Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill

Will Quince Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I thank my friend, the hon. Lady, for giving way. She is making a very brave and powerful speech. I would like to put on the record my huge thanks and appreciation for all her work in the setting up of the all-party group, and for the group’s continuing work. Bereaved parents, all of us, want to ensure that our child’s life, however short, has meaning. The hon. Lady is absolutely doing that and, if she does not mind me saying so, I think Lucy would be very proud of her mummy today.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman was trying to calm me down, but he has probably made me worse! As Members can all see, I feel very strongly about this issue, so I felt that, even though I knew I would end up in floods of tears, I had to come along and take part in this debate and express how strongly I want to support this legislative change, and why.

If Lucy had been born alive at 23 and a half weeks, she would have been incubated immediately and rushed in the waiting ambulance, with flashing blue lights, to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle, where they have the regional centre of excellence for special care baby units for very premature babies. She would have had the very best world-class care. She would have had a birth certificate and she would have been celebrating her 20th birthday this year. But sadly she was stillborn, so there were no flashing blue lights, no incubator and no birthday parties, ever. And as I found out to my horror, there was no birth or death certificate. As I held her in my arms and had to come to terms with what had just happened, I also had to come to terms with the fact that, officially, she did not exist, and that I would not be getting any certificate of her arrival or death. She was three to four days short of the required 24-week legal age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for kindly calling me. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on introducing this important Bill. It is a bit of a smorgasbord of issues that are all important in their own right. It may not come as a surprise to the House that I want to touch on clause 3 on the registration of pregnancy loss occurring before 24 weeks and clause 4 on investigations by coroners into stillbirth.

I have huge amounts of time for the aim of clause 3, and I recognise the huge inequality in the particular case that my hon. Friend raised of the poor mother who lost twins, one born before and one born after the 24 week cut-off date. Only one of them was recognised by the law. That is why the review set out in the Bill is so important.

I am immensely proud to co-chair the all-party group on baby loss, which the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis)—I am pleased to see them both in the Chamber—helped to set up. With my hon. Friend, I remember collaring the former Member for Ipswich, who was then the Care Quality Minister, at about 1.30 am during a Finance Bill. We sat him down and discussed how we were to take our work on baby loss forward, and how we would address some of the big issues.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on his Bill, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) for his work on baby loss. I lost my son, Ethan, to stillbirth in 2004, and—it might sound strange to say this—I was fortunate to get a stillbirth certificate, because the incident occurred post 24 weeks. I commend my hon. Friend and others for everything they are doing to further this important cause.

[Will Quince]

I am very sorry to hear of my hon. Friend’s loss, and I thank him for his campaigning on this issue. He makes an important point about the discrepancy in our law, and the time has come to address it.

The all-party group on baby loss has two fundamental aims. The first is to reduce stillbirth and neonatal death, and the Government have been hugely supportive on that aim. We now have a target of halving stillbirth and neonatal death by 2025. When I first arrived in Parliament and we raised the issue in late 2015, the aim was to achieve that reduction by 2030, but the date has been brought forward. That is fantastic news, because we lose between nine and 15 babies every day. We have one of the worst records in the western world, and it has to change. The Government have put in place a number of steps to make that happen, and I am hugely positive and optimistic about the future.

Even if we meet the aim of reducing stillbirth and neonatal death by 50%, however, 2,500 to 3,000 babies will be stillborn every year. That does not even touch on the huge number of parents who suffer what we define in law as a miscarriage, and the Bill will give us the opportunity to look at registration and recognition in that area. Even if we achieve all our aims, there will still be parents who go through this emotional and personal tragedy. That is why bereavement care and support are so important. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West was right to mention cold cots, because we need such facilities—and, indeed, bereavement suites—in every hospital in the country.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I have listened to most of this debate, and I have been very impressed by the contributions. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me about the importance of organisations such as Scunthorpe Rotary, which is working locally to get a bereavement suite at Scunthorpe General Hospital? The work of such organisations across the country makes a real difference to people at a very difficult time in their lives.

[Will Quince]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. Charities and the Government have to work hand in hand with each other and with parents, many of whom want to do something to support the hospital that helped them after they suffered their tragic loss. Parents are helped not just by hospitals, but by charities, too. After our loss in 2014, my wife said to me, “I don’t want flowers. I don’t want the house to be full of flowers that then die.” So we set up a JustGiving page to enable people to donate money—in the end, it was a huge amount—to the specialist bereavement suite.

The work being done by groups such as Rotary, as well as by charities and individuals up and down the country, is to be applauded and welcomed, but the Government should not use it as an excuse not to act in places that do not have such facilities. The Secretary of State has been very positive in that regard, and he wants there to be a bereavement suite attached to every maternity unit in the country.

