Homelessness Reduction Bill

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying. There is cross-party support. I support the Bill—the hon. Member for Harrow East and the Government have my support today—but I am entitled to speak for the people who will be on the streets of Greater Manchester and the hon. Gentleman’s constituency tonight. I am entitled to give them a voice in this House. The Bill will not change their situation or reduce rough sleeping anytime soon, so who is speaking for them? It is unacceptable for the House to debate homelessness in a cosy way without facing the reality that rough sleeping is rising at an alarming rate. What is the Minister doing about that? The House and, more importantly, the people out there on the cold streets deserve an answer.

[Ms Buck]

I urge my right hon. Friend to pay little regard to the comments of the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) because, although he is absolutely correct that there was and is cross-party consensus on the provisions and the culture underpinning the Bill, which we want to see implemented, in Committee and on Second Reading virtually all the comments from Opposition Members have been that the wider context in which homelessness and rough sleeping exist, from universal credit to housing benefit cuts and housing supply, is going in reverse. It is absolutely right that we should draw attention to that.

EU Nationals in the UK

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

Wednesday 6th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

It is an abdication of leadership for the Home Secretary not to be here to hear what my hon. Friend has said. One can only speculate that she made those comments in a bid to woo the grassroots of the Tory party. I do not know, because she is not here to contradict me. She could have done if she wanted to, but she is not here to do so. I do not know whether her comments were made with that in mind, but I do know that they have caused a lot of worry for people, as my hon. Friend says. They are in danger of making us look to the rest of the world like a very different country from the one that welcomed the world to London 2012 just four short years ago: a very different Britain from the decent, open-minded, fair country that we are perceived to be, or have been perceived to be, around the world.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

There are 36,000 EU residents living in the London borough of Westminster, and my postbag has also been flooded with correspondence on this. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is hard to overstate how disappointed and worried many of these people are at the message that is being sent out and the lack of clarity? I hope he can reassure one constituent who wrote to me this week to say that she has lived in her “beloved London” for 14 years, educated herself, paid for herself, always worked, paid her taxes, supported local charities, and been involved with her community. She says:

“I am probably not the…immigrant everyone fears, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am an immigrant and I worry for my future.”

[Andy Burnham]

I find it terrible that that is how people in Britain in 2016 are thinking and feeling today as we have this debate. We should do something today to give my hon. Friend’s constituent some comfort and to send the message that she is indeed valued here.

Police Funding, Crime and Community Safety

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I was just about to make that very point. The cuts that we are now facing come on top of the loss of 18,000 police officers over the previous Parliament, as my right hon. Friend has just said, and 12,000 of them were front-line officers. Thousands of police community support officers and civilian staff have lost their jobs. We have begun to see the break-up of neighbourhood policing, which was a great achievement of the previous Labour Government, bringing police out of their stations and cars and back into communities, restoring trust and bringing down crime. That is a record that Labour should be proud of.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend also aware that commitments were given that the sale of police stations and other buildings would help to ensure that there were additional police officers on the frontline? In my constituency we have lost St John’s Wood police station and Harrow Road police station, and I understand that Paddington Green police station has now been sold, yet our police numbers are still nearly 30% down on where they were in 2011.

[Andy Burnham]

The same story is repeated all over the country. I ask my hon. Friend to think about the cuts that have been made to other services alongside the police, such as those to councils, mental health services, social care, disability benefits, ambulance services and fire services. All those cuts pile extra pressure on our overstretched police forces. That is what we are seeing. The cuts now being planned come at a time when this country is facing multiple challenges on many fronts, and when the threat level has never been higher, so something has to give.

