Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland: Legacy Cases

Debate between Albert Owen and Tony Lloyd

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

This has been most certainly an interesting debate, although possibly not the one that either the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) or I thought it might turn out to be.

Let me say this: the role of the ombudsman is vital. The problem is that it has been constructed in the wrong way. The ombudsman has responsibility for the investigation of contemporary irregularities by the police service, mirroring what I had some responsibility for as the police and crime commissioner in Greater Manchester, although more generally they were dealt with by the then Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is now under a different guise. There is no doubt that there needs to be that contemporary role, but the problem has come because that role has been mixed with the role of historic investigators. Quite honestly, neither the ombudsman nor the victims nor the Police Service of Northern Ireland nor politicians think that is a satisfactory process.

I will begin by asking the Minister whether he can throw any light on an issue. One of the things that I welcome is the recent announcement from the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland of a further £55 million for coronial investigations. However, that will put pressure on both the PSNI and whoever is the investigating authority, whether that is the ombudsman or another body; I will come on to that later. Can the Minister tell us whether there will be extra resources for those other investigatory bodies and of course for the prosecuting bodies, including the Crown Prosecution Service, because it is important that we see resourcing for them within the package?

I echo the words of the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley, who said that we are talking about human tragedies, and about victims. Right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned a number of particular atrocities. Let me make it clear that victims, whether they are victims of republican terror, of loyalist terror or of state actors, are entitled to have resolution of their cases, as their loved ones are loved ones, their mothers and their children are the same, whatever the background of the perpetrator. We must establish that because there cannot be some sense in which there is differential justice, but at the moment we have differential justice, particularly when we have different agencies involved at different times. We have ad-hockery.

In the case of Pat Finucane, it was only because of the intervention of the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, that there was an inquiry. For 30 years, the family had been fighting for a process of justice. They have had a partial victory recently at the Supreme Court, but there now needs to be a continuation with proper investigation of the murder of Pat Finucane.

That brings me on to another case—that of Edgar Graham, the Ulster Unionist Member of the Legislative Assembly at Stormont. He was a young man who was murdered in the most public of ways on the campus of Queen’s University of Belfast, when he stood next to one of his Ulster Unionist colleagues. That brutal murder has not been brought to any satisfactory conclusion. In fact, when the then Historical Enquiries Team process took it up, all that the family got was a letter saying why there would be no report into that particular atrocity.

Let us make it clear that we now have to move to a situation where there is proper and uniform treatment, whatever the authorship of a crime, and I say this advisedly: whether it be republican or loyalist paramilitaries or state actors —

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

You have one minute.

[Tony Lloyd]

Thank you. Two minutes, Mr Owen?

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

One.

[Tony Lloyd]

Of course my point brings us to the very important role of the Historical Investigations Unit. I have to say to the Minister that it is now five years since the Stormont House agreement concluded that that was needed. It is now more than six months since the consultation on that body finished. We need to see that body up and running, because, and I say this to the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson), if we are to see equity the ombudsman cannot investigate things other than where the police are involved. In the future, he or she will have no locus beyond that. If we are to see equity, we have to see the HIU in operation, investigating across the piece whatever the authorship, whatever the body. Minister, we need progress on that. We need to see the HIU’s terms of reference, and see it established, so that it can begin that vital work, which is so long overdue.

Social Housing and Regeneration: Earl’s Court and West Kensington

Debate between Albert Owen and Tony Lloyd

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Owen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). He made a powerful speech that was clearly embedded in the needs of the people he represents, some of whom have come here today to hear the debate and others of whom will want to know the outcome. I say kindly to the Minister that there is a real expectation that today we begin to move the long-running saga of Capco’s plan forward in a way that is acceptable to the local residents.

If I may, I will set the debate in a wider context, going back to before the Grenfell fire. It has been recognised that the policy of owner occupation being the only viable form of tenancy, which was driven during the bulk of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition and in the early days of the present Government, had to change, in the face of the reality of what modern Britain is all about. It is worth putting on record some of the national statistics that are part of the process faced by people in this part of London. Since 2010, there has been a 50% increase in the number of people who are unintentionally homeless and are deemed to be a priority, people who desperately need rehousing and regarding whom our local authorities have a duty to respond. The local authorities find that extremely difficult of course, because of the lack of available properties.

Those who present themselves to local authorities as unintentionally homeless are only part of the picture. Many families and individuals are in inadequate, overcrowded housing, perhaps living with parents or other relatives. We know that the need for affordable social homes is massively greater than that illustrated by the unintentionally homeless figures. It is a scandal that some 120,000 children nationwide are in temporary accommodation—and the number is growing. In London in particular, in recent years there has been a tripling in the number of people described as rough sleepers, people who have been abandoned by our society in many ways.

That is all part of the background. So why is this? It is because policies dictated to take out social housing—affordable housing for people who need it—have been massively detrimental. That is what the ideologues my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith talked about earlier wanted to achieve. Since 2010, we have seen a 174,000 reduction in the number of council properties nationwide. According to the Chartered Institute of Housing, 150,000 social housing units have been lost, and it is predicted that a further 80,000 will go between now and 2020. At the same time, in 2010 there were 40,000 social housing starts and in the most recent year the figure was down to 1,000. Frankly, this is a crisis that has been made at political policy level, because of incompetence and the unacceptability of developers taking control of our planning process.

