Climate Action and Extinction Rebellion

Debate between Claire Perry and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. There is too much fear and not enough hope. If we look at the UK, the low-carbon economic sector is growing four times faster than the mainstream economy and we have 400,000 people—bigger than the aerospace sector—employed in green jobs. We can continue to see the global opportunities from investment. This is a massive opportunity. Not only are we saving the world’s ecosystems; we are creating jobs for the future. We know that 65% of those under 24 want what they call a green-collar job. They just do not know how many are out there.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

One way we can decarbonise homes is by using geothermal energy, particularly in former mining areas. The University of Durham has done a lot of research on this subject. Would the Minister like to come to learn about the research it is doing and consider how we can implement it?

[Claire Perry]

It would be a pleasure to come and visit. We have had several debates on geothermal heat, in particular from old mine workings. It seems only fitting that the blood, sweat and tears of those thousands of men who dug up the energy source of our first industrial revolution could somehow be reused by using hot water as another source of energy.

Climate Change Policy

Debate between Claire Perry and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

I think that part of the challenge, but also part of the opportunity, is that this has to be a cross-Government process. We simply cannot sit and make policy around transport emissions without thinking about infrastructure. We cannot talk about energy without thinking about planning systems. There is therefore absolutely fundamental cross-Government agreement on this, as well as, hopefully, cross-party agreement. It is telling that, when we agreed to put forward our COP bid, which involves a not insubstantial cost, that was done with complete Cabinet unanimity, because everybody recognises the importance of this issue and how fundamentally every part of our economy has to change.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

At the beginning of her statement, the Minister said how good the Climate Change Act 10 years ago was because it put legal obligations on the Government. One of the interesting things Greta Thunberg said earlier today was that we needed to move from the politically possible to the scientifically necessary. The high point of political possibility was reached in Paris, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) pointed out, that is not enough—that is not delivering the goods. When the Minister goes back into the international arena, in Chile at the end of the year, will she think about promoting legal obligations and not just pledges at the international level?

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Lady is right that we have to act as well as just setting out these warm words. One of the things we have been doing that is working is encouraging other countries to pass their own climate legislation so that they are not setting interesting, politically attractive targets and then all going off and having lunch. They are actually putting in law the sorts of budgets and reduction trajectories that we have had to enact. That means that Ministers have to stand up and have these uncomfortable grillings in front of people who know a lot more about the subject than they do.

Protecting Children Online

Debate between Claire Perry and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Once again, he emphasises the importance of the international dimension.

What we are proposing is aimed at reproducing the conditions that we have already established in the real world. The distinction between legal and illegal content is far too simplistic. For cinemas we have the highly respected independent British Board of Film Classification. It produces age ratings—12, 15 or 18. Any cinema found to be regularly flouting the age restrictions would lose its local authority licence. Furthermore, material classified as R18 can be seen only in certain cinemas, and some material deemed obscene is cut entirely. Yet on the internet it is all freely accessible to every 12-year-old. Indeed—this relates to what my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) said a moment ago—the NSPCC believes that one quarter of nine to 16-year olds have seen sexual images online. We are not talking about young women baring their breasts—that is like something from Enid Blyton compared with the Frankenstein images now available.

The dangers are clear. On average, 29% of nine to 16-year-olds have contact online with someone they have never met face to face. Of course there is a real difference between child abuse online and extreme pornography, but unfortunately in the real world people who become addicted to pornography look for more and more extreme images, and that sometimes tips into child abuse images. Addiction is the issue. Users are found to have literally millions of images on their computer, and child abuse sites are signposted on pornography sites. Both are shared peer to peer.

Therefore, an effective age verification system would mean that paedophiles would lose the anonymity behind which they currently hide, and the denial of what they are really doing would be addressed by the third proposal in the motion, which is to have splash warnings before entering filtered sites. Work by Professor Richard Wortley at University College London suggests that that might halve the numbers viewing child abuse online.

Of course, those measures would have a cost to industry. TalkTalk, which has led the way in offering filters, has spent over £20 million. Some in the industry tell us that they do not want to lose their competitive edge, and some say that they do not want to act as censors. That is why the Government should act by putting a clear timetable for those reforms into law in order to speed up change, level the playing field and support parents. We know that most parents want to do what is right by their children, because 66% of people, and 78% of women, want an automatic block, according to a YouGov poll conducted last year, but the industry is not helping them enough. At the moment, some still require people to download their own filters—a near-impossible task for many of us—some see it as a marketing device, and others want to give the option of filters only to new customers. At the current rate of turnover, it would be 2019 before that approach had any hope of reaching total coverage. It simply is not good enough. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) wish to intervene?

