Criminal Justice and Courts Bill
Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Lindsay Hoyle(10 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Both hon. Members cannot be on their feet at the same time. If the hon. Lady gives way to the hon. Gentleman, she must let him make his point before jumping back up. Bob Neill, have you finished?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I have let “you” go a few times, but in fairness, I am not guilty of any of this and I certainly did not want to intervene in the Dale farm situation.
Yasmin Qureshi
I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker; I got a bit carried away.
In a civilised society and a democratic country, access to law is very important, and that includes judicial review and those who have been charged with criminal offences. It is fundamental to a civilised society. The Government’s proposed restriction of judicial review is wrong and will cause problems. I ask them to reconsider, especially as immigration cases have now been taken out of the judicial review process. The number of judicial review cases is therefore similar to past levels, so the argument that there are too many such cases and money is being wasted is not credible.
It has been said that people can simply go for judicial review without any challenge: that they can walk into the High Court and say, “I want a judicial review” and get one. Everybody knows that the first thing someone has to do is to seek leave to obtain judicial review. High Court judges are some of the best and most experienced legal brains in the country; they do not grant judicial review applications willy-nilly and then set a hearing date. Many people apply for leave—that is the important part—to seek judicial review, but those applications are sifted and a lot are rejected. Weak, frivolous and vexatious cases get thrown out, and only a very few go on to the next stage, at which leave is granted for judicial review to be considered and a date is set. The sifting stage takes out all the rubbish anyway, and only the good cases of substance and merit go forward. Then, a full hearing takes place and in some cases, people are successful and in others not.
So the suggestion that I can somehow walk in off the street and ask for a judicial review and the court will grant it and set a time for it is a load of rubbish. I am surprised that Members who should know better—who know that that is not the situation—are trying to suggest that that is happening in our courts. It is not. Very few cases reach judicial review, which is still only sparingly used, but it is very important and fundamental to our legal system.
I remind Members that although we now accept that we can challenge the decisions taken by the various local authority and Government Departments and institutions such as quangos, there was a time when we could not. It is only because people are able to challenge the decision-making process that, today, we have a much fairer, much more equal society in which ordinary people feel that they get justice. That was not the case 40 or 50 years ago, and if we compare the situation then with now, we see it has improved tremendously, and active judicial review has been the biggest source of that improvement.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Lindsay Hoyle(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Temporary Chairman (Sir Edward Leigh)
Order. Before the hon. Lady replies to that point, may I suggest that she will want to return to the subject of audit certification?
Yasmin Qureshi
I will come to that, Sir Edward. The need for certification will cause financial harm to the unions, and we do not need it. It will not deal with the mischief that the legislation on lobbying was supposed to address. All it will do is impose an unfair financial burden on the trade unions, which rely on the subscriptions of ordinary members.
Derisory comments are constantly being made about the trade unions, but it is important to remind ourselves what they are arguing for. I get letters from unions lobbying me. For example, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers contacted me when there was talk of Sunday working during the Olympics. I also get letters from trade unions about pension rights, maternity rights, the minimum wage, health and safety, living conditions and better terms and conditions. What is there to be ashamed of about those things? What is wrong with a body arguing for those things?
Why are Conservative Members always having a go at the unions? They make it sound as though the unions are some kind of sinister organisations, but they are not. They are full of ordinary working people, and they have always fought for working people’s rights. The Conservatives should be championing the trade unions, rather than making derisory remarks about them and insulting them in the Chamber. This legislation is a clear example of their vindictive attitude towards the trade unions. The unions do not have a lot of money in the first place, but what they have will now be wasted on this unnecessary bureaucratic burden. The obligation that the Government are proposing will not deal with the mischief that the lobbying Bill is trying to deal with. That mischief relates to big business, to sinister deals and to cash being passed in underhand ways. That is what we are trying to deal with, but the Bill categorically fails on every single level.
This last part of the Bill illustrates the Government’s pure vindictiveness, and it has no purpose. We should all reject it. All Members of Parliament should vote against this Bill, and particularly against part 3. If Members really care about working people, as they all say they do, they should not allow this additional and unnecessary burden to be imposed on the trade unions. It will not deal with the mischief that the Bill was supposed to address.