Policing

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes with concern the loss of 17,000 police officers in the last five years; further notes the most recent Police Recorded Crime statistics, which show sharp rises in some of the more serious crimes including knife crime and sexual assault and that, alongside evidence that some crime is rising, there is evidence that crime is changing and moving away from traditional forms such as burglary and car theft and is being increasingly replaced by cybercrime; is concerned by reports that the police budget could face between 25 and 40 per cent spending reductions in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review; notes warnings from senior police figures that this could result in over 20,000 further reductions in frontline staff, the effective end of neighbourhood policing and much of the public being exposed to much greater risk; accepts that further efficiencies can be made in the police budget for England and Wales but believes that budget reductions over 10 per cent would be dangerous; further notes the ongoing concern surrounding the Scottish Government’s oversight of Police Scotland and the findings of the recent staff survey which found only 30 per cent of staff thought they had the resources necessary to do their job properly; and calls on the Government to secure a funding settlement for the police that maintains frontline services and does not compromise public safety.

I rise to speak to the motion in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends. At the start, I should thank the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), who is about to leave the Chamber. Old alliances forged over the cause of water fluoridation do, in the end, stand one in good stead. I am grateful to him.

We have just been discussing the powers that the police and security services need to keep us safe in the 21st century. I would be the first to argue that the House has a duty to provide those powers, alongside strong safeguards, but that is of course only half the story. Alongside the powers, we need the people to put them into practice. That bit was missing from the Home Secretary’s statement. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Britain led the world in policing, because our policing by consent model was based on investment in good people with a strong sense of public vocation. In the 21st century, crime is changing—it is moving online and becoming more complex—but what will never change is the simple principle that the foundation stone of good policing is that presence in every community and the building of those strong relationships at local level.

It therefore feels right to pay tribute at the start of this debate to police officers and police civilian staff. What unites this House is a deep sense of gratitude to the men and women who work every day to keep our constituents safe and put themselves in harm’s way to do it.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that among the police whom the public are most supportive of are our safer neighbourhood teams They have been so severely undermined by spending cuts in the past few years. In Westminster, we saw a 30% fall in police between 2011 and this spring, and many constituents are saying to me that they no longer see any evidence of safer neighbourhood teams on the beat. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is a cause of great sadness?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend anticipates me, because that is going to be at the heart of what I say today. I am sure that she, like me, feels great pride in what the last Labour Government did to invest in neighbourhood and community policing. Those changes have been noticed by the public and have built confidence locally in policing, and that is now at risk.

Health and Social Care

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman what I remember: I remember NHS waiting lists in 2010 being at their lowest ever level; I remember public satisfaction with the NHS being at its highest ever level; and I also remember leaving behind a financially solvent national health service. Let us look at it today: NHS waiting lists at a six-year high; cancer patients waiting longer for their treatment to start; A&E in crisis; and, as I said, a £1 billion deficit, and rising, at the heart of the NHS. That is the Secretary of State’s record, and a little more humility might not go amiss.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Is it not true that the NHS’s greatest resource, and indeed greatest cost, is its staff? Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust overspent on staff by £24 million last year, and at the end of the financial year 12% of all its spending was going on agency and “bank” staff. While it is completely right to clamp down on the ludicrous overspend on agency staffing, does this not reflect the reality of cuts in training and of an attitude to staff pay by the Government? Does my right hon. Friend agree that we will not deal with agency staff without having a better deal for the recruitment and retention of permanent staff in the NHS?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend anticipates me, because this is precisely the issue I am coming on to. Under the Lansley reorganisation, workforce planning went out of the window, and that led to today’s huge workforce crisis and hospitals being in the grip of private staffing agencies. That is the single biggest driver of the NHS deficit that I mentioned a moment ago, and I will talk about that shortly.

The Secretary of State gave us a pious warning about temperate language, yet this is the Secretary of State who today on the front page of The Daily Telegraph is saying that the NHS has enough cash and now must deliver:

“the time for debating whether or not”

it has enough money is over, it

“now needs to deliver its side of the bargain”.

