Probation Service: Chief Inspector’s Reviews into Serious Further Offences

Debate between Damian Hinds and Jess Phillips

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

The Minister lays out a world that I simply do not recognise in which, had there been this and that, people would have monitored the situation better. Every single day I handle cases of very serious, dangerous threats of violence. There is no monitoring of the most violent, well-known and prolific offenders of violence against women and girls in our country. These cases are by no means simply cases; they are part of a systemic problem. How many times have the Labour party and people like me called for some monitoring and offender management in these cases? I cannot sit through another statement about how agencies should be talking to each other. I have been hearing it for 20 years.

There is no monitoring. I spoke to Regan Tierney’s father just his morning. Regan was killed by her ex-partner while he had been on probation for breaking her nose. He had stopped turning up and nobody bothered to tell her. That is a case I just happened across this morning without knowing I was coming to this statement. I come across such cases every single day. The Government promised to make violence against women and girls a strategic policing priority. Why have they not done it yet? It has been a year. I cannot listen any more to people saying, “If only this had happened, these people would be monitored.” The truth is that we do not monitor these people in this country. We should stop pretending otherwise.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Lady speaks with great personal experience as well as passion, and always does on these topics. I wish it were not so. I wish she did not have to have all those experiences and hear from all those people as she does. Rightly because of the way that she channels these points into debate on the Floor of this House, people come to her. She does us a service by doing that.

The hon. Lady is right that levels of violence against women and girls are far too high. No woman and no girl should feel afraid as they walk the streets. That is something on which I believe everybody in this House concurs. She may argue the point and I respect that, but it is my absolute knowledge that tackling violence against women and girls is a top priority for the Government, the police and the justice system. Do we need to go further and faster? Of course we do, but I want her to know my personal commitment, as well as our collective.

National Security Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Damian Hinds and Jess Phillips

Committee stage
Thursday 7th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

Q I was not trying to start an argument or even a discussion or analysis of end-to-end encryption. I was just asking, relatively speaking, how much do we know? There is a hypothesis that the reason why there was apparently less material in recent American elections on Facebook than in 2016 is that large parts of it have moved to other channels where we just cannot see it. We just do not know what is there.

Poppy Wood: Let me give you a good example on Russia Today. We do a lot of work and analysis around Russia and Ukraine. Obviously, Russia Today was taken down from most national broadcast networks. It has been resurrected multiple times on social media. This week, we saw it resurrected with another name, like “Discovery Dig” or something, on YouTube, where lots of the comments, imagery and language were directing people to Telegram channels where they are actively mobilising.

What we see in the active mobilisation on Telegram channels is the outing of national security agents, the putting up of email addresses of politicians and saying, “Target them and say they are on the wrong side of the debate,” or, “Write to this national newspaper.” In all three of those examples, it is predominantly in the UK. They are telling them it is all fabricated. They are absolutely weaponising those private spaces. As you say, it is quite hard to get into them—but actually, it is not that hard. They are pretty open channels, with thousands and millions of engagements and followers. That is the scarier bit. They are private, but you are getting tens of millions of people and engagements on them. I am not sure that is the true definition of private, but it is certainly in an encrypted space.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Q I want to touch on the whistleblower issue you raised. There have been some concerns that the Bill might not sufficiently target those with malicious intent. Is there a risk that it potentially criminalises whistleblowers?

Poppy Wood: The role of whistleblowers in society is really important. I know the Government understand that. There are some good recommendations from the ISC about whistleblowers that I do not think have been adopted in this version of the Bill. That is about at least giving some clarity to where the thresholds lie, and giving a disclosure offence and a public interest defence to whistleblowers so they can say, “These are the reasons why.” My understanding is that at the moment it sits with juries and it is on a case-by-case basis. I would certainly commend to you the recommendations from the ISC.

I would also say—this was a recommendation from the Law Commission and also, I think, from the ISC—that lots of people have to blow the whistle because they feel that they do not have anywhere else to go. There could be formal procedures—an independent person or body or office to go to when you are in intelligence agencies, or government in general or anywhere. One of the reasons why Frances Haugen came forward—she has been public about this—is that she did not really know where else to go. There were no placards saying, “Call the Information Commissioner in the UK if you have concerns about data.” People do not know where to go.

