Public Services

Colleen Fletcher Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner). Like him, I want to concentrate on levels of crime. In my constituency of Coventry North East, draconian cuts to police budgets have had a terrible impact on local communities. Although I welcome the fact that the Government now seem alert to the damage they have caused, my Opposition colleagues and I have been warning for years about the problems their policies create, yet all our warnings have fallen on deaf ears. To listen to the Government over the past few weeks, we could be forgiven for thinking that the problems are new and have emerged only in the past 12 months. However, when this Government took over in 2010 and started imposing their austerity measures on communities across the country, crime, particularly violent crime, also began to rise. On this side of the House, we have always understood the reasons for that, and have always been committed to investing not only in the police service but in all the ancillary support and community services needed to give young people and others the opportunities they lack, and to give offenders the support they need to prevent them from reoffending.

The real question my constituents are now asking is why they should trust the Government to tackle crime and violent crime when it has skyrocketed on their watch. In the west midlands, we have one of the highest rates of violent crime, homicide and sexual crime in the country, with rates of violent crime rising by more than a third in the past 12 months. In addition, we have the third highest rate of knife crime in the whole of England and Wales. In Coventry over the past 12 months, children’s lives have been shortened because of knife crime, police officers have been severely injured, and the communities are slowly losing faith in the ability of the police to respond to their needs. This has all happened on the Tory Government’s watch, and it is questionable to think that this Tory Government can ever put it right.

As a result of the Government’s abject failure to tackle crime and their ideological refusal to invest in our public services, the people of Coventry simply do not trust the Government to deliver. The Conservative party is no longer the party of law and order; it is the party of crime and disorder, and the people of Coventry have no faith in its ability to reverse the rise in violent crime seen on too many of the streets on which our friends and families live.

References have been made in this debate to tougher penalties for causing death by dangerous driving, promised in the last Parliament. I myself have asked questions about this after two little boys in my constituency were killed by a speeding driver high on drugs who received a paltry sentence for his crime. I share the concern that these measures have not been included in the Queen’s Speech.

This Government have an appalling record on crime, and however hard they might try with the measures in this Queen’s Speech, my constituents in Coventry will not forget about the damage that they have caused.

Oral Answers to Questions

Colleen Fletcher Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

If the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) were standing, I would call her, but she is not and so I will not—but she now does, so I call Colleen Fletcher.

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

17. Thank you, Mr Speaker. A local officer recently told me that the police no longer have the resources available to provide the level of service most people rightfully expect and wanted me to tell the Government that without significant investment in policing this situation is unlikely to change. What does the Minister say to this dedicated officer, whose job is being made impossible due to savage budget cuts, and to the victims of crime, who are being let down so badly by this Government?

[Mr Hurd]

What I say to that officer is what I say to every officer who makes exactly the same point, which is a valid one: the Government understand that police officers are feeling very stretched and under pressure at the moment, which is exactly why we have increased investment in our police. It is exactly why we are investing more than £1 billion more in our police system. He may wonder why the hon. Lady voted against it.

Public Health Model to Reduce Youth Violence

Colleen Fletcher Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). It is always interesting to hear about Members’ former lives, and about what drove them to come to this place.

Sadly, youth violence, and knife crime in particular, has affected almost every community in the country in recent years, and it is a problem that has reached epidemic levels. Just last month in Coventry, a 16-year-old boy was tragically stabbed to death in the Wood End area of my constituency. That senseless act cost an innocent young man his life, ruined the lives of his family and friends, and left an entire city in a state of shock. It was yet another tragic example of how knife crime destroys lives and devastates communities.

That shocking event is just the latest in a rising toll of knife crime in the city. Over the last five years the number of knife crime incidents has almost doubled, from 164 in 2012-13 to 307 in 2017-18. There were more than 162 knife crimes in the first six months of 2018-19, with three fatalities in this year alone. The levels of knife crime in my area, and in other areas across the country, are rising, at a time when police budgets have been cut to the bone and the number of frontline police officers has fallen to the lowest level in 30 years. The West Midlands police force alone has lost more than 2,000 officers in the last eight years, and £175 million from its budget over the same period. There can be little doubt about the correlation between falling police numbers and rising crime levels. It is time that the Government finally acknowledged this link and acted to increase the number of officers on our streets to help protect our communities.

All forces need additional officers, and the West Midlands is no different; our PCC has asked the Government for an extra £42.2 million to cover inflation and the funding for 500 additional officers to help tackle violent crime more proactively. It is shameful that the Government failed to meet that request in full.

However, I accept that this problem has not been created by cuts to police budgets alone, nor is it a problem that can be resolved by simply putting extra officers on the streets. If we really want to address this problem permanently, we need to understand the social conditions that lie at the root of youth violence and recognise the underlying causes that have fuelled the recent surge in knife crime. In doing so it is impossible to ignore the cumulative impact of eight years of savage Government cuts to local services, which have exacerbated poverty and inequality, hampered our ability to tackle youth violence at source and pushed communities to a tipping point.