Bereavement care is hugely important, and I am pleased to say that the bereavement care pathway has been launched and is operating in 11 trusts. The plan is to roll it out nationwide later this year, to provide consistent bereavement care for those who suffer the loss of a child. Not only are the consequences of getting it wrong too great for the parents and the family, but there is a huge social cost, as we can see from the number of parents who, sadly, separate after the loss of a baby.

I want to touch on the point about recognition. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West made this case very powerfully in her speech, and I applaud her for her bravery in setting out the case for this change more powerfully than I ever could. We come to the very term “stillborn.” In effect, when we talk about stillbirth we are talking about a “still born” baby. It is important to recognise the double meaning: they are indeed still born, whether it is pre-24 weeks or post-24 weeks. For the parents who hold that baby in their arms—perfectly formed, beautiful babies—the only difference is that they are not breathing. I am not going to be the person who says to that parent, “That baby didn’t live,” or, “They weren’t here. They weren’t with us. They weren’t a real entity. They shouldn’t be recognised in the law.” The time has absolutely come for this change. We pretty much have cross-party consensus on that, and I am really pleased that the Government support it. The review will make a difference and the all-party group on baby loss will, of course, feed into that.

Clause 4 is a policy that I very much support. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and I are undoubtedly very much on the same page on investigations into stillbirth, and his campaign is a very big part of why the Government have made so much progress on this issue. We can learn a huge amount more from people’s experiences and share them across the NHS, and that has to be a good thing, because the more we speak to parents, the more we hear that those who lose a child want their child’s life, however short, to have meaning. I raised that in an intervention on the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, but I am not sure it helped all that much. What I mean by that is that parents want to know what happened, how it happened, where there will be learning, and that those learnings will be shared across our NHS to ensure that as few parents as possible have to go through that huge emotional tragedy and ordeal.

I was kindly invited by the Secretary of State for Health—now the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care—to his speech to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. He came immediately afterwards to make a statement, saying that from April this year, the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch will investigate every case of stillbirth, neonatal death, suspected brain injury or maternal death notified to the RCOG Each Baby Counts programme. To put that into numbers, there are around 1,000 incidents every year. He also announced—this point is significant in relation to the Bill—that he would work with the Ministry of Justice

“to look closely into enabling, for the first time, full-term stillbirths to be covered by coronial law”—[Official Report, 28 November 2017; Vol. 632, c. 179.]

This seems an appropriate time for me to pay tribute to the Secretary of State for all the support that he has given me and the all-party group in our campaign to reduce the stillbirth and neonatal death rate. I also pay tribute—this is my first opportunity to do so in the Chamber since the reshuffle—to my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) for all his work as Minster of State in the Department of Health, following on from his predecessor, the Care Quality Minister, the former Member for Ipswich. As Back-Bench MPs, we have numerous meetings with Ministers, and we know that those take place more out of courtesy than anything else, but that was never the case with my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow. He genuinely took an interest in the issue and our work, and he recognised that we had a real opportunity to make a huge difference in reducing our stillbirth and neonatal death rates in this country. We should all be very proud of that legacy.

My wider point is that the Government are listening. The Bill reinforces the mood music and soundings that we have had from them in this regard. They are trying to learn from best practice elsewhere and from unfortunate incidents where stillbirth occurs. Most importantly, as I mentioned, the Secretary of State has already told the House that he is looking into coroners investigating stillbirths, and that is very welcome. When that work has been undertaken, we will certainly work with him and anybody else who wants to be involved with the all-party group.

Improving support for bereaved parents and learning from experiences so that we can lower our stillbirth and neonatal death rate are small things, but they will make a huge difference to thousands of people up and down the country. I will support the Bill.

County Lines Exploitation: London

Will Quince Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) on securing this debate and making a very powerful case in relation to tackling county lines and some of the many issues that come with that.

More observant Members will know that Colchester, despite being Britain’s oldest recorded town and its first capital, is actually 60 miles from London. Although the subject of the debate is county lines exploitation in London, county lines have a far wider reach and impact, as we all know.

Traditionally, although every town and city across our country has been affected by the scourge of drugs and knife crime, they have largely been the preserve of our capital and our major cities, where the vast majority of those particular types of criminality has been prevalent. However, what we are increasingly seeing, partly because of a saturation of the market in London and in some of our other major cities, is that drug dealers and the gangs that peddle these disgusting substances are moving further afield to sell their wares and operating county lines.

I represent a seat in Essex and traditionally we saw such activity taking place in some of the towns on the outskirts of London, but more recently—certainly over the past two and a half years—we have seen criminal gangs are moving further and further out from London, to towns such as Colchester and even to towns further afield, because of the opportunity that such new markets present.