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

indicated dissent.

[Helen Goodman]

So what have the Government been doing? Before the general election, the Prime Minister promised that he would lead the most family-friendly Government ever, but so far there has been lots of talking and much less action. After three years and two Secretaries of State, the Government still seem to think that a voluntary approach will work. Do they not know when they are being strung along, or do they not care? How many more years must we wait? How many child deaths will it take to shock them into action?

Let us look at the record. First, the Prime Minister set up the Bailey review, which reported in June 2011. It recommended that after 18 months the internet industry must, as a matter of urgency, act decisively to develop and introduce effective parental controls—with Government regulation if voluntary action is not forthcoming within a reasonable time scale—and robust age verification. But here we are, fully two years on, and nothing has changed. Contrary to the answer I received from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who is in his place, the fact is that BT, Sky and Virgin are yet to come forward to announce their proposals on how they intend to deliver.

Then we had the independent parliamentary inquiry into child protection online, an all-party group. It recommended an accelerated implementation timetable, a formal consultation on the introduction of an opt-in content filtering system, and that the Government should seek back-stop legal powers to intervene should the ISPs fail to implement an appropriate solution. A year later, no solution has been implemented. Why did the Government not introduce a communications Bill with appropriate measures in the Queen’s Speech?

Finally, last autumn the Government undertook a consultation. It was so badly advertised that 68% of respondents were members of the Open Rights Group, an important group but a lobbying group with 1,500 members, compared with the 34% of respondents who were parents of Britain’s 11 million children. Despite that, the Government concluded that parents did not want to see parental controls turned on by default.

The Government have zig-zagged back and forth but we have seen no action in the real world. The Secretary of State has called a meeting with industry representatives next week. What will she say to them? I hope that she will not engage in yet another round of fruitless pleas and requests. There is a total lack of strategy from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

I want to make an offer to the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey): if he brings forward measures, with a speedy timetable, for the introduction of safe search as a default, robust age verification and splash warnings, we will support him. I gather that Ministers are urging their colleagues to vote against the motion. It is time that the Government stopped hoping that everything will turn out for the best and started taking responsibility. The time for talking is over. The time for action is now. We must put our children first. I hope that all hon. Members will vote for the motion in the Lobby this afternoon.

Women (Government Policies)

Debate between Claire Perry and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

I agree with the hon. Lady, who I know has campaigned on this issue for years, that some progress was made, but it was not enough. The welfare system is incredibly complicated and provides huge disincentives to work. Yes, women were helped back into the work force, and the hon. Lady and I both completely support that. However, we hear time and again about women who do not know if it is even worth their while to work—who cannot work out, given the complexities of part-time and voluntary working, whether they should even look for child care for their daughter or son in order to go to work. It is simply an expensive mess that has not helped the women and men across this country in the way that it should.

[Helen Goodman]

Will the hon. Lady temper her rhetoric just a tiny bit and recall that every person who goes to a jobcentre gets a “better off in work” calculation to inform them by how much they will be better off, and what their other entitlements are?

[Claire Perry]

I would be interested to know whether the hon. Lady has actually gone through a “better off” job calculation, as I have. It is one of the most complicated, ridiculous pieces of analysis I have ever seen. In many cases, the jobcentre advisers simply say, “We actually don’t know.” It can take 45 minutes to make a “better off” calculation, and if someone’s circumstances change by one or two hours a week, they have to go back to the starting point. If the hon. Lady is suggesting that the “better off in work” calculation is something to be proud of after 13 years in government, may I suggest that she fundamentally misunderstands what we need to do to get men and women back into work? In fact, the work that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is doing will massively reform the system.

Sentencing

Debate between Claire Perry and Helen Goodman

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Last week, the Justice Secretary showed us how out of touch he is with the women of this country, and this afternoon we have had a demonstration of how out of touch he is with communities on the issue of crime. In recent days, the Justice Secretary has said that he does not want to change sentences for serious crime, and he said that again this afternoon. He is playing word games with the public, however, because he knows perfectly well that under his proposals people could spend just one quarter of the sentence given to them by the judge in prison. The safety of our communities is too serious for us to play these word games.

