Riot Compensation Bill
David Lammy Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mike Wood
I will be brief, Mr Howarth. The main purpose of clause 2 is to clarify the property within the confines of the scheme, primarily extending it to motor vehicles. As has been said, 1886 was the year the first diesel engine was pioneered, so it would be too much to hope that those considering that legislation might have foreseen the extent to which the motor would come to dominate so much of our lives. The clause would explicitly extend the riot damages scheme to include motor vehicles. It also clarifies the position of mobile businesses and the equipment stored within them.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Regulations about claims procedure
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 5, in clause 3, page 3, line 12, at end insert “, which must be no shorter than 132 calendar days from the day on which the riot ends”.
This amendment would ensure that a person has at least 132 days from the end of the riot to make a claim for compensation.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 6, in clause 3, page 3, line 14, at end insert “, which must be no shorter than 132 calendar days from the day on which the riot ends”.
This amendment would ensure that a person has at least 132 days from the end of the riot to submit details and evidence in relation to their claim.
Mr Lammy
I am grateful to serve on this Committee but sad that we find ourselves here because my constituency has seen two riots in a generation. It is right to update this legislation, and I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Dudley South for his work on the Bill.
I have tabled some probing amendments that I suspect will go to regulations. The Committee will understand that these matters are of great concern to my constituents, but many hon. Members might also want to raise these issues. Amendments 5 and 6 relate to the kinds of areas that experience riots in our country and the kinds of people and businesses that find themselves having to make a claim. Hon. Members might remember that the original legislation allowed for 30 days in which to claim compensation. After much lobbying by Members and others, that was extended to the 42 days that has been landed on.
Mike Penning
I fully understand the thought process behind the amendments and their tone. Of course, there was an extensive consultation process, but we have to draw a line somewhere. I fully understand the points made by the right hon. Member for Tottenham and the shadow Policing Minister, as I am sure other Members do. I will commit to putting exceptional circumstances into the regulations.
The Bill is for people who have suffered and the most vulnerable. It is a safety net; that is what it is there for. The regulations will cover exactly what the right hon. Gentleman has asked for. Exceptional circumstances could easily cover medical conditions, residential properties and small and medium-sized enterprises. The Bill is rightly not about the Nexts of this world. Given what I have said and will say, I hope that Members and other people will realise that we have listened. We will do this in the regulations, which is where it should be. That commitment is now on the record, so I hope there is no need for the amendments.
Mr Lammy
I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 3, page 3, line 17, leave out “may” and insert “must”.
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to require that any estimates of the cost of repairs are to be prepared by approved contactors.
The amendment deals with the approved contractors that act on behalf of the Secretary of State, engage with individuals who find themselves having to make a claim under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 and estimate the cost of the repairs. It would be remiss of the Committee if we did not put on record the substantial findings in the months after the riots. That comes up time and again in the House, and it will come up in relation to the floods being experienced across the country.
The London Assembly committee chaired by John Biggs did very good work and published a very good report in 2012 on the riots. The committee took evidence from a range of people. The report said:
“Loss adjusters who were involved in assessing insurance claims after the riots faced a complex situation. Nevertheless, some loss adjusters behaved insensitively in handling claims, and lacked the skills needed to deal effectively with some owners of small businesses.”
As I said at the time, there is no point asking someone to provide receipts for their stock if their business has been burned to the ground. There was an inability, frankly, to understand where those small businesses were coming from and what they were facing. There were challenges in such areas as Croydon, Birmingham and Tottenham, where businesses—they are often independent, ethnic minority businesses—were made to feel like they were criminals attempting to defraud the state. I had an Adjournment debate after the riots where I expressed my concerns about the insurance industry and some—not all—loss adjusters.
I tabled the amendment to probe the Minister to say a little more about the nature of those approved contractors and how we might deal with the issue. I pay tribute to the independent review of the Riot (Damages) Act by Kinghan, which laid the foundation for much of the work that led us here. He recommended that a riot claims bureau be developed with the agreement of the Home Office and the insurance industry. He also recommended that a manual be prepared, as soon as is practicable, to provide guidance on the types of claims likely to follow a riot, including how to deal with clients unused to making claims and other issues. That is a part of his report that is pertinent to the issue raised by the amendment.
Members will understand that floods occur more often than riots in the United Kingdom, because of the nature of our geography. In 2011, much of the expertise simply was not there. The country had not seen widespread riots in the 10 years since Bradford and Oldham, and it is easy to lose the expertise, the necessary sensitivity and the understanding that the context in the communities experiencing such events is very different.
Kinghan also recommended that, in their emergency plans, local authorities should be asked to include planning for riot recovery services to provide co-ordinated advice and support. I do not know whether that recommendation relates to all local authorities, but that, too, goes to the point about expertise. It would be wrong if I did not mention loss adjusters at this point. Will the Minister say something more about the approved contractors and how we can avoid the situation that caused real concern in the communities affected?
