Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Villiers]

Up until Monday, I would have said the Stormont House agreement. I think that is still the greatest thing that I have contributed to and it is still on the road. We have had a bump on the road, but the Stormont House agreement will carry on. The other thing of which I am proud is the progress that we have made towards devolution of corporation tax. I do not want to see that thrown off course by events that have taken place this week.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

5. What further steps the Government plan to take to resolve outstanding issues relating to flags and parades.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

9. What further steps the Government plan to take to resolve outstanding issues relating to flags and parades.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)]

The Stormont House agreement identified a clear way forward on parades and flags. [Interruption.] The Government will continue to work with the five parties in the Executive on the implementation of all the provisions of the agreement, including on these issues. [Interruption.]

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer, although I must admit I had trouble hearing it. Unrest around the parades has an unsettling impact on the community, on local businesses and on tourism. What steps are the Government taking this year to try to ensure a peaceful parade season?

Growth Deals

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s endorsement. The investment in the north-east has been striking, and it is making a big impact. We have been talking about the local growth fund, but there is also the regional growth fund, of which the north-east has been a big beneficiary to the tune of more than £300 million. That is the right way to go—to take money from Departments in Whitehall and to put it into the hands of local leaders and business leaders in the community, because they know where to get the best bang for their buck.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I understand that the Deputy Prime Minister is in Bristol West this morning to announce the new money that Bristol will be getting. I am sure the visit has nothing to do with the fact that the election prospects of the local Liberal Democrat MP are looking rather precarious. I welcome the new money for Bristol, but urge the Minister to consider one proposal that has not yet received funding, which is a centre of excellence for the food and drinks industry. It is an exciting proposal and Bristol would be the perfect city to host it.

[Greg Clark]

I will certainly look at that proposal, but the great advantage of these growth deals is that it is not me, but local leaders who make the decision to put such projects forward. I hope the hon. Lady will take up that matter with the West of England local enterprise partnership. The Deputy Prime Minister may be in Bristol today, but representatives from Bristol came to 10 Downing street on Tuesday, and I was pleased to have the chair of the LEP and the mayor of Bristol, George Ferguson, pitching to international investors some of the fantastic projects that are available in Bristol. The projects went down a storm, and the meeting was a huge hit, so, quite apart from the investment that comes from these local growth deals, the interest in international investment in Bristol is now rising very strongly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I cannot really add to what Sir John Chilcot has said. That independent inquiry is under the control of the inquiry members. I can say that we have responded to every request for extra resources; none has been turned down. I would just add that if the previous Government had launched the inquiry at the time it was requested, it could have been finished and could have reported long ago.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T8. In the debate on food banks just before Christmas, the Minister for Civil Society kept saying that the reasons for food bank use were complex and overlapping. He would not go beyond that. Will he join me in condemning the Tory councillor who said that the only people who use food banks are those with drug, alcohol and mental health problems, and will he acknowledge that the top two reasons for food bank use are due to the failings of this Government’s welfare system?

[Mr Rob Wilson]

I think the thing to say about food banks is that I and Government Members commend Britain’s very strong tradition of volunteering and community action, which sees people coming together to support those in need. Food banks are just one example that I come across on a daily basis.

Food Banks

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)]

In the limited time available, I would like to draw the House’s attention to the activity in my constituency.

In Clackmannanshire, we are fortunate that individuals have committed to establishing food banks at The Gate in Alloa and the drop-in food bank run by Activ8 in Sauchie. I have to say a big thank you for the dedication and foresight of people such as Evelyn Paterson, Val Rose and Sandra Gruar, because without their commitment the situation in Clackmannanshire would be a whole lot worse, while in Kinross-shire and South Perthshire, part of my constituency, people such as Les Paskin, who manages the Perth and Kinross food bank, deserve our gratitude for a venture described by the Daily Record as a “Food lifeline for Crieff”.

I want to put on the record the level of support these operations are providing to my communities. Perhaps the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) can listen and get some of the numbers now. In the first year of its existence, Perth and Kinross food bank provided 1,573 food parcels. That is three days’ food for 2,772 people, including 712 children, and the equivalent of 25,000 meals. The Gate has delivered 214 food packs, feeding 371 people with 7,745 meals between July and September of this year alone. At the end of October, it had supplied 21,700 meals to people in crisis in the preceding 10 months. That equates to a 35% increase in the number of people supported and a 50% increase in the number of meals supplied. The numbers show that 49% are due to benefit delay or sanction, a figure even greater than the 37% due to poverty or debt.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

A constituent came to me on Friday who has been sanctioned for three months—that is three months without a single penny coming in. He showed me evidence that he had applied for 21 jobs on one website alone in the past three days, but because he could not show that he had handed in his CV in one particular place he was sanctioned. That is what we are dealing with. Does my hon. Friend share my disappointment that the Minister will not acknowledge that?

