Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
As of December 2023, 91% of all claims either had received a final decision or were less than six months old. The Windrush scheme has reduced the time taken to allocate a substantive casework decision from 18 months to less than four months. That includes making all essential eligibility checks together with a preliminary assessment to make an initial interim payment of £10,000 wherever possible.
Vicky Foxcroft
In response to a parliamentary question, the former Immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), confirmed that by April last year, 41 of the 6,122 Windrush compensation claimants had sadly died before their claims were settled—an increase of more than 100% since 2021. Will the Minister update us on how many applicants have now died while waiting for the Government to right the wrongs done to thousands of innocent survivors and their families?
Laura Farris
I can confirm that we have been made aware of 53 claimants who have unfortunately passed away. I want to provide the hon. Lady with two reassurances: first, if we are notified an individual is suffering from a critical or life-limiting illness, their claim is prioritised; secondly, if they do pass away, their family are still able to pursue their claim.
Mohammad Yasin
Only 14% of 150,000 eligible applicants to the compensation scheme have received redress. Will the Government learn lessons from the Horizon scandal and listen to victims and campaign groups who are calling on them to lower the burden of proof for claims, and ensure that legal aid is guaranteed to all eligible claimants?
Laura Farris
So far, £75 million has been paid out on more than 2,000 claims. I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that it is not appropriate to draw precise equivalence with things like the Horizon scheme, because that involved a judicial process, with different facts, different losses and different harms. However, we have been making consistent improvements to the compensation scheme, including making it easier for applicants to use, and we have rapidly accelerated the speed at which we make our payments.
Janet Daby
Victims of the Windrush scandal have experienced huge injustices of destitution, humiliation and varied health issues, as well as delays in receiving compensation. To make matters worse, they do not currently receive compensation for the loss of private pensions. Will the Minister look into reducing the delays and compensating Windrush victims for private pension losses?
Laura Farris
We consider each claim on its facts, and no two claims are the same. I would be happy to write to the hon. Lady about specific issues, but I reassure her that we do not take a blanket approach to each individual and we assess claims individually.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
The Conservatives have failed the Windrush generation twice now: first by denying their rights as British citizens, and secondly by delaying their compensation, as we have just heard again. Labour would sort out the compensation scheme, re-establish the major change programme and Windrush unit scrapped by the Conservatives and appoint a Windrush commissioner to ensure that this kind of scandal never happens again. What is the Government’s plan here?
Laura Farris
I find it difficult to accept that a scheme is failing when more than 80% of claims have now received a final decision, and more than 90% have either received a final decision or are less than six months old. So I disagree with that. I think it was suggested that we should take the scheme out of the Home Office—perhaps that is Labour’s proposal. I remind the hon. Lady that Martin Levermore, the independent adviser to the Windrush scheme, supported the scheme remaining in the Home Office in his most recent report, published in March 2022.
Anneliese Dodds
There is no accountability for the failures being felt so acutely by so many people who, frankly, do not have much time left to see justice. The Windrush generation and their families helped to build our NHS, but today we see big inequalities in health outcomes. Labour’s race equality Act would include a target to close the appalling maternal mortality gap for black and Asian women. It seems another nine months have passed since the maternity disparities taskforce last met—is that because the Minister for Women and Equalities thinks this is another of her alleged fake problems?
Laura Farris
I say to the hon. Lady that that is not accepted. In fact, the Health Secretary made an announcement on maternal services this week; I think it would be appropriate to refer to my colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care, and then I will write to the hon. Lady on this point.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
I meet the Domestic Abuse Commissioner regularly, and our last joint visit was to a refuge for minoritised women for whom honour-based abuse was a specific issue. It is important work of the Home Office to look at the specific harms connected with this issue. One of the things we are most proud of is our forced marriage unit, which has provided support services to more than 300 cases in the past year. We also fund a national honour-based abuse helpline, which has helped more than 2,500 people in the past 12 months.
Kim Johnson
Savera UK, which is based in my constituency, and the Domestic Abuse Commissioner are concerned by this Government’s failure to provide a statutory definition of so-called honour-based abuse. Does the Minister agree that that will lead to under-reporting and a lack of detail on the scale of the problem?