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Clause 3(4) is also about trying to prevent fraudulent claims, but I am just trying to understand what the amendment, by making this mandatory, would preclude. With approved contractors on an approved contractors list, it might be hard to identify a local authority or others outwith the approved process of the Secretary of State or local policing bodies. Is there an important flexibility that may help to a degree with timeliness? I know that the right hon. Gentleman was concerned, as I was, about the timeliness of compensation for our constituents’ businesses.
Mr Lammy
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. In a sense, this is a probing amendment to get to the substance of what we are really talking about. The “must” probably goes too far; I accept that. I hope that I will get some comfort from the Minister shortly.
No one can predict when the next riot will be and no one can entirely control the individual loss adjuster who is behaving insensitively, but what one can guarantee is that, by and large, it will be in a deprived area and, if it is a high street area, it will involve independent shopkeepers. We have had a long history, over successive generations since the Windrush, of independent shopkeepers largely being of refugee and immigrant stock. I think of the parts of my constituency that are still Orthodox Jewish and of the émigrés who ran the shops many decades ago. Over the decades, different communities have run the shops. Shopkeepers find themselves in a situation where, if they have been ransacked, they are not getting understanding from parts of the insurance industry, particularly loss adjusters, about providing receipts, for example. That is why I make the points that I do.
Mike Penning
I fully understand and also respect, not least because of the conversation that we had outside, the right hon. Gentleman’s probing amendment. I have to agree with him that “must” goes a bit too far, but I fully understand exactly where the amendment is coming from.
May I say at the outset that we are looking to put together an approved list of loss adjusters who will be responsible should riots take place? Obviously this is different from the insurance side, because these measures are for people who are uninsured.
Mike Penning
It might have been a long intervention, but I think it was very useful to the course of the debate. I am sure you would agree, Mr Howarth, even if we need to keep interventions short. Should I need to intervene on anyone, I will try to keep my intervention short as well.
I say to the hon. Member for Croydon North on that specific point that I have just had the 10th anniversary of Buncefield in my constituency, which was the largest fire and explosion in this country since the second world war. The quality of the loss adjusting in some companies was brilliant; the quality in others was appalling. The insurers were very good in some areas and did not boost the premiums, while other premiums, particularly for smaller companies, were extremely harsh. It is something I have been working on with other Departments. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to join me outside the Committee in working on that issue, I will be more than happy to do so.
With regard to the probing amendment, there are two things we have to ensure. This is taxpayers’ money, so we have to make sure—this is a safety net for people who are uninsured—that fraud and other events do not in any way mean that taxpayers’ money is misused. However, we do not want to say that everybody will be a criminal and try to defraud; they are after help in 99% of cases. We also do not want to slow down the process of making the payments. If we look at the sheer scale of the riots in 2011—we have heard today about the myriad different communities across the country that were affected—we can see that to have all the estimates done by approved contractors would be enormously difficult.
The point about guidance was very well made; for want of a better word, on paper, it would say, “This is what should happen, should these terrible events happen again”. That was a recommendation of the review. That is something I will take away from the Committee, work on and make sure it happens.
With regard to the loss adjusters, an approved list is exactly where we need to go. On the need for this provision and the need for the word “must”, I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree to meet me and consider the comments I have made.
Mike Wood
Neither police and crime commissioners nor local police forces are experts in processing claims, which is why it is important to allow those bodies to delegate the functions, particularly to loss adjusters. Provisions in clause 4(3) allow the Secretary of State to specify the persons to whom those functions may be delegated, which will hopefully achieve the objectives that the right hon. Member for Tottenham was trying to achieve through amendment 3.
Mike Penning
Obviously, that was looked at extensively. We have to be slightly careful. Unlike my learned Friend I am not legally trained, but the authority is the police—it is the police who decide and no one else. That is the definition. From the police’s point of view, if a criminal offence has taken place, a riot is defined as such by the police, who have the training and expertise to do that.
I fully understand the sensitivities of local authorities and others, but it is not their decision and it must not be. It must be the police’s decision. The wording in the Bill makes it simple as to how we define that. I understand the concerns, but they were looked at extensively.
Mike Penning
That is a fundamental point. The Minister will understand that that goes to the heart of our policing model: that is, policing by consent. Unlike other police forces in the world, our police do not routinely carry guns; we, as citizens, police alongside the police. Therefore, given the policing by consent model, he will understand that in some scenarios the police authority may be reluctant to declare a riot. What are the safeguards in those circumstances?