Not for the first time, that is a statement by the Secretary of State that will have caused jaws to drop across the NHS. People will not forget the time he accused hospitals of coasting when they were in the middle of an A&E crisis, but even by his standards this was a staggering piece of spin.

The simple fact is that the NHS does not have enough money. In fact it is seriously short of money. It is facing a £1 billion deficit this year, with two thirds of hospitals in the red, which marks a major deterioration from what the Conservatives inherited in 2010, when there was a surplus of over £500 million.

National Health Service

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will give way to my hon. Friend before making more progress.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

If the causes of the A and E crisis are deep and structural, as the Secretary of State has implied, why is it that the number of people in London waiting outside A and E in ambulances rose by 66% in one month—between November and December?

[Andy Burnham]

As usual, my hon. Friend puts her finger on the issue: the crisis is not as the Secretary of State describes. I will come on to that right now, but the first request I will make of him today is to publish the research that proves that the three top reasons he gave in this House two weeks ago are indeed the reasons for the increased demand in A and E, because I do not believe that they are. Perhaps they have made a small contribution, but they are not the real reason for the crisis. Our analysis of what is behind the extra pressure is very different from his. Let me introduce an important and revealing fact into this debate, which picks up on my hon. Friend’s point.

Over the past four years of the previous Government, annual attendances at A and E increased by 60,000. Over the first four years of this Government, they have increased by 600,000. That is a dramatic increase, which is explained not by those long-term structural issues, but by decisions taken by this Government.

Sure Start Children’s Centres

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

We will judge a week on Thursday whether Kent can return much Labour support, and we look forward to that judgment, but again I pay tribute to those local authorities that in difficult circumstances are doing their best to keep the Sure Start infrastructure intact. They deserve credit for that, because they are making some difficult decisions, and later I will go through some local authorities and list those examples that the House will be interested to hear.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Westminster council is also seeking not to lock the doors of its 12 children’s centres, but it is achieving that by implementing an 18% cut in funding through reduced outreach services and reduced services for child development, and by ensuring that smaller centres no longer provide any help for families seeking employment. How does that fit with the Government’s objective of getting mothers back into employment?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I look over her local authority’s border into Hammersmith and Fulham, where even more worrying steps are being taken, steps that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) has skilfully exposed. I will come to those issues later, because there is a real issue about whether, in keeping open a centre, the service to parents in local authorities throughout the country is being destroyed. That is the key issue for the House to consider.

Let me, however, give the Government credit where credit is due—most unlike me, but here we go: they have certainly talked a good game on early intervention. To show just how committed they were to the issue, they commissioned not one but two distinguished Opposition Members to advise them on it, and the Field review—I am pleased to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) in his place—and the Allen report found common ground.

First, each report sets out a persuasive case for investing public resources heavily in the early years of a child’s life. They argue that doing so will help us to tackle the root causes of poverty and to build true social mobility in Britain. Only that will challenge a society where, in the words of my right hon. Friend,

“at the age of three but certainly by five, the die of life is set for most children.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 320.]

We all must seek to work together to challenge such a world.

Secondly, their recommendations are based on the assumption that the existing 3,600 Sure Start children’s centres throughout the country, one to serve every community, should be the essential infrastructure—indeed, the delivery system—if the vision of high quality early intervention is to become a reality. That is the key question that we need to consider today.

The departmental Select Committee in the previous Parliament found that Sure Start had begun to make an appreciable difference to children’s lives. It stated:

“Parents in Sure Start areas relative to those in non-Sure Start areas reported using more child and family-related services…and their children were socially more competent. These results seem to show that programmes are becoming more effective over time, particularly in their work with the most disadvantaged, and that children are feeling the benefit of longer exposure to the programmes.”

That is a ringing endorsement.