No wonder the public lose trust in the system.

“many people feel that sentencing in Britain is dishonest and misleading.”

The Tories said that in their manifesto, and they promised to improve transparency; another broken promise. As my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said, they promised to redevelop the prison estate and increase capacity. Instead, they are cutting the prison building programme. The one manifesto promise the Justice Secretary has fulfilled is to

“stop talking tough and meting out ever longer prison sentences”

That promise was in the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto, of course.

My hon. Friends the Members for Llanelli and for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart)—the latter was an excellent Home Office Minister in the previous Government—have spoken of their concerns about the way the issue of rape was treated last week. That revealed that the ministerial team does not know the facts and does not know the law.

Unfortunately, most of the 1,000 rapes that are committed every week in this country are committed by partners and ex-partners. Also, the law has changed since the Secretary of State was practising at the bar in the last century, and he should know what it now is. Consensual sex between an 18-year-old and a 15-year-old is unlawful, but it is not rape.

The Labour Government ended cross-examination by assailants, and they ended questioning on people’s sexual pasts. The way to win the confidence of women in this country is not to cut the sentence for people convicted of rape; rather, it is to keep the specialist police, maintain local authority support for sexual assault referral centres, and listen to the groups and lawyers working with victims. The Ministry of Justice needs a woman in the team, and the Prime Minister should find one PDQ.

Many Members have spoken about the legacy that was left for the current Government. Government Members should remember that Labour cut crime by 43%, and cut reoffending by 15%. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) pointed out, the Labour Government understood the role that prison plays, which is why we increased the number of places by 26,000.

Everyone wants to cut reoffending and tackle the underlying problems, and the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) made an excellent speech on the issues faced by women offenders. The points she made highlight why we followed the recommendations in the Corston report and the Bradley report on prisoners with mental health problems, and why we invested £170 million in literacy and numeracy skills, and set up new workshops in prison.

Early guilty pleas can speed up trials and reduce the pressure on victims, but the real reason why the Government are going ahead is to save money, as the Secretary of State made clear. The Government’s own estimate is that a discount of up to 50% would reduce the number of prison places by 3,500 and save £130 million. The proposal in the Green Paper appears not in the section on victims, but under the heading

“Efficient, effective use of the courts.”

That is the real motivation. Of course cutting the deficit matters, but it is not the only thing that matters, and it is not possible to put a price on justice.

What is so radically wrong with the Government’s proposal to introduce a 50% discount for early guilty pleas is that it undermines the justice of the sentence that is finally served. Many criminals who would have pleaded guilty early anyway will benefit. Can the Minister tell us how many thousands of prisoners fall into that category? The Ministry of Justice estimates in its impact assessment that the average discount will rise from 25% to 34%, and that is totally unjustified.

As was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Justice, Ministers have produced no evidence to suggest that the proposal will affect the number of people pleading guilty early. Indeed, the Sentencing Council will say that the strength of prosecuting evidence is the crucial factor, and the Council of Her Majesty’s Circuit Judges feels that many offenders are

“irrational or dysfunctional and will not face up to the realities until the last possible moment.”

As the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) pointed out, short sentences are known to be ineffective—that is obviously why the Ministry of Justice wants to increase the number of people on them. Another problem with the proposal is that the reduction is formulaic, so those who have committed the worst offences get the biggest cuts in prison terms—that is simply not fair. This proposal will apply to terrorists and last week Lord Carlile said:

“The release of every prisoner convicted of a terrorist offence has a national security implication and the sooner they are released the greater the national security implication.”

The overwhelming problem is that the punishment will not fit the crime. My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) pointed out that victims will feel let down and the public’s confidence will be shattered.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

The hon. Lady speaks with her usual passion on this subject, but did she speak with this passion when the previous Government introduced a 33% discount for an early guilty plea?

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Lady should have listened to the debate; we have gone through that argument already.