The right hon. Lady made a very powerful case about county lines and why we have to tackle them—in particular, because of the young people involved. In my constituency, we have seen an increase in county line activity. Those listening to this debate outside Westminster Hall may not understand what a “county line” is, and it is important that we actually spell out what it is. It is a network of mobile phone lines that are bought and sold like franchises—[Interruption.] Perhaps the right hon. Lady did explain: I may have misheard. But it is important that the public have an understanding of what county lines are, because, as she rightly said, they often go under the radar and people do not understand how easy it is—particularly for young people—to be sucked in and trapped by these drug gangs in the conveyor belt and cycle that the county lines operation represents.

County lines are phone lines bought and sold, like franchises or small businesses. Often, the people who own them are never involved in touching drugs at all, but they increasingly use young people to spread their networks up and down the country.

In Colchester, we have seen an increase in knife crime, which is hugely regrettable. However, what is really interesting about that increase, and it is why this debate is particularly important, is that predominantly both the victims and perpetrators of knife crime have not been from our town. They have not come from Colchester; they are from London. On one particular night, we had six knife attacks, and every single one of the individuals involved—both the perpetrators and the victims—was from London. They were part of rival drugs gangs who were coming to Colchester to sell drugs, and bringing with them the knives, the intimidation and the violence that come with that activity.

We have also seen an increase in cuckooing. I know that the right hon. Lady touched on this issue, but it is important to spell out what a scourge on our society cuckooing is. Cuckooing is where a drugs gang, often operating through a county line, will come to a town such as Colchester and pick on a vulnerable person, whether that is someone with mental health issues, someone in social housing, a prostitute or someone who is already addicted to class A drugs. The gang will operate from that person’s property, which is often social housing, using that base to exploit that individual or individuals to sell their drugs from the location over the course of a week or two.

An individual came to my constituency office absolutely petrified. He was clearly a class A drug user—he was perfectly honest about that—and he said, “I have had people come to my flat. They came with a gun. They took over my flat.” First, they offered him drugs, which he of course accepted; he was addicted to heroin. He said, “It has got to the point where they will not let me back in my flat. They have taken over.” He was too scared to go back to the flat, because they said that they would kill him. He came to me, and I gave the only advice I thought I could give, which was to go to the police. He went to the police station and he was subsequently arrested, because they went to the flat and found a large quantity of class A drugs. Despite that perhaps being a regrettable outcome, it was probably the best and safest place for him at that point in time. Cuckooing is becoming a major issue because it is happening more and more frequently.

[Ronnie Cowan]

What we are seeing here is that a person with a drug addiction went to the hon. Gentleman looking for help and the best outcome he could find was to be arrested.

[Will Quince]

That is not quite what I said. I said it was the safest place for him because the police were able to take action. What advice should I have given to an individual coming to my constituency office who said an individual with a firearm had taken over his property? What action the police chose to take was up to them. That is not my job as a constituency MP; my job is to protect the individual and other individuals living in my constituency when I hear a report of a firearm. The issue is for the police.

On the wider issue of cuckooing—this is not a party political point; we all agree that we urgently need to tackle this issue across the country—what worries me most is how these drug gangs operating county lines are targeting the young and some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I mentioned that these cases often involve prostitutes, those with mental health issues, those in social housing and class A drug users, but often there are families involved in that scenario, too. Just because someone is a class A drug user, that does not mean they do not have children in the property. If a drug dealer operating a county line comes to a young person’s property and threatens them and their mother, I would not blame that young person for taking action to protect their parent, especially if they are young and vulnerable. That is why it is important that we take a long hard look at how we treat these young people and how we intervene.

I take all the points that the right hon. Member for Enfield North made on support services. We have to do more to put support services in place. Where we identify those young people—I take her point about missing people—who are vulnerable and are involved, or in danger of being involved, in a drug gang or a county line, we have to intervene, but we have to be clear about the action we want to take. It is important that we do not criminalise those young people. We should treat them as victims, because it is dangerous to criminalise them.

I predict that the Minister will say that if a young person is involved in a serious crime—especially a crime that affects another person, such as a stabbing—it is absolutely right that the criminal justice system takes full effect. However, if a young person has clearly been a victim and has been exploited and used as a drug mule carrying drugs about their person, as the right hon. Member for Enfield North said, or has been dealing drugs—it could even be a case of modern slavery—it is important that we send a clear message to that young person that we want to help. We should say, “We will intervene. We want to ensure that we get you back on the path to being fully involved in society.” We should not set them off down the wrong path, which is the danger in labelling them a criminal. What kind of message does that send out? When they are an exploited, vulnerable victim, what path does that set them on for the rest of their life?

We have to be careful how we treat young people in particular. To be clear, drug gangs are increasingly using children as young as eight, nine or 10, potentially entrapping them with gifts such as trainers, phones and other things, at which point they feel completely owned by that individual or drug gang. Sometimes it is worse—sometimes it is physical violence against them or a family member who they love. The point is that we have to intervene and offer them some kind of hope and a way out of a horrific situation.