In essence, Sure Start built into the early years universal comprehensive education. Its strength is that it brings together parents, of all backgrounds, who may not have known each other before. Instead of providing only state support, Sure Start, by bringing those people together, helped them to create self-sustaining support networks in the community, through one parent working with another, and in that way it gave all young parents the extra support that they need. That is a fundamental strength of Sure Start, and it must not be lost.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

Either that is a school sixth form or the answer that the Secretary of State’s Department issued was wrong, but it is an appalling state of affairs if he has barely ever managed to take himself along to a sixth-form college to speak to the staff and students who will be affected. [Interruption.] Yes, he has been to one in his own constituency but no one else’s. That is very helpful of him. I might remind him that he is responsible for everyone’s constituents. At a stroke he is axing a £500 million scheme, which will have a profound effect on 650,000 young lives and on the viability of 230 FE colleges and 95 sixth-form colleges, for which he has policy responsibility, without so much as troubling himself to go along and hear at first hand what the decision will mean.

The Secretary of State needs to climb down from his ivory tower once in a while and get out in the real world. How many students has he met who will be directly affected by the changes? Has he met any? I am not sure whether he is nodding, but if he had met some I am absolutely sure that, if nothing else, he would long since have asked his Ministers to stop implying that those high-achieving and talented young people can be described as “dead weight”.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Through my right hon. Friend, may I issue an invitation to the Secretary of State to come with me to City of Westminster college? Its principal has written to me to say that 1,500 of his students will lose their EMA, which in his experience has transformed attendance and achievement at the college.

[Andy Burnham]

I will do so, but I cannot answer for the Secretary of State. I have been to sixth-form colleges in London, and that brings me to my case about social mobility. If he visits a sixth-form college while he is in the job, may I suggest that he could do worse than visit the one that my hon. Friend mentions, or indeed Newham sixth-form college, which I visited yesterday? If he does, he might meet the young man who told me about the practical effect of losing EMA. He feels that he will have to lower his ambitions in the universities to which he applies, because he thinks his exam grades will undoubtedly suffer.

School Sports Funding

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will accept a package that keeps the basic infrastructure in place and keeps school sports co-ordinators in their jobs. I have said that I will accept a reduction, but it is the Secretary of State’s job to put forward a package that does just that.

What the Secretary of State has done is a senseless act of vandalism defying all logic, leaving people speechless. The Australian sports commissioner has asked how this country could dismantle a “world-leading” school sport system. The chief executive of the Canadian Olympic committee has taken the unusual step of writing to the Secretary of State to ask how, months away from a home Olympics, we can have this wholesale change in sports policy. We have called this debate because we want the Government to listen, to change course and to protect a basic school sports structure before it breaks down.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend was very supportive of me in his previous incarnation at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport when I came to talk about school provision in inner London. Is he aware that the school sport partnership in the London borough of Westminster, which is set to lose £400,000 a year, has, since 2005, increased from 55% to 100% the number of young people taking part in at least two hours of sport a week, including the promotion of inter-school competition?

[Andy Burnham]

They are astonishing achievements, particularly in an area such as the one my hon. Friend represents, where traditionally there have been difficulties accessing good-quality sports provision. I remember those discussions. For the children living in that inner-city environment, that is an unbelievable achievement, and they should be congratulated on what they have done.

Ministers do not seem to understand why people feel hurt and angry. They use provocative language and selective figures, and they seem not to understand what has happened on the ground in their own constituencies—or, worse, they do know what has happened, but they are not prepared to acknowledge it because it does not fit with their political purpose. Either way, it is very bad. If it is the latter, it is appalling.

Funding and Schools Reform

Debate between Andy Burnham and Karen Buck

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

It is depressing to hear such nonsense from the Government Benches after all these years. Is the hon. Gentleman saying to me that it is acceptable for a school to have leaking roofs or to have no playing field? Is he saying that office blocks are fine for schools? I disagree. I believe that we can do better for our children. If that is a call to cut off the funding to deprived authorities, he should be utterly ashamed of himself.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Perhaps the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) could enlighten the House by pointing us to any private schools that have outside toilets and leaking roofs.