[Gordon Banks]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern about, and her abhorrence of, what is going on. I am sure that every Opposition Member has had people coming to their constituency surgeries and delivering that kind of message. It is abhorrent and it must stop.

My office in Alloa is the third biggest referrer of those in need to the Gate food bank and my constituency offices in Alloa and Crieff act not only as drop-off points for donations but as collection points for food parcels. Let me take the House back a couple of weeks. We supplied a food parcel from my constituency office in Alloa for someone who had prearranged collection. The gentleman came and collected his food parcel and one of my members of staff went out of the office a few minutes later only to find him sitting in the street outside my office eating a cold tin of spaghetti. He was that desperate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) talked about Members of this House who have been around for some time. Well, I have been around for some time and I have never known a situation like this.

Last Saturday, I attended a Christmas lunch for pensioners at the Trinity House community centre in my constituency. It was a lovely occasion, but I did ask myself what kind of lunch some of the people would have been having if they had not been there. I went to a school and the head teacher told me that the meal provided for children there was the only proper meal they had all day; I had to ask myself what happens during holiday periods.

I went to the New Covenant church for a carol service last Sunday in another part of my constituency. I had a chat with the pastor and I was told of the things that were done at that church. He told me about its food programme and its food bank. He told me that the church has volunteers who work there and in the community but cannot find jobs when they have left the volunteer period.

That night, I went home and saw on television a commercial that said, “Help Unilever and Oxfam fight hunger in the UK”. I found it utterly shaming that a commercial such as that had been made, where people were saying that there was so much hunger in this country that action against it had to be organised. Despite the damage done by this Government, this is one of the richest countries in the world, and it is utterly humiliating that people should have to go to food banks to get a meal.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I do not know whether my right hon. Friend has yet had a chance to visit the excellent FoodCycle Manchester. I am a patron of the organisation and was at FoodCycle Bristol on Sunday. It uses food waste—surplus food—to provide meals for people who cannot afford them. For the 60 or so people I met there on Sunday, it was probably the only nutritious cooked meal they were going to get that week. I urge him to visit.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

My hon. Friend has got it right, because one sees this again and again. Why? It is because of poverty. The figures show that in my constituency 42% of children live in poverty. Mine is the 10th worst constituency for that in the whole UK. The city of Manchester is fourth in Britain for poverty, and that is according to the Department for Education’s own definition. Children are said to be living in relative poverty if their household’s income is less than 60% of the median national income.

Manchester is a target for this Government. They have taken away more Government funding from my city than from anywhere else in the country, whereas in other parts of the country, such as Surrey, they are actually increasing the amount of Government funding. It is a cynical political trick. They know that they cannot win seats in Manchester, so why make life comfortable for people there? By contrast, in Surrey they do have some hope of winning constituencies. It is a political manoeuvre and my constituents suffer because of it.

The Government’s policy can be summed up:

“For whosoever hath, to him shall be given…but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.”

Benefit sanctions are spoken of again and again. Heaven knows I have a case load, as the Secretary of State knows from his correspondence with me, but people should not look for benefits other than those to which they are entitled by family circumstances. They should be able to have jobs. In Manchester, we have the Manchester living wage, but it does not prevail. If people do not have incomes or jobs they cannot buy food. It is terrible that we have in this country—a progressive western European country—hunger that is categorised by Unilever and Oxfam. The people who provide food banks are fine, decent people. They are good people—valuable people—but we should not need them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor-General]

I do not have the specific figures, but I know from a recent report from Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate that there have been examples of best practice in the north-west and the north-east. Those examples could be followed by other CPS areas to help to increase the number of prosecutions.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

4. What recent assessment he has made of how effectively police and prosecutors co-operate in securing convictions of perpetrators of child abuse.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of how effectively police and prosecutors co-operate in securing convictions of perpetrators of child abuse.

[The Attorney-General (Jeremy Wright)]

The Crown Prosecution Service prosecutes child abuse cases robustly. In 2013-14, the number of child abuse prosecutions rose by 440 to 7,998 and the conviction rate rose to 76.2%—the highest ever, and a reflection of the close co-operation between the police and the CPS.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the Attorney-General for his response. The excellent recent report produced by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) raised concerns in relation to child sex exploitation and grooming in the Manchester area that negative comments by the CPS about the victims’ behaviour had influenced the decision not to bring charges. Will he ask Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service inspectorate to review those charging decisions made by the CPS to ensure that the new guidelines—which do not allow prejudices and stereotypes about the victims to be taken into account—are now being adhered to?