Laura Farris
I am afraid that the Government take the opposite view. We use the expression honour-based abuse, which has been controversial in itself, because often victims understand it the best. Victims of honour-based abuse are often the hardest to reach, and sometimes are the least able to articulate their claims and to escape their circumstance. We keep the definition wide to capture successfully all the various insidious forms that it takes. Let me reassure the hon. Lady that both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Home Office use a working definition to guide investigations and, so far, it is proving effective.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
One of the most insidious forms of domestic abuse is conversion therapy. It is cruel and it does not work. Could my hon. Friend give me some indication of when legislation will come forward to ban it?
Laura Farris
I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Government will publish a draft Bill on that in due course.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
Every year, 800 women pass through immigration detention, including centres such as Yarl’s Wood in my constituency. Many of those women have been trafficked or are victims of sexual abuse. I am working with a group, Women for Refugee Women, to provide a snapshot of the backgrounds of these women. Will the Minister agree to meet us to analyse the results of their findings?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Laura Farris)
I would of course be happy to meet my hon. Friend. Women who have survived trafficking or sexual abuse are detained only when the evidence of vulnerability in their individual case is outweighed by immigration removal considerations. Victims of torture have their case considered by a single specialist team, autonomous of general caseworkers, and victims of modern slavery undergo a needs assessment to identify recovery needs.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Women (Maria Caulfield)
I thank the hon. Lady for her work in this space. I responded to her letter last week as quickly as possible and I am glad she has received the response. I just want to confirm that from April the HRT prepayment certificate will be available to women—at £18.70 for a whole year—saving women hundreds of pounds on HRT prescriptions every year.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
Kemi Badenoch
The Government will be supporting the Equality and Human Rights Commission in developing a statutory code on workplace harassment. We will be working closely on that. The Government are also preparing their own practical guidance for employers on preventing sexual harassment in the workplace, which should address the very issues my hon. Friend just raised.
Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I think the hon. Gentleman’s proposal would also increase Bills for many millions of families, so I am not sure it is the right approach. What we are doing is providing around £900 of specific support for all families’ energy bills this winter, and there is further targeted support for those who are most vulnerable, which is absolutely the right thing to do. As the Chancellor has already announced, we are also consulting on the best thing to do going forward, including options, as the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, such as a social tariff, as part of our wider reforms of the retail energy market.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
Every single country in the G7 requires some level of minimum service to be provided when strikes take place in essential public services, often with laws that go much further than that. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the British people should be entitled to the same basic level of protection when strikes take place in these services, and does he think the former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair had a point when he said last year that the “big defect” at the birth of the Labour party was its ties to organised labour?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend put that very well. She is right to make the point that what we are proposing is in line with the vast majority of other countries around the world. Indeed, many countries ban strikes in blue-light services altogether, which we are not doing. We are joining countries across continental Europe in having minimum safety laws, as I think the public would reasonably expect a level of emergency life-saving care in the event of strikes. That is a common-sense, reasonable position to take, and we all know why the party opposite cannot bring itself to support it.
Illegal Immigration
Laura Farris Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The Home Secretary and I want to see exactly the same thing. That is why with our new plan we will cut the initial asylum backlog by the end of next year. People should get swift processing, but in order to deliver that sustainably we need to reduce the pressure on the system, and that means stopping the flow of new illegal migrants coming here.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
It is absolutely right that there is alignment with our main European counterparts in how we deal with asylum claims from safe countries, so I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the agreement with Albania. Given the automatic return principle that will apply to arrivals from Albania, there will be an incentive to try to conceal their true country of origin on arrival. We already know that that is a problem with the channel crossings, with people disposing of their ID documents mid-crossing, often at the direction of people smugglers. In anticipation of this issue, can he reassure the House that there will be a sufficiently robust evidential threshold that will prevent people from falsifying their claim?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent suggestion. I also give her the reassurance that for the first time we will have British officials stationed in Albania, particularly at Tirana airport, and Albanian officials here in the UK to deal with the problem that she identifies. I am confident that that joint working will help us deliver the solution we want.
