Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Craig Whittaker and Nigel Evans

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am just thinking about protecting a bit of time for the Front Benchers, so if I put on a four-minute time limit, we can hopefully get a few more Members in.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

I would like to speak in support of the Government and against making misogyny a hate crime, as suggested in Lords amendment 72. It is safe to say that everybody understands the strength of feeling about adding sex and gender to hate crime laws—as I do, not least, from my mailbox—and this debate has shown that. However, I feel unable to support the amendment in the light of the Law Commission’s conclusion in its independent review of hate crime laws in December last year. It said that such a step would potentially

“prove more harmful than helpful, both to victims of violence against women and girls, and also to efforts to tackle hate crime more broadly”—

the Law Commission’s words, not mine. It specifically noted that adding those characteristics may make the prosecution of crimes disproportionately affecting women and girls, such as sexual offences and domestic abuse, much more difficult.

That issue arises because establishing whether a hate crime has occurred would require additional proof to be demonstrated in court. The Law Commission notes, by contrast:

“It might be practically difficult to prove a sex or gender-based aggravation in the context of VAWG crimes that usually take place in private”.

As a result, the Law Commission notes:

“We are particularly concerned about the potential for this to make some sexual offence prosecutions more difficult”.

We should not put this in the “too difficult” box; it will just work against women and girls who are the victims.

The Law Commission subsequently recommended against adding these characteristics to the law. Given those and other potential unintended consequences, as we have heard, organisations responding to the consultation support the Law Commission’s review in opposing these characteristics being added to the law.

It is also worth Members noting, when they come to their decision today, that the Lords amendment seeks to mitigate the most serious risks identified in what I have spoken about by excluding certain offences from any hate crime designation, including sexual offences and domestic abuse. However, the Law Commission similarly identified that such models would not be helpful, noting that this would then make the addition of the characteristics largely “tokenistic”—the Law Commission’s words, not the Minister’s—by excluding the most serious offences that frequently harm women and girls. It also noted that the exclusion of these offences risks suggesting that they are, by default, less serious or not rooted in misogynistic hostility, and would treat sex and gender unequally to other characteristics in the scope of hate crime laws.

I therefore share the Law Commission’s concern that adding sex and gender to hate crime laws in any form could prove unacceptably counterproductive and work against women and girls.

Munro Report

Debate between Craig Whittaker and Nigel Evans

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this excellent review.

Strikingly, we knew as far back as 2009 that some social workers spent more than 80% of their time in front of paperwork, rather than out on the front line, face to face with children and families. Cameron’s quotation:

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted,”

published in 1963, has never been more apt than it is to our over-bureaucratic and compliance-ridden system. The focus on early intervention, also highlighted in the Allen, Field and Dame Clare Tickell reviews, shows the long-term benefits to the enrichment of families on the whole, as well as the massivly reduced burden in the cost to the state, and it can only highlight the need to turn that huge supertanker in a different direction.

It is time that we put social workers on the professional platform that they deserve. We need to develop a system in which child protection truly is a multi-agency business involving not only social workers but schools, police and health workers all finally working together—a system that removes constraints on local innovation and professional judgment. But let us not be under any illusions about the time that it will take to change mindsets and to implement the changes needed. The system has been so burdened for far too long.

I will home in on the role of the lead member for children’s services in local authorities, a position that Professor Munro says should not be undermined. Having spent three years as lead member for children’s services on Calderdale council, I believe that the lead member role needs to be looked at and enhanced through further guidance. I know only too well how brilliant a lead member is and how brilliant they are considered when they are out there batting for that extra £1 million in the budget, but the moment they start asking tricky or challenging questions they can almost see and feel the shutters closing down around them.

One good thing that the previous Government did introduce, just over two years ago, was the lead member’s membership of the local safeguarding children’s board, albeit on a limited basis as a participant observer. With that privilege, I could at least challenge partner agencies, and had it been introduced earlier I might have been able to use it as a tool to deep-dive issues even further.

Generally, however, partner agencies were not the only problem, because they chose to work traditionally in silos; it was also down to our directorate. The problem started at the top in Calderdale, which, like most authorities in the UK, has an educationist as its director of children’s services. Educationists also take up most head of service roles. Educationists and social workers generally lack the professional knowledge and understanding of each other’s roles, and without question there is professional snobbery between the two.

Just imagine, then, how it was for a lead member with only 30 years’ retail and people management experience going into that lion’s den. As one head of service once said to me, “With all due respect, you are only a shopkeeper.” A tongue-in-cheek comment, I know, but the battle line was drawn.

The lead member is also generally part time and often from a totally different sector. They are the only councillor with legal responsibilities, but when things do not go as well as they should, as was the case for me in Calderdale, gaining access to information can be hugely cumbersome. The information is often non-existent, and frankly the lead member can hear those shutters going down around them.

Interestingly, Professor Munro mentions Klein’s view on intuition, and with my managerial experience and intuition it became evident to me early on that we had a head of service who was not fit for purpose, an information service that was wholly inadequate, a children’s service base budget that was under-resourced to the tune of £1.5 million, a work force with low morale and a high proportion of agency staff, core and initial assessments woefully behind on time scales, two serious case reviews in the pipeline and a children’s trust in name only—and all that was just the headline stuff. When I challenged those responsible for the day-to-day running of CYP services, there were always reasoned responses and excuses, but that is often exactly what they were—excuses. It took three heads of service, three serious case reviews and more than two years before the appointment of a new director of children’s services, who agreed to an independent review by PricewaterhouseCoopers, before we managed to get a truthful picture of how bad things were in Calderdale regarding safeguarding.

Professor Munro mentions the role of the lead member staying the same. I would like the Government to consider four key points, if I can get them in very quickly. First, the lead member, who is currently a participant observer, should be a full-time member of the local safeguarding children board. Secondly, I would like the Minister to consider the fact that there is no mandatory training for the lead member role. Training of sorts is available, but it is difficult to accommodate if they have a full-time job. Thirdly, will the Minister consider guidance on making the lead member role a four-year term for the sake of continuity? Calderdale is now on its fourth in three years.

Finally, may I ask the Minister to look at the leadership—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Three out of four is not bad.