[The Attorney-General]

Yes, I have seen the report by the hon. Member for Stockport and I agree that it is an impressive and particularly striking piece of work. I hope the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) will be relieved to know that updated guidance for Crown prosecutors on this type of offence is already available and makes precisely the point to which she refers. A number of myths need to be addressed, and not only in the minds of prosecutors; there needs to be communication with courts and juries to make sure that some expectations that some jurors and some prosecutors have of how victims of this type of offending ought to behave are challenged and dealt with. That guidance is in a much better place now, and the CPS is serious about it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am happy to look at what my hon. Friend says. We do have the Telephone Preference Service that helps people to avoid a lot of those calls, but I have had pressure for more to be done, and I am happy to look at what he says.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q2. A survey I did of GPs in Bristol this summer showed that they are at breaking point: their workloads have doubled, they cannot recruit and surgeries are at serious risk of closure. It was said this week that the Prime Minister did not have a clue about the NHS reforms. Will he at least acknowledge that it is now harder to be a GP and to see a GP on his watch?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course there are pressures on our NHS; everybody knows that. We made some big decisions on becoming the Government, which were to go on spending on the NHS—we put £12.7 billion more in—and to cut the bureaucracy so that there are 20,000 fewer administrators and 6,000 more doctors, including, crucially, 1,000 more GPs. We need to go on to ensure that the reform plus the money eases the pressure on our health service so that we can continue to see the sort of success that we have in our NHS today.

Local Growth Deals

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

It is true that one of the hallmarks of a successful local economy is people putting aside their differences and working together. One feature of the growth deals that have been negotiated is the remarkable ability of people who previously did not get on to put their differences aside and work together locally. I hope that will be the case in the north-east.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Some exciting stuff is being bid for in Bristol, such as robotics and the use of composites in marine technology, as well as much-needed investment in public transport, but may I ask the Minister about flexibility? When money has previously been offered by local government, local people have been told that there is no scope for negotiation and that all the money will simply be taken away if they object to the proposed schemes.

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; she gives an accurate description of what happened under the previous Labour Government. One of the differences we are making is giving the flexibility to allow good and capable local enterprise partnerships to set their own priorities, so if an important economic opportunity arises, they should be able to change things around. That will be available to Bristol, as it will to other places across the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I agree. I have spent some time in my hon. Friend’s constituency, stuck on the A5, and I know how much that remedial work is needed. It is vital for that part of our country. We are investing more in our railways than at any time since Victorian times and more in our roads than at any time since the 1970s. That is key to the success of our long-term economic plan.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Q7. Is there a good reason why the Prime Minister will not condemn the tax affairs of Tory-supporting Gary Barlow as morally wrong?

[The Prime Minister]

I could not have been clearer. I condemn all aggressive tax avoidance schemes—and more than condemning them, this Government have taken legislative action to say to people, to coin a phrase, “We want your money back for good.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 25th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

If I may say so, I always keep the funding arrangements under review, and I am always happy to discuss them with my colleagues in the Treasury. The nature of the SFO’s work load is very flexible, and I therefore think it almost inevitable that if it is to do its work effectively, there will be occasions when it will need extra funding, or will require funding in excess of what it needs. This is an interesting balance which we need to look at. That said, I am mindful of the fact that there may be other ways in which the funding can be delivered and I discuss that frequently with the director of the Serious Fraud Office.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

9. What discussions he has had with the Crown Prosecution Service on prosecuting crimes of violence against subcultures as hate crimes.

[The Solicitor-General (Oliver Heald)]

I pay tribute to the work the hon. Lady has done in this area. The CPS prosecutes violent offences robustly, including cases where victims have been attacked on the basis of subculture. Targeting particular groups is treated as an aggravating feature in such cases.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the Minister for that response. As he is aware, I have been working with the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. She was killed seven years ago and her mother has been tirelessly campaigning for police forces to record such crimes as hate crimes. Might it be part of the sentencing guidelines given to courts that they can sentence specifically in relation to hate crimes?

[The Solicitor-General]

At present statutory provisions cover cases motivated by hostility or prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity, but none the less it is possible for a judge to sentence on the basis that the crime was motivated by hate of a different kind, as Judge Russell did in the case the hon. Lady mentioned, and to treat that as an aggravating feature. I think the hon. Lady is arranging a meeting at the House of Commons tomorrow at which the Sophie Lancaster Foundation will be having a listening event.

