Queen’s Speech

Baroness Williams of Trafford Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter. I looked with horror as she spoke about the debate that is taking place tomorrow. She is, of course, absolutely entitled to do that but I will not respond to her points today. I also join noble Lords in paying tribute to my noble friend Lord Bourne. Fulsome tributes have been paid to him today. He succeeded me at MHCLG—boy, did he succeed. I was recently at a service to mark National Hate Crime Awareness Week when someone came up to me and asked, a bit put out: “Where is Lord Bourne?” When I said that he was no longer a Minister they were quite disappointed. They waxed lyrical about how wonderful he was and how he will be missed. I will be among others who will miss him.

I will start with my favourite subject, devolution, which was the subject of the first Bill that I brought in as a Minister and which, as my noble friend Lord Heseltine said, is about everything that has been talked about this evening. It is about effective local communities and skills. When I was in local government, and when my noble friend and I went round the country, I found out how important local leadership was in the prospects for devolution. It was no surprise to me that Greater Manchester got the first devolution deal. It knew exactly where it was going and what it needed to achieve. The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, asked what the northern powerhouse means and whether we need legislation for it. To me, the northern powerhouse was all about the Government’s articulation of growing the areas outside London to allow them to play their economic part.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

A better balance.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Exactly—balancing the economy outside London and the south-east. I have the platform and can now unburden. When people say that we need regional rail more than we need HS2, or vice versa, I say that we need it all in the north. It is about time that we started to connect people to jobs more easily. My noble friend Lord Heseltine asks how we can differentiate rural and urban: actually, we all need to access skills and education and bring places of work nearer to us.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

Does the Minister think that the northern powerhouse could be rather fragile if there is no legislation through which it is embraced?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I could agree with that, but I give the noble Lord the example of Wythenshawe in Greater Manchester, which has the largest council housing estate in Europe. It had one intervention, to bring the tram through it. The houses are still not worth very much, but in percentage terms they have had the greatest increase in value in Greater Manchester. That is an example of where strategic intervention really helps places to grow without particular legislation. Like everyone else, I look forward to the White Paper and contributing to it. As the Prime Minister said in Rotherham recently, we are going to do devolution properly: I know my noble friend Lord Heseltine will have great hope. We are going to maximise the power of the north, with more mayors across the whole of the north.

The noble Lord, Lord Shutt, raised Yorkshire. The Prime Minister also welcomed the establishment of a Yorkshire committee as a practical step facilitating greater collaboration on a Yorkshire-wide basis. I echo that and the bespoke ongoing discussions across Yorkshire to ensure the most appropriate arrangements. I have the scars on my back from some of the earlier discussions in Yorkshire. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and my noble friend Lord Heseltine talked about the shared prosperity fund. We recognise the importance of reassuring local areas on the future of local growth funding once we have left the EU and providing clarity on the SPF. We will consult on the fund, alongside the White Paper, so that people have an opportunity to contribute their views on its design and priorities.

There is a lot of support in your Lordships’ House for the Domestic Abuse Bill. It came first from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, but I think most noble Lords mentioned it. One thing he brought up—and I look forward to discussing it with noble Lords—was GPs charging fees to victims for providing a letter evidencing abuse. I did not know that that was the situation; I am really appalled to hear about it and I can advise him that the department of health is working with a range of other departments and agencies, including the Ministry of Justice and the British Medical Association, to assess the scale of the problem and find out how many GPs currently charge for this service and how much. Gathering the evidence is the first necessary step, but I deplore the fact that it is going on.

On equalities, my noble friend Lord Bourne talked about the Race Disparity Audit. He knows that it is to drive change by publishing authoritative data and analysis about ethnic disparities, differences of treatment or outcome affecting people of different ethnicities. The website “Ethnicity facts and figures” now covers 176 different topics across education, healthcare, criminal justice and the economy. The Government are committed to acting on the data provided. He also talked about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. At that hate crime service there was a commemoration of a boy in Liverpool who was killed because he was a Traveller. He is absolutely right that the Race Disparity Audit shows that people from Irish Traveller and Gypsy Roma groups have the highest rates of temporary and permanent exclusions. In response, the Government commissioned the Timpson Review of School Exclusion, published earlier this year. The report stressed action to ensure that permanent exclusions are only used as a last resort, and made 30 recommendations which are currently being considered.