Housing Benefit (Under-occupancy Penalty)
Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Lindsay Hoyle(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this debate.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said that the Opposition have many soundbites and that the Government should develop some of their own. Perhaps the Government are not able to develop soundbites because they have nothing good to say about this measure.
I have listened to the many Members who have contributed to this debate. On the face of it, the Government’s proposals sound logical. There are apparently 1 million bedrooms going spare in this country. The argument is that people should not be able to carry on living in homes that have too many bedrooms, but should be moved to smaller homes. That sounds sensible and practical, but it does not reflect the reality on the ground. Few homes fall into the category of a two or three-bedroom house that is lived in by a healthy, fit person but is under-occupied. Most of the so-called spare bedrooms are needed by the people who live in those homes.
I say that not because I am in any party political grouping, but because of what my constituents have said to me in my surgery and in letters. I can honestly say that none of the people who have contacted me fall into the criteria that the Government are presenting. I will share with the Ministers and other Members of the House the experience of the constituents who have spoken to me.
A number of the constituents who have spoken to me are single parents whose children do not live with them for seven days a week, but stay with them for two or three days, depending on the arrangements made by the court. People in that situation who live in a two-bedroom place will be severely affected by these provisions. What will parents who do not have the money to go into private rented accommodation or buy a home with the right number of bedrooms say to their children? They will have to say, “Sorry, you can’t come to stay because I have to go to a one-bedroom flat. I will not be able to spend quality time with you. I will not be able to develop a proper relationship with you as other mothers and fathers can with their children.” That is the kind of situation we are talking about.
The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) said that anybody who has a bar outside their home can be described as disabled. The people who have come to me have been elderly or very unwell and have homes that have been adapted substantially at a cost of thousands of pounds. They are often quite small properties, but may have one tiny room that is counted as a spare bedroom and has just enough space to store their wheelchair, commode, Zimmer frame or other equipment that disabled and unwell people often have.
Such people tend to be in social housing. Everybody who knows about social housing knows that they are small homes. That is certainly the case in my constituency. Even if they are two-bedroom flats, they tend to be very small, but people need a bit of space to be able to manoeuvre. What should I say to the constituents who write to me because they are being told that they will have to find somewhere else to live, but do not have £700 or £800 a year to pay for it? What about parents with two children of the same gender? They may have three bedrooms but they will be tiny rooms and the two children—two girls or two boys—will be in one little room where they cannot do anything except perhaps sleep on camp beds or bunk beds and they cannot have a proper room. Do we tell such people, “No, you’ve got to go; you cannot stay in this house and if you do you must pay £800”? That is the reality on the ground.
Foster parents have been mentioned but what was said about it being easy for someone to register as a foster carer and get an extra room is just not the case. People must go through high-level checks, training and vetting that can take months or even years before they are assessed as suitable to be a foster carer. To suggest that someone would become a foster carer to avoid moving out of their home or to claim an extra bedroom does not fit reality.
Many Members have touched on particular groups of people, and again I ask the Minister to reconsider this measure. The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) mentioned a number of concerns that need to be addressed but I do not want to repeat points about discretionary issues and other ways that the bedroom tax will impact on people. At the moment, this is a compulsory scheme and a matter of law so if people have a spare bedroom, they will end up paying money unless they can argue for discretionary help. As has been said, on 1 April people will be faced with a choice of what happens and will end up with bills. They will then have to go to their local housing association or council and see whether they fit the criteria required to get some help. If they do not get that help, what will happen?
What happens when the £30 million set aside for this scheme is gone? Will more money be put into the fund so that people continue to benefit from it? Instead of a statutory scheme, would it not be better to work with councils and housing associations to try first and foremost to work out whether housing need can be reorganised and people placed in the homes that are appropriate for them? At the end of that process there may be some people who wilfully do not want to move, some who live in a massive home or there may be a single person of good mental and physical health living in a two or three-bedroom house and they might not be worried. However, they make up a tiny minority of those who have the so-called 1 million spare bedrooms. The majority of people—98%— fall into different categories.