I am passionate about tackling this issue, and I am keen to work cross-party to ensure we put in place the right measures and make support available, particularly to those young people to help them get out of that potential life of crime. I know the Minister is equally passionate because we have had so many conversations about it. First, I urge her to encourage police forces to work far more closely on the county line issue. We need to get police forces outside London to work far more closely with the Metropolitan police in London, where sadly a lot of the county line activity emanates from. We need to put in more resources to tackle the county line issue. The Government recently put in just under £300,000, so they are taking action, but there is more to do. This is a growing issue that is largely going under the radar. Secondly—potentially this is more of a Justice issue than a Home Office issue—when we intervene and find those young people who are victims, are being exploited and have gone through the most horrific experiences, we should look at them as victims, not criminals.

Unaccompanied Child Refugees: Europe

Will Quince Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

This is an incredibly important issue, and it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker), who made a very emotive contribution.

I vividly remember the debates we had in this Chamber on child refugees and the need to help vulnerable children stuck in squalid conditions through the Dubs scheme. I may even have had a disagreement with the Government on the issue, but we have changed the Chief Whip and the Deputy Chief Whip now, so perhaps all is well again.

I am really proud of our record as a Government. I am proud that we have provided sanctuary for unaccompanied children. In 2016, we transferred over 900 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to the UK from Europe. More than 750 of them came from France as part of the UK’s support for the Calais camp clearance. In the same year, the UK settled more refugees from outside Europe than any other EU country. According to Eurostat figures, more than a third of people resettled in Europe came to the UK. That is something to be proud of, and I hope our European colleagues will listen and follow our lead. More widely, the UK has granted asylum or another form of leave to over 9,000 children in the past year alone. Since 2010, it has been over 42,000.

I want to say that this motion is right. We need to ensure that there are safe and legal means for unaccompanied child refugees to come to the UK. Everyone in this Chamber will no doubt agree that we need to stamp out people traffickers. They profit from the desperation of the vulnerable and do not care about their welfare. Where we do not have safe and legal routes, people smugglers not only operate but thrive.

We should be clear that primary responsibility for unaccompanied children in France lies with the French Government. I encourage my right hon. Friend the Minister to urge his counterpart to ensure that the French are doing everything they can to process asylum applications.

While we continue to be a member of the European Union, we will participate in Dublin III, and it is in all our interests that we continue to co-operate on asylum and migration, both legal and illegal, once we have left the EU. We should bear in mind that unaccompanied children cannot make applications for family reunification under the Dublin regulation. That regulation is a mechanism to determine which member state is responsible for the consideration of any asylum claim, but it is not, and never has been, a family reunification route in and of itself.

We must look to the future, however. I accept that the nature of any future agreement is still to be discussed with the European Union—it will form part of the negotiation process. It would be wrong to set out our position in advance, but we can set out our principles: we are proud of the UK’s long history of offering sanctuary to those who need it.

[Amanda Milling]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be proud of the totality of support that the UK is providing to refugees, particularly these most vulnerable children?

[Will Quince]

I do agree. There is sometimes a danger in the House that we make the perfect the enemy of the good. I am proud of what our Government are doing.

We are proud of the UK’s long history of offering sanctuary to those who need it. Britain will always offer asylum to those fleeing war, genocide and persecution, and we will continue to make sure that vulnerable unaccompanied children can join their families here. The Government have played an important role in responding to the migration crisis, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) just said. We have settled the most vulnerable children directly from the region. We have pursued the criminal gangs and trafficking networks that profit from the misery and desperation of those in these terrible conditions, and we are one of the largest contributors of aid and development in the Syria conflict. As the motion says, the UK has demonstrated moral and political leadership on this issue. Long may that continue.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Knife Crime

Will Quince Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I will refer later in my remarks to education, which is key.

Knife crime is increasing. Comparative data from NHS hospitals show us that there was a 13% increase in admissions for assault by sharp object between 2015 and 2016. The Minister will be aware of the growing concern about county lines operated by urban criminal networks.

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate on the scourge of knife crime, which is one of the most important issues facing the country. She mentioned county lines. Does she agree that we need to get police forces outside London to work far more closely with the Metropolitan police to try to break some of those county lines, and particularly to tackle the practice of cuckooing, which preys on the most vulnerable in our society?

[Sarah Jones]

Yes, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to do more. County lines is a new and developing issue that I have learned about in Croydon. Gangs go out as far as Cardiff and down to the south coast from London and other UK cities. They are spreading out, and we need to do more. Police resourcing is absolutely key, but we need to work together even more. Children from Aberdeen to Cardiff and Margate are carrying knives; it is a UK-wide problem.

The second thing I know is that the age of the young people involved is getting lower and lower. Every single agency I spoke to over the summer said that it was used to seeing young people between the ages of 16 and 24, but that the age of the children it saw was dropping to 12, 13 and 14.