Food Banks
Debate between Maria Eagle and George Howarth(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Maria Eagle
My hon. Friend is correct. I know that the two Trussell Trust food banks in my constituency have figures similar to the national average, which show that over a fifth—22% in my constituency—of people who resort to food banks for an emergency food package are in work.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
My hon. Friend will be aware of the statistics from the Big Help project in Knowsley, which covers her constituency and mine: 23% of those who receive vouchers to go to the food bank are in work—in other words, the working poor. Even more alarmingly, 45% of the vouchers issued involve children.
Maria Eagle
My right hon. Friend is correct. The figures for the Knowsley food bank, which cover his constituency and mine, are pretty similar to the figures for the south Liverpool food bank: benefit delays 28.8%, benefit changes 14.5%, and low income—in other words, poverty pay—22%. This is a problem that he and I recognise from our constituencies, and it needs to be addressed.
Food Banks
Debate between Maria Eagle and George Howarth(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Maria Eagle
No. Let me make it clear that I will not take many interventions because of the number—[Interruption.] I am seeking to give hon. Members in all parts of the House a chance to get into the debate, and it will not help if I take three quarters of an hour to open it.
Mr George Howarth
As a fellow Knowsley MP, does my hon. Friend agree that it is a disgrace that, from April to 13 November, 756 children and 1,424 adults were referred to food banks with vouchers? We congratulate the agencies involved in doing that work, but is it not absolutely disgraceful that this is what we are reduced to?
Maria Eagle
I agree. My right hon. Friend and I share food bank provision in our constituencies, so I know that to be true.
Since April this year, over half a million people have already relied on assistance from the 400 food banks run by the Trussell Trust charity—that is double the number of food banks compared with this time last year. Of those half a million people, one third are children. In Britain, the seventh richest country on the planet, in the 21st century, it is a scandal, and it is getting worse. More people have been going to food banks in the past nine months than in the whole of last year. Half a million people have gone to food banks compared with 26,000 before the last general election.
Hillsborough Disaster
Debate between Maria Eagle and George Howarth(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
Every weekend, hundreds of thousands of people attend public events, including many sporting events. They leave their homes in the not-unreasonable expectation that those who are responsible for the management and safety of those events will do their jobs professionally, thoroughly and properly, and that all the experience available will be brought to bear in those situations. What they do not expect is that if something does go wrong, as things do occasionally at events, any victims will be turned into villains. At the heart of the continuing problem that the families, I and many Members have about what happened at Hillsborough is that that is exactly what happened—there was an attempt to turn the people who were victims, in the ways described by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), into villains.
My hon. Friend spoke movingly and eloquently, and I think that he spoke for the whole House. His speech was thorough and covered all the events, problems and things that have gone wrong since, but what he did by reading out the names of the victims was to bring things back to the human scale. I want to do that now by mentioning two people who were constituents of mine at the time—they have since moved—Mr and Mrs Joynes. They lost a son, Nicholas, who has been named by my hon. Friend, and I had a lot to do with them in the early years after the tragedy occurred. They would not want to be seen as being any different from any of the other families concerned, but I single them out because they typify the dignity with which people have responded to the loss of loved ones.
I mention Mr and Mrs Joynes because it was at their request that I attended a day of the inquest hearings, at which I was appalled. It was clear from the way those mini inquests were handled that the whole event seemed to be geared up to proving how much or little alcohol was in the blood of those who had been killed in that tragic and awful disaster. I note that there is a whole debate to be had about mini inquests, but it might be best to have that debate on another occasion. Is it any surprise that those people who had lost loved members of their families at Hillsborough were offended when, on top of the attempts to turn the victims into villains, they found that the inquest, which was supposed to be about establishing cause of death—nothing more than that—seemed to be a perpetuation of that calumny?
Mr Howarth
Indeed—it was.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on the role they have played in bringing about the release of all these documents, and I welcome, I think, the statement that the Home Secretary made today. As I understand it, she has said that all documents, including Cabinet minutes, will be made available and that nothing will be withheld from the glare of public scrutiny. If that is what she was saying, I very much welcome that. I followed her comments carefully and that appears to be what she said.
I want to make a slight qualification about the process of redaction. The Home Secretary will be aware that, wearing another hat, I sit on the Intelligence and Security Committee. When we produce annual reports or any other kind of report we use the process of redaction, which is necessary because issues of national security are sometimes involved. However, I am aware that redaction causes suspicion. What is left out gives the media vent to speculate about what might have been in there. In this particular case, the families who want to know everything, and rightly so, might feel that something has been excluded. The point I want to make to the Home Secretary is that more thought needs to be given to how that process is to be conducted, who is to be involved in it and who will have the final veto. The default position should be to have no use of redaction unless there are issues of personal medical evidence or of data protection to consider. Data protection should not be used to protect those who may have been culpable of failing in their duties, but other issues of data protection, including in relation to the families themselves, might be relevant. There should be redaction only in those circumstances, and even then each decision should be open to question by the families and the independent panel.