Of course there is a need to address people who are waiting to be housed appropriately in proper homes or in accommodation that fits and meets their need. I have constituents in a similar situation. People suggest this is an unusual idea, but the way to tackle the problem is to consider a home-building programme. It is all very well hon. Members saying that one Government did not do that, another Government sold council houses and another should have done more, but we are where we are now. Instead of looking back at what could have happened five, 10 or 20 years ago, why not deal with our current problem of acute housing shortage? Doing that will not involve subsidised housing because, as everybody knows, the cost of building a house on a piece of land is not as much as the value of the property once it is put up for sale. Bricks and mortar do not cost as much as a house, the value of which can be over-inflated. When groups of people or associations and voluntary bodies get together and start building homes, they can pay for those houses so that the Government or state do not have to subsidise them. We must encourage local authorities and such groups to invest and allow house-building programmes to provide housing and help to regenerate the economy.
The measure is compulsory, but I urge Ministers to think about encouraging local authorities and housing associations to get together to deal with the people who will be affected. Constituents who are disabled and unwell write to me. One gentleman told me that he has one tiny bedroom, which will be considered spare, but he needs a commode, a Zimmer frame and a wheelchair. He cannot house that equipment in his tiny little—
Child Sexual Exploitation
Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Lindsay Hoyle(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but is he not making the same mistake? The Home Affairs Committee asked the deputy Children’s Commissioner about this particular issue—she is now carrying out an investigation throughout the whole country—and she said that it is not to do with race or religion, but is just one form of methodology of sexual abuse.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Can I just say that we have to have short interventions? I know that the hon. Lady wants to speak, and I am sure that she does not want to use up her speech this early, but the problem is that if she continues to intervene, she will understand if she is moved down the list.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Keighley is, indeed, Kris Hopkins. We must, however, have shorter interventions, important as they are.
Yasmin Qureshi
I was saying that it is important to recognise the methodology involved. In the cases mentioned by the hon. Member for Keighley, on the face of it the victims were white and the perpetrators were Muslims, but that is coincidental and not deliberate.
Gavin Shuker
My hon. Friend is being extremely generous as she receives no injury time for this intervention. Is the point she advocates so strongly that these samples become self-selecting after a period, and that the evidence base is not advanced enough for us to draw conclusions about race and ethnicity? Understandably, however, certain newspapers will go after certain cases.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I think the hon. Lady has got the message and the hon. Gentleman will understand if he now gets moved down the list. He does want to speak but he has intervened a couple of times already.
Yasmin Qureshi
Let me explain why this issue is about methodology rather than race or religion. Sir Cyril Smith, for example, seems to have had a desire to abuse young boys, which seems to have been his pattern of behaviour. A system of trafficked victims—young girls who are forced into prostitution—is one method used by pimps and other criminal gangs so that they can take money from them. Jimmy Savile obviously had a penchant for young girls, and he used his position and power, and whatever presents he could give them, to influence them in order to do what he did. Sadly, most of those involved in such activities are men. Care homes contain people in a vulnerable position, and the adults who abused them were mostly men as well.
Hon. Members have also referred to grooming cases. Grooming is not new—there were such cases in many of our cities 20 years ago, but the newspapers never talked about it. I remember dealing with the type of cases that the hon. Member for Keighley spoke of, but the victim and the defendant were white. It is important to emphasise that, and not to fall into the British National party and English Defence League trap of saying that the problem is linked to race or religion—it is not.
A common factor and theme run through those different types of abuse. They virtually all involve men, and the victims are always young girls or boys or children, and always vulnerable. Leaving aside internal family cases, the external cases never involve the child who has a secure, happy family life or a home life where someone looks after or takes care of them. The cases involve children who are abused by priests when the church is looking after them, or children in a care home in a vulnerable position who do not have anyone to look after them, or young boys, such as in the Cyril Smith case, or the young girls in Keighley and other places. Many of these young people are vulnerable. Criminals virtually always commit crime on vulnerable people. People mug little old ladies. Why? It is because they are easy targets. Such people would not want to mess with 6-foot big, burley men, because it would be difficult to take anything from them. The key is vulnerability, and nothing else. If we get distracted by race or culture, we will lose sight of the bigger picture. It is the same with the inquiry into Savile. We talk about him, but what his victims went through is more important.
We need to do a number of things. The country at large needs to be educated and made aware of how prevalent sexual abuse is, particularly sexual abuse in the home. We must set up systems in schools, social services and the police, so that they are places where children can go when they are being abused. When they say what is happening to them, we need to take them seriously. I am not saying that they should be believed, but there should be an objective investigation—they should be heard and the matter should be thoroughly investigated, and their complaints should not just be put aside. At the end of the investigation, action should be taken if it is needed. Many years ago, that investigation process was not happening, as it did not more recently in the Rochdale case. We need to ensure that we have better systems and a better framework so that children can come forward and feel confident in talking to adults, including their teachers and others, about what they have been going through.