It is certainly no coincidence that areas of high deprivation have similarly high rates of knife crime. In Coventry we have seen cuts to education provision, children and youth services, Sure Start, the police and mental health facilities, all of which have had a direct impact on the most vulnerable in society. Cuts to such vital services not only make it difficult to identify young people who are most at risk of early offending due to their environments, but make it more difficult to address those environments through early intervention. That is why we need a long-term, properly funded, integrated public health approach to youth violence, an approach that focuses on the drivers of youth violence rather than the aftermath and that prioritises the safeguarding and protection of vulnerable young people over criminalisation.

We must ensure that carrying knives never becomes normal behaviour and seek to change the culture among many young people. To do this, we need to place a greater emphasis on community policing that builds trust, education programmes that equip young people to be resilient, and early intervention that targets those most at risk of becoming involved in violence, as well as targeting significant resources on prevention activities on a multi-agency basis. As a result, youth violence would no longer simply be within the purview of the criminal justice system; instead, this would involve the police, schools, parents, health professionals, youth workers and council services working alongside community groups, young people, faith groups and the voluntary sector.

There are already practical examples of this holistic approach taking place in Coventry with the roll-out of youth workers in our local A&E department. Those youth workers intervene at “teachable moments” and speak with young people who attend hospital with a knife wound, as victims often become perpetrators of violent crime—although I think we can all agree that it would be preferable to prevent the violent incident in the first place, rather than act in the aftermath.

There is also investment in mentoring projects and youth work, including through the Positive Youth Foundation in Coventry, to divert young people away from violence. Similarly, there is investment in education programmes that warn young people of the dangers of carrying a knife. We have also seen the introduction of violence prevention mentors—young people who mentor other young people in their schools away from violence.

Such local initiatives really do make a difference to both individuals and communities touched by violence, but they do not in any way negate the need for the Government to adopt a public health approach on a national scale. We need the Government to implement and properly fund a national programme, with measurable outcomes, that targets resources at communities to tackle the problem of youth violence at source while protecting future generations from it. I hope this is something the Government will look at very seriously.

International Men’s Day

Colleen Fletcher Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I commend the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for securing the debate. He has raised many issues, each of which is probably worthy of long debate. It is difficult in a debate like this one, which is quite short, to have the conversations that we really want to have.

I am feminist, and I have two sons. They have brought issues to me while growing up, and we have always talked about equality. We are going back a generation—my sons are in their early 40s. I remember one coming home from school and saying to me, “It’s not fair—the girls have a special room where they can go at lunchtime, and boys don’t have one.” Girls who had their period or were not feeling well were allowed to go to that room and have some quiet time, which I tried to explain to my sons. Should schoolchildren—whether boys or girls—not feel well, they should have a room where they can sit down quietly. That is just sensible.

We have to be careful about our language and ensure that people who have an audience, such as those in the media, think about what they are saying. Another issue was picked up just last year. My son and I were listening to the radio—something was going on in Coventry—and the presenter commented on some men’s “wonderful six-packs”. My son was appalled and said, “What if that was a man on there, talking about what big breasts someone had?” We have to be careful about the language that we use, especially in the media and in newspapers, although we cannot often control what happens there, and people will always read what they want to.

International Men’s Day is designed to highlight some extremely important issues—none more so than men’s mental health and tackling male suicide. I want to focus on those issues, and this debate gives me the opportunity to do so. I will always take the opportunity to talk about it.

Last year, suicide rates among men in the UK were at their lowest for more than 30 years. While that is, of course, extremely encouraging, we must not overlook the underlying statistics, which show that there were 5,821 suicides in the UK last year. Of those, 4,383 were male suicides, which means that more than three quarters of people who took their own lives were men—the rate was 15.5 suicides per 100,000 men. One such death is one too many. Those statistics lay bare the scale of the crisis in men’s mental health, and they also highlight how essential it is for us to continue to target expertise and resources at understanding the causes of male suicide and trying to prevent it.

Why is suicide such a highly gendered occurrence? We know that mental health issues can affect anyone and are caused by a number of factors, including bereavement, unemployment, finance and debt issues, family and relationship problems—as has been said already—social isolation, low self-esteem, drug and alcohol issues, and many other personal factors. It is not that men are necessarily more susceptible to these mental health triggers; societal expectations have shaped men’s behaviour in how they deal with—or, more accurately, how they fail to deal with—their emotions, feelings and wellbeing when confronted by them.

The malign influence of masculine conditioning—it shapes the way men are brought up to behave and the roles, traits and behaviours that society expects of them—demands that rather than talk about their emotions and how they feel in times of difficulty or crisis, men should instead be silent, manly and strong. That social and emotional disconnectedness simply adds to men’s vulnerability and contributes to a higher rate of suicide across the male population.