The noble Lord also talked about the definition of Islamophobia. As he knows, the APPG definition would create practical and legal challenges. It is absolutely vital that we get it right and that any definition reflects the experiences of those who have experienced anti-Muslim hatred. That is why we are appointing advisers to lead a review on the definition of Islamophobia. As he knows, the first of the advisers, Imam Qari Asim, was appointed on 23 July.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, talked about the reform of the adult social care system. We have given government access to £1.5 billion of additional funding for adult and children’s social care next year, and we will set out proposals to fix the crisis in social care in due course. I am sorry to say that there is no consensus on the best way to reform the system, but we need to get it right. I am afraid I cannot commit to a timeline at this point.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering talked about the Hague convention. We are committed to continued co-operation with the EU in cross-border, civil and family cases after Brexit. In particular, we are keen to ensure that there are clear rules on which court should hear a cross-border case and that UK legal decisions can be recognised and enforced in the EU. We will work with our European partners to establish the exact nature of a future agreement.

On policing, the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, gave his support, and I am pleased that other Peers also welcomed the commitment to policing through the recruitment of an additional 20,000 officers over the next three years. We are also committed to wider support and protection as part of the police covenant, which I was pleased to hear the noble Lord welcome. The Home Secretary has made it clear that she will give the police the tools they need, as evidenced by the recent pledge of £10 million to equip police officers with Tasers.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, talked about the recruitment of BME officers in the 20,000 uplift. There has never been a more important time to ensure that we increase the diversity of people joining the police so that the police look like the diverse community they serve. Of course, we want to attract talent from the widest possible pool. As of March this year, we have the highest proportion of BME and female officers since records began. There is further to go, but this is a promising step towards reflecting the community that the police serve. Work by police forces is already under way to ensure that they have a more representative workforce than ever before.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked about extending welfare mitigations to Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland does not have the power to instruct the Northern Ireland Civil Service; I am afraid that any legislation to extend welfare mitigations would have to be for a restored Executive.

She also talked about breakfast club funding; the Government are investing up to £26 million in the breakfast club programme, using funds from the soft drinks and industry levy revenues. The contract was awarded to Family Action in March 2018 and will run until March 2020. Family Action, in partnership with Magic Breakfast, have both been named as the leading charities responsible for running the breakfast club programme. Family Action is distributing the appropriate funding to participating schools that meet the eligibility criteria. The noble Baroness shakes her head.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I am sorry to intervene, but my question was: what will happen after March 2020? The evidence from the charities was that it is very successful but they are anxious about what will happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Perhaps I can follow that question up for the noble Baroness. It may have something to do with spending reviews—obviously, I cannot commit on those—but I will follow that one up for her.

My noble friend Lord Astor of Hever brought up the important issue of the legacy in Northern Ireland, particularly as it related to former servicemen. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will work with the Attorney-General and the Defence Secretary, and they are collectively determined to find a solution that works for Northern Ireland and which treats everyone fairly. I will at this point voice everyone’s appreciation for the work of our service men and women in Northern Ireland in incredibly difficult circumstances.

I turn to sentencing and rehabilitation, which several noble Lords mentioned. The Government have been very clear that violent and sexual offenders must serve sentences that truly reflect the severity of their crime, which help to protect the public and give victims confidence that justice has been served. I take the point made by several noble Lords, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, that sentences for certain offences have almost doubled in the past few years. Other noble Lords said that there is no point in short sentences. I am sure that we will have much discussion about that.