Hon. Members are shocked when they hear about sexual abuse, grooming and so on, but should we be so shocked? Historically, since time immemorial, sadly, a small percentage of men—irrespective of which part of the world they come from—have had desires towards children. We need to recognise that that small minority are interested only in abusing young children, whether boys or girls. Many child abusers do not abuse adults—their specific lust is for children. We need to recognise that that is the root of the problem.
How do we deal with that and recognise it? The best way is to use whatever mechanisms we have to prevent abuse, to detect abuse when it happens, and to deal with abusers as criminals, as they should be dealt with. Unless and until we recognise that and have systems to make it easier to protect our children, we will have those problems.
Voting by Prisoners
Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Lindsay Hoyle(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I have to rule. Please, take your seat.
Sir Peter Bottomley has made a point of order and is absolutely correct. We should not mention another person in another place in that way, so I am sure that the hon. Lady does not need to continue down that line.
Yasmin Qureshi
If I may just finish, I should say that nobody now would think that suing a local authority or a public body over the negligence of their actions was wrong. So, using one person to criticise and castigate the whole European convention is plainly not right.
On prisoners’ right to vote, I know that some people say that, because the prisoner has committed the offence, all their rights should be taken away, but does that mean that we should go back 100 or 200 years when hard labour was considered to be the right punishment? I am sure that, in those days, when people said that our penal policies should be much more humane and liberal, just as many people said, “Oh no, these people have committed crimes and therefore should be punished to the hilt.” As we did not adhere to those policies then, why are we reacting so strongly to this issue now?
I agree with several Members who have said that, in reality, the number of prisoners who exercise the right will probably be quite small. In my years before becoming a Member, I represented and prosecuted many defendants, and I met many people who became prisoners, so I can say, anecdotally, that most of them are unlikely to vote, but the question is one of principle: what do we as a society and as a nation stand for?
Many years ago, we abolished the death penalty, bar for two offences: high treason and burning Her Majesty’s shipyard. A few years ago, a Labour Government abolished the death penalty even for those offences. Why did they do that? We had not issued the death penalty to anyone since the ’60s, but we abolished it for those two offences because we felt that as a society in the 21st century that was the right thing to do. A point of principle was involved, and for me the issue of prisoners’ rights is a point of principle, too.
The disfranchisement of sentenced prisoners dates back to the Forfeiture Act 1870, and the origins of the ban are rooted in the notion of civic death: a punishment entailing the withdrawal of citizenship rights. But Dr Selby, the former bishop of Her Majesty’s prisons, and now the president of the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards, states:
“Denying convicted prisoners the right to vote serves no purpose”—
Housing Benefit
Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Lindsay Hoyle(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Like you, I am sick and tired of the Tories blaming the need to make cuts on the ordinary working person, when we know that it was the bankers who caused the crisis. What do you think—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Members are using the word “you”, but I am not responsible. I call Tom Clarke.
Academies Bill [Lords]
Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Lindsay Hoyle(14 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yasmin Qureshi
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman says that I was talking about selection. If the teachers are teaching well and the pupils are responding well, children of all abilities can be taught in one school. There will obviously be some children who do very well academically, while others may not do quite so well. However, children who are perhaps academically poor initially will have a chance to catch up. Because they are in a good school with children of mixed abilities, they will have a chance to get better.
Yasmin Qureshi
The Bill does not say, however, that 50% of the children coming into such a school must consist of children of all abilities. We will still have academies and schools selecting according to ability, and my point is that we should not.
It might be a controversial idea and an unpalatable one to many people in the House, but it is not that strange: why should children from all backgrounds not go to the same school? Why can we not have mixed-ability classes? The record across the country shows that schools containing children with a mix of ability and with different social backgrounds do better, and that schools that are not performing so well start to do better in these circumstances because everyone is working for things together. Instead everybody wants to create these “excellent” schools, which have “pushy parents”—I am sure that my saying that will be held against me—who obviously want the best for their children. That is fine and I understand that they want the best for their children, but why does everybody forget about the other—