G20
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
The conversations I had with other leaders were incredibly appreciative of the role that the United Kingdom is playing in helping to tackle suffering, poverty and poor sanitation around the world. What was highlighted in particular was our recent commitment of £1 billion to the Global Fund, as well as our track record of supporting countries to alleviate famine. Those are things that everyone in this House should be proud of and this Government will continue to champion them.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
The whole House will welcome the shared commitment to the defence of Ukraine and the rule of law, but my right hon. Friend will know that key to that last element is the work of the International Criminal Court, which in March launched its investigation into war crimes, with an aspiration to issue an indictment by the end of the year. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the UK will continue to do all it can to support that work, including in the difficult task that lies ahead of obtaining custody of Russian military generals so they can stand trial?
The Prime Minister
Obviously, this is an area that my hon. Friend knows well, and she is right to highlight it. I am pleased to tell her that the United Kingdom was out in front in providing both technical and financial resources for the efforts to gather the evidence. I know that the Justice Secretary is in touch with the British prosecutor as well, and the team will have our full support.
Tributes to Her Late Majesty the Queen
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
It is with profound sadness that I rise to pay tribute to Her late Majesty the Queen on behalf of my constituents in west Berkshire. She was the lodestar of our national life, and in west Berkshire she was treasured for her passionate engagement in racing, our signature pastime. She was a frequent visitor to Newbury racecourse, sent multiple champions for training in Lambourn and even purchased her own racing stables in West Ilsley. The legendary Lambourn trainer Nicky Henderson told me that when a foal of particularly promising parentage was born in the spring of this year, she said, “Nicky, when this one runs for the first time as a four-year-old, I’ll be 100, you’ll be 75 and we’ll be the oldest owner-trainer combination in the world.”
In the end it was not to be, but it was at Newbury racecourse that Her late Majesty saw some of the greatest triumphs of her racing life. In April 1958, six years into her reign, she was there when Doutelle gave her a first winner in the John Porter stakes. It was the year when Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister, Sputnik 1 was launched into space, Elvis topped the charts with “Jailhouse Rock” and Vietnam stood on the brink of war.
She saw victory again in August 1967 with Hopeful Venture in the Geoffrey Freer stakes. It was the era of Harold Wilson and the Beatles, when NASA was putting the finishing touches to its preparations for launching man on to the moon. Just after Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 election landslide, she was there again with Rhyme Royal, which came home for her in the London gold cup. It was the year of the Iran hostage crisis and the assassination of Lord Mountbatten at the hands of the IRA. She saw Phantom Gold cruise to victory in 1996—the year of the Dunblane massacre and just months before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Her last visit to Newbury was in 2017. She entered the winners enclosure just one day after her 91st birthday, when Call to Mind was victorious in the Dubai Duty Free maiden stakes. The country was in the midst of a general election campaign, and was reeling from terrorist attacks in Westminster, London Bridge and Manchester.
Through her reign—war and peace, triumph and disaster, Presidents and Prime Ministers—she was our strength and our comfort, and we in Newbury will always be proud that she derived moments of pure joy from the place that we call home. I send my sincere condolences to the royal family, and also to the family of the Princess of Wales, who are my constituents. May she rest in peace.
Bill of Rights
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
May I gently say to the hon. Gentleman, of whom I am quite fond and with whom I have debated these issues many times, it cannot be both ripping up human rights and a damp squib? May I suggest that he reads what people have to say on this—including Jonathan Fisher QC, who has written a very thoughtful piece about reform; Lord Sumption, a former justice of the Supreme Court; and John Larkin, a former Attorney General in Northern Ireland? He might get a slightly more sober analysis.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for the letter that he wrote to the Justice Committee this morning. In it, he said “The Bill will prevent human rights from being used as a way to bring claims on overseas military operations”, but does he recall that some of the gravest crimes of the Iraq war were revealed only through recourse to the Human Rights Act, enforced in our domestic courts? I think particularly of the systematic torture of detainees by British soldiers in Basra which was revealed in the Baha Mousa case only because of the Human Rights Act, after the Ministry of Defence had declined to investigate. Can he provide reassurances to the House that the new Bill of Rights will not operate to suppress such serious human rights abuses coming to light in the future?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I understand my hon. Friend’s point. Of course, we need to have proper accountability when anything goes wrong. The professionalism of our armed forces is second to none, but mistakes can happen and there needs to be accountability. The reality is that we have the international law of armed conflict, which is designed to do that. It has been unhelpful, and indeed has created legal uncertainty, to layer an extra tier of human rights obligations on top of that. It has created uncertainty as to the state of the law, and huge uncertainty for our armed forces. We will make sure that there is the accountability that she seeks, but we will also deal with the extraterritorial jurisdiction, which, frankly, has encouraged litigation and many spurious claims, as well as the ones that she mentioned.