I think it is fair to say that punishment and rehabilitation are not opposites. We must do both. I totally agree with noble Lords who have made the point that we need to improve rehabilitation in prison and support our probation services in supervising former prisoners. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, asked me for the evidence that longer sentences work. Also on that point, we need sentences that properly reflect the severity of crimes that people have committed. As a society, I think we have no choice but to insist on proper sentencing, but sentencing in which we have rehabilitation and some of the basics which noble Lords have talked about today. I have seen at first hand the lack of numeracy, literacy and any basic skills within the prison population—particularly, perhaps I may say as a woman, among women prisoners.

The noble Lord, Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick, talked about youth sentencing. The Government think that sentencing should allow children to get the support they need to improve their lives. During the passage of the then Offensive Weapons Bill, we talked about not criminalising children at an early age when they could find a path to a far more productive life. We have sentences specifically for under-18s which provide the court with a range of community options to address offending behaviours, and, as we talked about during the passage of that Bill, custody should be not a first but a last resort, and the sentence length should be appropriate and proportionate.

Many noble Lords talked about offender health in prison—not just physical but mental health and the effect that substance abuse has. In October this year, health and justice partners confirmed to the Health and Social Care Select Committee their commitment to providing a standard of healthcare in prison at least equivalent to that available in their community. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, talked about the alcohol abstinence and monitoring requirements. As part of the review, we have looked at changes to sentencing for the most prolific offenders who could help to break that cycle of reoffending through these monitoring requirements he talked about, which start across England and Wales in 2020. More specifically, we think that the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector should have an important role in helping to shape and deliver public services to make a real difference to their communities. The MoJ and HM Prison and Probation Service facilitate a wide and varied range of opportunities for the VCSE sector to work with offenders in prisons and in the community.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and other noble Lords mentioned the current prison population. In August, the PM announced investment of up to £2.5 billion to transform the prison estate and provide 10,000 additional prison places on top of the 3,360 places already being delivered at Wellingborough and Glen Parva. However, on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Marks, we need decent, clean and humane prisons. A new national standard has been produced to assist in providing assurance through the management line and drive improvement.

Quite a few points were made on the constitution. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral talked about a written constitution. There has been lively debate on the benefits of a codified constitution. The Government welcome that debate but have no plans at this time to introduce a codified or written constitution for the United Kingdom.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who has been the speaker of sensible points over the past few days, talked about the Minister for the Constitution. Together with Cabinet Office ministerial colleagues, that Minister maintains oversight of constitutional issues across the Government, including for the union. Apparently, that oversight does not rest with one Minister or department, and the Prime Minister retains ultimate oversight of the constitution. The noble and learned Lord asked the question that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, thought I might not answer—but I will— about whether the Minister for the Constitution was consulted on the Prorogation. That is a matter for the Prime Minister to advise on; unusually, of course, the reasons for his decision have been made a matter of public record in the documents that were submitted to the courts and subsequently published. I can safely say that most of my family did not know the meaning of “Prorogation” until a few weeks ago; now, the entire world knows it.

I hope that noble Lords will indulge me for a few minutes longer. The noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, talked about the United Kingdom. We are absolutely committed to the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom. Our union is strongest when each of our constituent parts work together. We remain focused on ensuring that the interests of all the devolved nations are fully represented within our union and on continuing to deliver a strong and sustainable devolution settlement.

The noble Lord, Lord Beith, talked about judicial independence and appointments. Our judges are selected following a transparent, rigorous and independent merit-based process, which is key to maintaining the quality, integrity and independence of our world-class judiciary.

My noble friend Lord Bourne, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Best, talked about affordable housing, which remains a government priority. We are investing more than £9 billion in affordable housing to support the delivery of approximately 250,000 affordable homes, including homes for social rent. I take the point about the phrase “affordable housing” from whichever noble Lord made it, but I remember making exactly the same point 15 years ago and yet house prices are higher and higher.

I will write to noble Lords on the subject of immigration because I have a pile of papers here and I have been speaking for almost 22 minutes. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for that.

Debate adjourned until tomorrow.