Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anna Soubry and David Anderson

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

That is the set of proposals we are considering. May I make it very clear to the hon. Gentleman that I am more than happy to speak to and meet him? If he would like to contact me after this session, we can arrange such a meeting.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

4. What recent discussions he has had with trade unions in Scotland on the Government’s proposed legislation on trade unions.

[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

We are in the process of bringing forward new legislation in relation to trade unions to make sure that we carry out our manifesto commitment. I have not yet met any of the trade unions in Scotland. I look forward to that so that we can make progress with the Bill.

[Mr Anderson]

From what the Minister has just said, it is quite clear that she has regular discussions with business, but no discussions with trade unions. It is clear that trade union association is a matter of human rights, and that the right to strike makes the difference between people being workers and being slaves. Will she assure the House that she will listen to the voice of the trade unions, and will she confirm that these rules will not breach International Labour Organisation conventions?

[Anna Soubry]

May I make it very clear to the hon. Gentleman that as a former trade unionist and shop steward I am more than willing to listen to trade unions? Equally, however, it is really important to understand that in the modern world it cannot be right that a minority vote to strike has the most profound effect on travellers and on carers and children. It is in everybody’s interests for us to make sure that our trade unions are democratic and work for everyone.

Veterans (Support and Rehabilitation)

Debate between Anna Soubry and David Anderson

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Anna Soubry]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has said, as he did in his speech, all the things that I would want to say, so I will not repeat everything; he puts it far better than I can.

I join in the tributes paid by my hon. Friend to the big, national charities. We have talked about SSAFA. That charity is often forgotten, but it is a fabulous charity and does great work. We know the Royal British Legion. I am reminded of a study that it has just done. I am happy to share the results by way of a letter, because I cannot go through all the statistics now. It has done a big survey of veterans, and some of the things in it concern me. I am talking about the rates among veterans of, for example, long-term illness and depression. It says that they are higher, although if we look across the mental health piece, we know that actually our veterans, people coming out of service, do not suffer higher levels of mental health problems than the rest of the population. That does not mean that the issue is not important, but we have to set these things in context, because as the RBL says, there are a number of myths. One is that most people are damaged by their service. That is not true. The majority of our veterans enjoy good mental health, for example. We are told that many are homeless. We have heard the stats; it is only 3%. I know that 3% is still 3% too many, but 3% of London’s homeless population are ex-service personnel.

There is also the issue of the number of veterans in prisons, and I shall deal with some of the very good points made by my friend the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) in his excellent speech. We think that 3% to 7% of prisoners are veterans, but I heard the figures that the hon. Gentleman gave from his extensive experience in his own constituency.

I want to give a quick mention to Help for Heroes. It does a fabulous job, but when I go, as I have gone, to Tedworth House, I can see that it is a place that could take more people. I want us to get into the position whereby someone who is being medically discharged from service has the opportunity to go to Tedworth House, so that it can put them in the very place that the hon. Gentleman wants them to be in before they leave service. I want people, if they do hit troubles, bad times and all the rest of it, to have somewhere to go back to—an organisation to go back to that can then pass them on to a local charity.

[Mr Anderson]

The figures that I cited were not actually from the local area. They were from the rehabilitation advisory service, which works closely with the veterans project. The work involves going into prisons and talking to people; it is not just a case of writing to someone and saying, “How many veterans have you had here?” It is good evidence, and we gave it to the Minister’s predecessor.

[Anna Soubry]

I am very grateful. I would very much enjoy having a conversation with the hon. Gentleman to discuss the matter further. I pay tribute to the work that he does and the knowledge that he has brought to this debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke asked specifically about veterans’ accommodation. There is £40 million of LIBOR funding for that. Nine out of the 16 projects that have been successful have been announced; a further seven will be announced next month by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

There are schemes to support veterans involved in the criminal justice system. I was really interested in the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Blaydon. I have always been resistant to the idea of veterans courts, but he has begun to convince me. Certainly I am going to keep an open mind on it; he has persuaded me to keep my mind open to it. The danger, I am told, is that many of those who have served say, “Why should we be seen as something different or special? We do not need our own court.” My hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke addressed that argument. My experience in the Crown court was that when a judge knew that someone was serving or had served, they took that heavily into consideration before deciding whether to pass a custodial sentence, because they recognised the sacrifice and the duty that the individual had performed by serving in one of our armed services.

In the time that remains, I want to deal with the some of the points that have been raised. In particular, I want to talk about mental health, which always comes up, and I know that it concerns so many people in this place and outside it. I give full credit to the charity Forward Assist, which the hon. Member for Blaydon has mentioned and of which, I believe, he is a patron. He brings to the debate insight and understanding. I think that the charity is a good example of how we should deliver on the covenant, namely through local delivery by a good local charity that knows the people who need help and knows how to go and find them. Knowing how to find such people is one of the big problems.