Something has gone drastically wrong, and the situation in Earl’s Court and West Kensington fits into that national pattern. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith made the point forcefully that there is something fundamentally wrong when developers can sweat assets that are people’s homes, land on which perfectly adequate estates and communities make their lives. That is not sweating assets; it is prostituting national resources in the interests of developer profit and it cannot be acceptable. Nor can it be acceptable that simply because the market is turning and Capco no longer sees the development as viable we now have the possibility of a change of policy. The policy should never have been allowed in the first place, putting, as it does, people’s lives and homes at risk.

Everything I know of the situation my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith has talked about says that this is a collection of viable estates of popular homes. I understand there are very few voids, empty properties—I think my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith confirms that—and that they are properties that are not so old and not really in enormous need of repair. With that background, the idea of destroying those homes simply to allow the sweating of assets—in fact, to allow people to make enormous amounts of money—does not fit in with the social values we ought to espouse. Even the Government have now begun to espouse those values, as they talk in a slightly more nuanced language about the need to develop more affordable social housing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith made some important points about the situation that would be unacceptable anywhere. “Like for like” should be the minimum requirement of any transfer for individuals. It is not like for like when we know that people who have substantial properties will be offered properties with minimum space standards—whatever that means. In fact, it increasingly means much reduced standards and therefore a lower quality of life. My hon. Friend talked about people possibly seeing a tripling of service charges to £3,500 a year, and that is not a small amount of money. It would have a significant impact on people’s incomes, and it simply is not sustainable. Given that background, there is something fundamentally wrong with the model. Residents are rightly looking not only to the local authority—it now has a different political complexion and a different view of the situation—but to central Government to see what they can do to alter the situation.

My hon. Friend asked for specific things from the Minister. The Minister should look at the capacity of the right to transfer. If that issue has been on his predecessor’s desk for two years, it needs to be brought to a conclusion. I hope today he can begin to move that process on. My hon. Friend also talked about the need for the provision of affordable housing. There is something fundamentally wrong in the design of a new area that is supposed to have some 7,500 properties when the number of affordable homes would be less than the number being taken out. In the world in which we now live, the proportion of affordable homes should be significantly in excess of replacement. It should make some real impact on the dire need for social homes—affordable social homes at that—in London in particular. I hope the Minister will comment on what that means for future developments such as this and what the Government can do to begin to bring pressure to bear on Capco.

In conclusion, my hon. Friend has brought a shocking story to the House. The support that my hon. Friends the Members for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) and for Westminster North (Ms Buck) have brought is important. I congratulate the residents of the area. Their 10-year fight is not yet over, but had they not been prepared to stand up to Capco and the developers, the issue most certainly would have been finished long ago with them in massively inferior conditions to what they now have. I hope that where we are today promises something better for the future.

We look to the Minister for a credible response. The saga is complicated because a lot of the control rests with the developer, but the developer is now on the ropes. I hope he accepts that it should not depend on changing market conditions for us to have a more rational housing policy that says that the rights of existing viable communities should not be wiped out simply to sweat those assets to make more money. The Government’s changing attitude says that that is the wrong situation for us to be in, and I hope the Minister will confirm that.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

I know that in responding to the debate the Minister will allow a couple of minutes for Mr Slaughter to wind up.

Marine Environment

Debate between Albert Owen and Tony Lloyd

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

It is interesting to follow the right hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon). I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) has always considered John Clare to be an early socialist; but we will return to that theme.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield mentioned “Small is Beautiful”. I of course remember the publication of Schumacher’s book, but of course the ocean is also beautiful, and very large. The problem is that for decades we have believed it to be effectively infinite, but it is not and we have now reached its capacity, or perhaps beyond it. I applaud and agree with the steps taken by the Government to reduce plastic use, which is important; but there is in reality no one-nation solution. We are not unilateralists as far as the protection of the marine environment goes. Threats to the marine environment cannot be solved in one country, whether they are littering, plastic pollution, fertiliser run-off or bottom trawling. I agree with the right hon. Member for Newbury that pulse fishing should be banned, but the validity of any bottom trawling has to come under consideration, because of the damage it does. Acidification is another major issue. It is right, as one country, to extend the role of marine conservation areas. We must do considerably more on that, as I hope hon. Members present for the debate would agree; we must press on with real action. However, even those efforts will be undermined if we do not do something about the overall quality of the oceans.

I want to speak briefly about coral reefs. They represent only 0.25% of the ocean floor, but they house probably half of marine life. An astonishing amount of ocean life lives on coral reefs—not only the romantic warm sea corals, which people are aware of, but the cold sea corals. They are fundamental to life in the ocean, and probably they are important to life on the planet as a whole, because of the impact on the food chain. Preserving coral reefs is vital. Bottom trawling destroys soft and hard coral, but perhaps the biggest threat is acidification. Half the carbon dioxide in the world disappears into the seas. They are becoming not simply warmer but more acidic, and we do not know what the impact will be on sea creatures with calcium-based shells; but we must operate on the precautionary principle. The position is critical for oceans now. If we get things right, there is a really exciting possibility that, as well as protecting the shoreline, coral may have medical research potential, which could be unlocked for humans in the future. That would be a more rational exploitation of the sea than some of the things that have happened so far.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) that we need a different international legal framework. The law of the sea is massively important, but we must transcend what it has done. It must be global and must have an impact on the things that are threatening not only marine life but probably life as we know it on the planet. The Government are well placed to take such international action—including within the EU, for the remaining time we are members of it. Who knows where we will end up, but internationalisation of the process must be fundamental, and I look to the Minister to say how the Government will approach the international agenda.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and all the Back-Bench speakers for their self-discipline in sticking to their timings. I am sure that after the Front-Bench speeches the Minister will allow the hon. Member who moved the motion time to make some concluding remarks.