Getting touchpoints earlier down the chain so that people do not respond in desperation in the way we have seen in the past would be a good recommendation to take forward. Whistleblowers play an important part in our society and in societies all round the world. Those tests on a public interest defence would give some clarity, which would be really welcome. Building a system around them—I know the US intelligence services do that; they have a kind of whistleblower programme within the CIA and the Department of Defence that allows people to go to someone, somewhere, earlier on, to raise concerns—is the sort of thing you might be looking at. I think a whistleblower programme is an ISC recommendation, but it is certainly a Law Commission recommendation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Damian Hinds and Jess Phillips

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend has been a strong and consistent champion for his constituents and their education. Lancashire has been allocated £140 million over 2011 to 2021. In his constituency of Morecambe and Lunesdale, the proportion of schools rated good or outstanding has increased from 64% to 86%.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Lots of things make a school good. A headteacher who I met yesterday in my constituency had written to the Department for Education for a specific answer to a question. He did not feel that he had had that answer, so I am going to ask it today; I would appreciate a specific answer. What is a teacher to say to a child who asks, “Is it okay to be gay?”

[Damian Hinds]

They should say yes.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Damian Hinds and Jess Phillips

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

I think I will have to move on a little.

Last year the Government spent almost £30 billion on tax credits—more than three and a half times what we spent on military personnel. That level of spending on tax credits is unfair on those who foot the bill, who are, of course, other taxpayers. That is why the Government took steps in the summer Budget to put tax credit spending on a more—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley want to intervene?

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Yes, I do; I just want to point out that people who are on tax credits are in work. They are taxpayers, and they are therefore paying that bill. The Minister should not pitch two sets of people against each other. He should recognise that people who get tax credits work.

[Damian Hinds]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady deliberately did not hear me say that. I did say that people who pay the tax credit uplift are other taxpayers. That is true. That is not pitching one person against another, it is just a statement of the reality, a statement of how the system works. That is why the Government took steps—[Interruption.] Does the hon. Lady want to intervene again? She keeps on speaking.

[Jess Phillips]

I am more than happy to do so. The Minister is being extremely divisive. What he actually said was that the person footing the bill was basically someone else. The Government are basically trying to make some people feel that they are being robbed for the sake of the poor. When I lived on tax credits, I worked probably about a 14-hour day. I will not have it said of people such as me and my hon. Friends that we were beholden to someone else. We were taxpayers.

[Damian Hinds]

I do not recall referring to the hon. Lady’s specific case or the case of anybody else on the Opposition Benches. Nor did I say that anybody should feel bad for supporting others, but there is a case for balance. It is just a statement of fact that, in any tax and benefits system, benefits paid to one group or person have to be paid for by others, and we have to make sure that that system is fair.

As the hon. Lady will recall, we had a great reforming Budget with a set of measures to move us from a low-wage, high-tax, high-welfare society to a lower-tax, higher-wage, less welfare-reliant society, including measures such as the national living wage, with which we seek permanently to reform the structure of the economy and the way the system works.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

I am going to press on for the moment. The average number of children in families in the UK in 2012 was 1.7. The Government therefore think it is fair and proportionate to limit support through tax credits and universal credit to the payments for two children. To give families time to prepare, the change will not come into effect until April 2017. In child tax credit, the change will affect families who have a third or subsequent child born on or after 6 April 2017 only. In universal credit, the change applies to any third or subsequent children born, or joining the household, on or after 6 April 2017 and to families making a completely new claim to universal credit after that date.

[Jess Phillips]

I want some clarity on whether the measure relates to children born after that date or a new claim for a child after that date. What if my children were born in 2005 and 2010 and I do not currently need tax credits—who knows what the future will hold?—but need to claim them later? What if I need to go back on to tax credits after having a third child? Would my children count because they were born before or is it the claim that counts?

[Damian Hinds]

I believe we will have an opportunity at a subsequent stage to debate that point in detail in relation to a subsequent amendment, but I do not want to keep the hon. Lady waiting. To be clear in simple terms, the tax credit system is for new births after April 2017; universal credit is for new births and for new claims. Of course, universal credit is replacing the tax credit system. When we talk about new claims, that is with a gap of six months. It may apply to someone who has never been in that system before or in the predecessor tax credit system, or who has been out of both systems for a period of six months.