I have confidence, and I hope I am not overstating it, in where we are now. We have heard from the hon. Member for Strangford about Cyprus. We know that in respect of people who were involved in Afghanistan in the theatre of war, our armed forces have really woken up to mental health. As a society, we have woken up to mental health, and much of the stigma has been removed from it. In our armed forces, the rather macho attitude of “We do not talk about these things. Be a man and get on with it,” has given way to a much healthier attitude to mental health. It is seen much more as part of general health. People look after their weight, and they look after their head at the same time. Looking after their mental health is part of being fit for service. We are building resilience and we are encouraging people to talk about mental health. As the hon. Gentleman has identified, people go to Cyprus from Afghanistan, where they go through a period of decompression. They are encouraged to be open and to talk.

It is hugely significant that our former Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Peter Wall, chose to become president of Combat Stress when he retired, even though he had many charities to choose from. That shows that people are no longer afraid, and no longer feel that it is some sort of slight, to talk about mental health. People recognise how important it is that we get it right, and a lot of good work has been done. I am concerned about people—they are mainly men—who served in previous combats, such as Iraq, the Falklands and Northern Ireland, who did not have many of those facilities and do not come from that generation of service. I fear that they have slipped through the net. They may end up in trouble or in a bad place, and they may feel that there is nobody to support or help them.

That is where the fabulous local charities come into play, because they have the ability to scoop up such people at a local level and get them into the right place. In my constituency, there is a fabulous local charity called Forces in the Community, which is looking at schemes with the local police. If the police pick up someone who is drunk, misbehaving, or engaged in low-level crime and they discover that that person is a veteran, they do not go through the normal process of giving the individual a caution. Instead, they look sensibly and intelligently at doing things differently by, for example, placing the individual with an organisation such as Forces in the Community. If, for example, someone has a problem with drugs or drink, if they are homeless or if their marriage is falling to pieces, they are put together with local organisations that can help them. In such a way, we can deliver what we should be delivering for all our veterans.

The hon. Member for Strangford mentioned vaccinations in Iraq, and I will take that issue away and deal with it. Mr Bayley, I think I have enough time to talk quickly about the career transition partnership—

Postal Services Bill

Debate between Anna Soubry and David Anderson

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Anderson]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman mentions the work force because I can now ask him, if he believes in the new politics, why not ballot the work force? If they say yes to privatisation, we will all shut up and go home. We will walk through the Aye Lobby if that is what the work force want—but I think he would be on a losser.

There are other examples. When we were telling Sid to privatise all the utilities, we were also creating the pensions mess that we are cleaning up today. The 13 years of pensions holidays under previous Tory Governments led to Royal Mail facing 38 years of paying back pensions. That is the main reason for today’s comments about the public having to pick up the bill. As someone said earlier, we will get all the bad parts and the private sector will get all the good parts. That is exactly what happened with the coal industry: we privatised it and now we are buying coal from Ukraine and China. We put 200,000 miners on the dole, but that does not matter: it is the rigours of privatisation. The rigours of privatisation mean that 6,000 in China will be killed in coal mines this year, but nobody on the Government side cares about that. And what happened with the rail services? What happened with Railtrack? It failed. What happened with GNER and the east coast main line? They failed. What happened with east coast railways? They failed. The public sector had to come in and pick up the mess, and that is what will happen here.

We have also seen the development of markets in the health service. We had compulsory competitive tendering in the early 1990s—ideologically driven part-privatisation that meant that ordinary workers who had given their lives to public service were sent out to work for the Joe Bloggs cleaning company. We have seen it with foundation trusts and market-led rigours. What are they doing? The hospital in my constituency closed its laundry. Now, 5 million pieces of laundry have to be taken 140 miles, from the north-east to Leicester and back again, because it is cheaper. Those are the rigours of privatisation—forgetting the fact that 90 laundry workers have been sacked.

We shall see exactly the same thing with Royal Mail. It is clear what we can do in this situation. As I said earlier to the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland)—he and I worked together for the Gurkhas—if he really believes that people want privatisation, he should be honest. Go out and hold a referendum: ask the work force what they think. When Royal Mail is no longer allowed to be called Royal Mail, it will no longer be allowed to put the Queen’s head on stamps. The mail service will probably be subject to VAT.

It is clear that the public do not want the measure. The workers do not want it. The majority of people on the Opposition Benches do not want it, and the truth is that half the people on the Government Benches do not want it either, but they are being driven—

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

In my constituency there are 700 postal workers at the Beeston sorting office. To my knowledge, not one of them has written to urge me not to support the Bill. Two of them came to the Commons today to ask me not to support it—two in 700.

[Mr Anderson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. If she would like to meet me outside in the Lobby, I will take her name and address and pass it to the general secretary of the Communication Workers Union. I will ask him to write to his 700 members at Beeston to ask them to contact their MP and tell her that they are happy to work for TNT or Deutsche Bank, and that they will be happy to see their pensions, shift allowances and jobs go down the river. If that is what the workers want, that is what the rigours of privatisation will deliver. The track record cannot be denied. We can pretend it does not happen, but that is the truth.

It is clear that there is nothing new in the Bill—