Tributes to Tony Benn

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I too rise to speak as one of Tony Benn’s successors as a Member of Parliament, in my case for the constituency of Bristol East, which he represented from 1950 to 1983, with a brief interregnum when we had the bother about the hereditary peerage and he had to fight two by-elections. He probably holds a record in that he was elected on a by-election when Sir Stafford Cripps retired in 1950 because of ill health, and then fought two by-elections, at one of which he was disqualified. The people of Bristol, South-East, as it was then, knew perfectly well that he was not entitled to be elected to Parliament, but voted for him nevertheless. Two years later, when he managed after a bitter battle to get the law changed and the Peerage Act 1963 introduced, he then fought another by-election, and he also fought the Chesterfield by-election, which, as I said, must be something of a record.

I am also here to speak on behalf of Madam Deputy Speaker, who, I think, first met Tony Benn at the age of 21—when she was 21, not when he was 21; she does not go back that far—and worked for him as an assistant and eventually joined him as a colleague as the MP for Bristol South from 1987.

Tony Benn was a man of the establishment. He came from a privileged—dare I say “posh”?—background. He was privately educated, he read PPE at Oxford, he was president of the Oxford Union, and apart from two years serving in the forces during the second world war, the only other job he held was at another bastion of the British establishment, the BBC. His father was an MP and both his grandfathers were MPs.

Despite that background as a man of the establishment, Tony was also a man of the people. That came out strongly in what my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) said. Describing it as the common touch makes it sounds quite patronising, but there was nothing condescending about it. So many people have stopped me in the street in recent days—the same has happened to Madam Deputy Speaker—to offer their personal accounts of his kindness and friendliness. The leader of Bristol council’s Labour group told me about a time he came over to her house. Her two young children had just been given bicycles for their birthdays, and he insisted on riding them up and down the hallway on their tiny bikes. It is little things like that we remember.

Madam Deputy Speaker and others have talked about the contraption he rode around in at election times, a chair strapped to the top of an old Austin Cambridge. He would be driven around the streets, precariously perched on top of the car with a thermos flask in one hand—he was never without his tea—and a megaphone in the other. It is amazing how many people remember him doing that. It is not something I care to replicate—I do not think that I would last very long up there. There is also a brilliant picture of him from 1957, up a ladder decorating the constituency office in just a little pair of shorts. The office needs decorating again, but I do not think that I will be going up a ladder.

I want to mention some of the key things for which he is remembered in Bristol. He supported the Bristol bus boycott in 1963, which was inspired by the civil rights movement in America. There was a colour bar on black workers being employed by the bus company. He was very supportive of Paul Stephenson and others who led the boycott. Eventually, two years later, it led to the passing of the Race Relations Act 1965. People still remember his role in that. He said, “I will not use the buses. I may even have to get on a bike.” He is also remembered for Concorde, of course, the 45th anniversary of which is coming up. A permanent memorial to it will be placed in Filton, just outside Bristol. A civic memorial service will also be held for Tony Benn soon.

In the tributes that followed his death, he was quoted by Madam Deputy Speaker as having advised her, “People will attack you because they want to deflect you. You ignore the attacks and get on with understanding the people. You were put there by the people and they can take it away, so stay close to them.” I think that sums him up. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, he never lost sight of the fact that he was one man with many employers. In that regard, too, he was a man of the people.

My last memory of Tony Benn—I did not know him very well, because our times did not overlap—was when I had the somewhat dubious honour of being invited to be on the Left Field stage at Glastonbury last year. I say that it was a dubious honour because the three of us on the stage were Billy Bragg, who of course is an absolute idol of the Glastonbury audience and a national treasure, Tony Benn, and if anyone could command more adoration at Glastonbury than Billy Bragg it was him, and me, feeling something of a spare part. It took so long for the session to get going because he of course received a standing ovation as he was led up to the stage. So many people wanted to shake his hand and show how much they admired him and respected his views.

He was obviously in frail health and I do not think that he could hear the questions he was being asked all that clearly, but he spoke about the power of politics to effect social change. Those in the audience were probably quite hung over, having been up all night listening to music and doing various other things, but it was clear that he totally inspired them, because despite his physical frailty and advanced age, he was still saying, “You can do something. You can achieve something, just by getting out there and keeping at it.” I think that is his lasting legacy, because he believed in politics. There is so much cynicism about politics these days. He was a rare creature, as he was able to persuade people not to be cynical about politics and to believe that politics can actually change things.