Legal Aid
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Dominic Raab
The proposals on the Public Defender Service and the means test review, and the increase in the fees, will all look across the board at areas where there is a scarcity of supply of practitioners willing to take on that work, in order to fill the gaps. I look forward to that and I hope that the hon. Lady will contribute to the consultation.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
The Government are to be congratulated on accepting Sir Christopher’s headline recommendations in full. I saw how much care and consideration went into that piece of work, but I would like to ask my right hon. Friend about chapter 13 of the report, which deals with fee income at the criminal Bar. Sir Christopher found that at every level of seniority female barristers earned less than their male counterparts, on average by 34%. He also found that non-white criminal practitioners earned less than white criminal practitioners by an average of 10%. What reassurances can he provide that this significant injection of public money will not be used to sustain potentially unlawful pay disparities?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this very important point. In 2020, the gender balance at the point of entry among specialist criminal barristers was roughly 50:50, but at the senior level there is a much higher imbalance, with a ratio of 70:30 men to women. What are we doing about that? Our fees changes, for example in relation to duty solicitors, will particularly support younger lawyers. They will disproportionately help women with caring responsibilities.
We are also looking at further diversification through the roles and the rights that CILEX members can acquire. CILEX has allowed non-graduate routes into the profession, and I think 76% of its members are women. More generally, breaking down glass ceilings and barriers to entry into the profession is important. Beyond fees, the consultation will allow us to consult and to understand what more we can do systemically to attract a broader diversity of practitioners into the profession and then, critically, allow them to flourish.
Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Tom Pursglove
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who is a tireless campaigner on the issue of restorative justice, for sharing the APPG’s report with me and my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, who I know has also thanked him for his efforts. We are carefully considering its recommendations and will respond in due course. I am particularly mindful of the fact that, especially in relation to acquisitive crime, restorative justice can play a significant part in righting such wrongs, and I would of course be delighted to meet him to discuss this further.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Dominic Raab)
This Government are committed to bringing more perpetrators of domestic abuse to justice. It is a key plank of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which creates new offences such as non-fatal strangulation, and extends the coercive or controlling behaviour offence to include former partners.
Laura Farris
The excellent work the Government have done on domestic abuse risks being seriously undermined by recent reports of Met police conduct published by the Independent Office for Police Conduct. One officer who had attended a domestic abuse incident said of his victim that she was mad and deserved a slap. As Members of this House will know, that was the tip of the iceberg of the remarks uncovered. Police conduct is of course the subject matter of the Angiolini inquiry, but before that concludes, what work is my right hon. Friend doing with the Home Secretary to ensure that domestic abuse victims retain confidence in the criminal justice system?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. The remarks she cited are utterly abhorrent I would imagine to everyone on all sides of the House. The public rightly expect the behaviour of the police to be beyond reproach, which is why we have tasked the Angiolini inquiry, as she said. In addition to that work, as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Crime and Policing set out last week, inspections are ongoing in forces across England and Wales to judge their vetting and counter-corruption capabilities. More broadly, we are of course taking forward the victims Bill consultation and we have increased funding for support services. They have actually increased to £185 million by 2024-25, which will help fund an increase—by about a half, up to 1,000—in the number of independent domestic abuse advisers. So we will keep showing zero tolerance of domestic abuse while those wider inquiries are ongoing.