was late but he had stopped in the driveway to ring the Prime Minister to tell him that he had found a very suitable residence for the Home Secretary.

Bramshill provides two things of vital importance. First, it provides the strategic training for the most senior officers of the police service. Secondly, it is a centre of excellence for international and European police training. Are there plans for what will happen to Bramshill when the NPIA is abolished?

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that intervention because it gives me the opportunity to respond by saying that there is almost a mathematical relationship between size and the importance of the boundary that exists between different regions. One difficulty with regional boundaries is that they are frequently quite dramatic, although there may be a geographical coherence. I am a Fenman. The Fens are in the eastern region, about which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, spoke, but they are also in the east Midlands. Yet it makes sense for them to work together as a geographical whole. One great advantage of the LEP approach is that, when the models are smaller, the boundaries are slightly less severe and there is an opportunity for LEPs to work together. That is the whole point of the policy—to create greater flexibility in how the units of economic development can work together where they wish to. That supports the argument of One North East and the degree to which common policies across the north-east can work. I accept that it is possible to have a different point of view, but I am telling noble Lords how we see this. If we really want to address the regional imbalance in this country, we have not succeeded with RDAs.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

Does the Minister accept that the Government are out of step with virtually everyone in the north-east?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I take a great deal of comfort from my noble friend Lord Bates, who shares my view of the ability of the north-east to develop common policies where it wishes to do so. There are individual differences between Teeside, Tyneside and Wearside. You would not want to say you were in Newcastle when you were in Washington—I remember somebody getting into terrible trouble for doing so. Locality is very specific and the north-east has different characteristics. It is not homogenous and there are methods of getting economic development in the north-east which do not depend on having a single body to deliver it. A coalition of different bodies with a common policy may well be a much more effective method for doing so.

I gave way to my noble friend when I was talking about the West Country. If I might take Bristol as an example, it is far better for the local partners to develop policies for the specific issues it faces, and for Cornwall to do likewise. I strongly believe that any economies of scale that a regional approach may have are more than outweighed by an absence of local knowledge and commitment and the consequent loss of responsiveness to local circumstances. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who asked why the Gloucester, Swindon and Wiltshire LEP was rejected, I would say that, although there was some business support for the proposal, other businesses in the area felt that a different geographical approach was right. Ministers have gone back and asked the partners to discuss their proposals again in order to develop an approach which takes the full range of local views into account. So the matter is not concluded; it is still under debate, and the Government await evidence on which to make their decision.