How do we tackle this problem? Part of the answer is to reduce the stigma around men’s mental health and to encourage men to open up and seek help when they are struggling or feeling in despair. In Coventry, the encouragement and the conversations are being initiated by the award-winning mental health awareness and suicide prevention campaign, “It Takes Balls to Talk”. It is the brainchild of mental health nurse Alex Cotton, who is my constituent.

The campaign is a public information programme targeted at male-dominated sporting venues across Coventry and Warwickshire, which uses sporting themes to raise awareness of mental health support services and seeks to reduce male suicide by encouraging men to talk about their feelings. Since its launch more than two years ago, “It Takes Balls to Talk” has played a vital role in breaking down the barriers that prevent men from initiating conversations about their mental health and wellbeing, and from positively engaging with mental health services in my local area. Such targeted initiatives promote positive mental health and make a lasting difference. That is why I am extremely proud of what the campaign has achieved so far and of the work it does across my city and Warwickshire. It is why I support it wholeheartedly.

I want to conclude by encouraging any men affected by a mental health issue not to bottle it up. Those are wise words for anyone. Talk to a friend, a colleague or a family member. Contact Mind, the Samaritans or “It Takes Balls to Talk”. They need to know that there are always people and organisations out there who will listen and offer practical help, advice and support. After all, you know what they say—it has just been said: a problem shared is a problem halved.

Vote 100 and International Women’s Day

Colleen Fletcher Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

I am very proud to be sitting on these famous green Benches on International Women’s Day, surrounded by other women representing constituencies in all four corners of the United Kingdom.

Since the Representation of the People Act 1918 and the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, both of which celebrate their 100th anniversary this year, significant advances have been made in ensuring that Parliament represents more accurately the country that it serves. Since those Acts, 489 women have been elected as Members of this House— a milestone that must have seemed so distant to women such as Mary Smith, who delivered the first women’s suffrage petition to Parliament in 1832. Currently, there are 208 female MPs, and I am honoured to be the first female MP for Coventry North East.

Alongside those Acts, great changes—including the industrial revolution and both world wars—successfully challenged the notion that a woman’s role was solely domestic, and opened up possibilities for women economically, politically and socially. Despite this progress, the battle is far from won. Yes, it is fantastic that we have 208 female MPs in the House, but that equates to only 32%. At the last general election, only an additional 12 women were elected; at the current rate it will take 50 years to achieve gender equality in Parliament. One hundred years after some women won the right to vote, and some were afforded the opportunity to stand for election as an MP, the fight for political equality must continue.

I am proud to come from a party that has such an impressive record on striving to achieve these things. Labour has more female MPs than all other parties put together and is the only party to advocate the use of all-women shortlists to address the inequalities still present in the current system.

I have seen many, many changes from when I first started work—in a job where I did not get equal pay. I was happy to see the introduction of the Equal Pay Act 1970 and the Work and Families Act 2006, which extended the right to statutory maternity leave for a full year. When I had my children, I was back at work after six weeks and 12 weeks respectively. I needed the money, and I needed to keep my job.

As we have heard in previous contributions, there have been many other advances in the cause of women’s equality. However, more still needs to be done, especially regarding maternity rights and the gender pay gap. In Coventry—the city I represent—a recent survey found that fewer than 20% of female respondents felt they are treated equally to men. A further 42% believed they have experienced gender discrimination in the workplace, and nearly 60% felt that women are under pressure to look good at all times.

It is clear that significant advances have been made since the Representation of the People Act and the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act. However, the results of that survey are alarming and remind us how far we have yet to go. Women are still paid less than men in many fields, and gender stereotypes surrounding certain degree subjects and industries still exist. Women are still objectified in the media, and for many, politics remains a man’s world, with many women feeling this glass ceiling will never, ever shatter. We have come so far, but the fight for gender equality is not over. With cuts, especially to tax credits, the NHS and social care budgets, it is often women who are hit the hardest.

Before I conclude, I would like to pay tribute on this special day to a great, strong and formidable woman, who was elected and who swept to power on 3 May 1979. She was to inspire a young woman who watched her every move—a young woman who, because of that woman’s inspiration and very presence, would become the 414th woman ever to be elected to this place. She is probably not the person Members are thinking of: this great woman lived in Coventry, and in her kitchen there was a plaque that said, “A woman’s place is in her trade union”. Her name was Dorothy Dalton; she was my mother, and she was elected to Coventry City Council on that very night—a night when the Labour party swept to power in Coventry.

Great women inspire other women. Women of influence give other women confidence. Thinking about all women around the world, I hope the Minister will join me in honouring International Women’s Day with not only a reflection on what we have achieved so far, but an acknowledgment that more can and must be done for gender equality.