I want to move on to the important issue of the Secretary of State’s “rehabilitation revolution”. That is what he has promised, but the cuts programme he has agreed—23% over four years, with a loss of 10,000 prison and probation staff—will make it impossible. He says that he wants to increase the number of hours that prisoners work from 22 to 40, but his own impact assessment says that that will need more up-front capital and ongoing staff costs to supervise prisoners for longer. He has already cut £170 million from prisons, which means that prisoners will be locked up in their cells for longer. We are already seeing cuts to education and restorative justice work with offenders.

He says that he wants more community sentences, but effective community supervision is impossible with the huge cuts to the probation trusts. As the Chairman of the Select Committee pointed out, we need to reinvest in community supervision, but this year Nottingham’s probation trust faces a cut of 7%, and the trusts of Norfolk and Suffolk, Devon and Cornwall, and West Yorkshire face cuts of 7.2%, 7.8% and a staggering 9.8% respectively.

The strategy is just not credible; nor are the Ministers. The year began with the prisons Minister standing in front of a burning prison as the third riot of his tenure took place. Last week, he said that “a moment’s reflection” would make it clear that giving half off a sentence would help to protect the public. He has now had a week’s reflection and we see from the Order Paper that the Government are stubbornly sticking to their policy. So I urge all hon. Members to reject the amendment and vote for the Opposition motion.

Amendment of the Law

Debate between Claire Perry and Helen Goodman

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this year’s Budget debates. Last Wednesday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a choice to make. He could have corrected the judgment he made last summer in the light of December’s stall in growth and the huge instability in the oil market, but he made a different choice: he chose to continue with his £81 billion of public spending cuts. Notwithstanding the remarks made by the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), I fear that the Government’s supply side measures will not produce a revolution in entrepreneurialism. The evidence for that is the Chancellor’s own growth forecasts. The forecasts for the early years have been reduced by far more than those for the later years have been increased, and that is because everything is dwarfed by the massive fiscal retrenchment. The cuts are deeply unfair and they are a strategic blunder.

I wish to focus for a moment on the cuts to the poorest families: the cuts to the social fund. At the beginning of March, the Department for Work and Pensions announced an immediate end to crisis loans for cookers and beds. Why? Before the election, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), who is now a Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, said:

“People who apply for crisis loans are desperate and have nowhere else to turn…The Government has got to practice what it preaches to the banks and make more cash available through these loans to help families through hard times.”

Now he prioritises sticking to the Budget and says:

“We need to ensure that crisis loan support is correctly targeted at those who need it most”.

Does he honestly believe that bedding is not essential? Does he think that mothers of disabled and incontinent children do not need beds and bedding? Can Government Members imagine how a mattress smells after six months’ use by an incontinent child?

[Claire Perry]

Yes.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Lady says yes, so she obviously thinks it is satisfactory for poor children to live in that way—a way that I am sure she would never allow her own children to live.

Do Government Members think that children in poor families should have only cold food—even in winter? Would they like to say to their small child on a cold afternoon in November, “Oh you can’t have baked beans on toast. You’ve got to have a cheese sandwich”? No wonder DWP Ministers are not having an outing on the Treasury Bench during these Budget debates. Clearly they do not want to face the criticism they know they would get from Labour Members.

In answer to questions, the DWP has told me that last year crisis loans for cookers and bedding totalled some £27 million. Where are people supposed to turn instead? Are they supposed to turn to the voluntary sector? I recently met families in my constituency, all with disabled children, who had benefited from that excellent voluntary sector organisation the Family Fund. Last year, the Family Fund helped 55,000 families with items such as cookers and bedding and its total budget was £35 million. Are the Government going to increase the grant to the Family Fund by £27 million to make up for the cuts to the crisis loans? Last year, the Family Fund included a picture of the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) in its annual report—I wonder whether it will do that next year too. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) is the only Liberal Democrat Member here to be reminded that the Minister responsible for this is the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate.

The problem that this country faces is not that it is bankrupt; the problem this country faces is that it has a Government who are morally bankrupt. This is hurting, but is it working? Taking the four years from 2010 to 2014 together, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that growth will be down, unemployment will be up, the social security budget will be up and net public sector borrowing will be up by a massive £40 billion. Already this looks like a catastrophic error of judgment and a strategic blunder. There is an alternative: a sensible path to fiscal consolidation as set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), which was about bringing down the debt, promoting growth and keeping people in work. There is an alternative, and on Saturday 300,000 people came to London to demonstrate in favour of it.