Mike Penning
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but that is the same as any other decision that the police make. We have an independent police who make independent decisions based on their best knowledge at the time. To say that no policeman is ever influenced by events going on is wrong. Of course they are. They can listen to arguments, but it is their decision. We looked carefully at that to ensure that the police have and can keep powers to make the decision as to what is a riot and what is not. There is a whole debate to be had about that, but the definition in the Bill is important in allowing the police to continue to have the powers that they have had. That is why I support the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6
Delegation of Secretary of State’s functions
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mike Penning
That is an important point. From my own constituents’ point of view, I understand the frustration when money is sitting in a bank account and not being used by the local authority. I cannot comment on why that happened, because I do not know, but I fully understand the frustration.
If we are asking local people to take part in and to be part of their community—if we believe in localism—it is critical that they are listened to. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman and I could meet after the Committee. I will look into the recommendations that were made—I was not in post at the time—and we can see the reasons why they were not implemented and whether those reasons were logical. The Secretary of State wants the power to do something with the local community—localism in action—which is exactly what he will do.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Amount and payment of compensation
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 4, in clause 8, page 5, line 29, at end insert—
‘(3A) Money received by the claimant from emergency or recovery funds, whether funded publicly or privately, in the aftermath of a riot must not be taken into account by the decision maker when deciding the amount of compensation to be paid.’.
This amendment would ensure that money received by the claimant from emergency or recovery funds in the aftermath of a riot does not reduce the amount of compensation a claimant receives.
Amendment 2, in clause 8, page 6, leave out lines 16 and 17.
This amendment is consequential on amendment 1.
Mr Lammy
The amendment relates to the £1 million cap that the Government have landed on. I am probing what is behind the £1 million limit.
Someone who sets up a small business on Tottenham high street might buy the shopfront and have a home of sorts above the shop. In London the average price of a house is estimated to be £470,000, and the average price of a shopfront is a little more than that. A number of individuals on the high street found that they were underinsured, or not insured at all. The issue of insurance premiums in the kinds of areas affected by the riots is very real.
In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North, we do not want to see parts of our country looking like areas of America, such as the city of Detroit. That city has experienced successive riots, has a falling population and was effectively declared bankrupt a few years ago. Showing great sensitivity to those areas that experienced riots, we do not want them to become failed communities. We want them to be communities where people can set up businesses and thrive. Successive Governments in our country have been in the business of regeneration and improvement. We do not currently have areas in our country that are like Detroit.
The question of where to set the cap is in the context of the ability to find insurance, its cost and whether some of the big players on the high street decide not to come to the area. We lost easyGym, the post office and Carpetright from our high street; all were really important for us. The big issue is whether they are going to come back. If they do not come back there is no footfall for the small independent retailers and shopkeepers. How did we arrive at the £1 million cap?
We also have to look at the regional context. The cost of running a small business in Croydon is different from the cost of running one in Salford. There is currently no regional variation before us to indicate an understanding of that.
Mr Reed
My hon. Friend is making an important point. In a riot, police resources are necessarily overstretched and they have to prioritise, and they tend to prioritise the wealthier areas. Once again it is the poorer businesses that can least afford the loss that suffer. It is those areas that would be affected by the inability to claim above the cap. What is my right hon. Friend’s view on that?
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend makes a good point. He and I are regular soldiers in the fight for very poor areas. With regard to the £1 million cap, I would say that the 2011 riots were unusual. As a Londoner born and bred, I would never have imagined that on the second day I would see the constituency of Ealing Central and Acton caught up in the riots.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The word on the street in Ealing, once known as Queen of the Suburbs, was that our police were diverted to Westfield, which is a shopping centre of high-value, high-end designer shops. That is why we were left empty-handed when the riots hit.
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend makes a serious point. There was a similar context in Salford. That goes to the point about the £1 million cap meaning different things on the high streets of Tottenham, Ealing, Salford and Croydon. It goes to the cost of running a business, to the detail of loss of stock as a result of flooding or following fire damage because a business has been burnt to the ground, and it goes to insurance. We want businesses to be insured and not to have to rely fully on the legislation. Given that we do not want to have areas in our country that cannot recover because of under-insurance or no insurance, the point about the £1 million cap is very important.
I go right back to the very good Kinghan report, which of course suggested the cap in the first place. Options were explored in Kinghan’s review. His first option was that we set a percentage—say, 25% or 50%—as the limit of compensation that the police or Government would pay in respect of claims paid by insurers to their customers. His second option was that we put an absolute limit on any single claim that the police or Government pay to an insurer—say, £500,000 or £1 million. The third option was that the limit be set by reference to the size of the insured business, so that the insurer receives compensation only for claims made by businesses with a turnover below the limit. I liked the third option a lot and thought it was fair, because it allowed for an understanding of the differences between small businesses.
In drafting the Bill and landing on the figure of £1 million, were the Minister’s officials in touch with the Federation of Small Businesses or with high street businesses, for example small retailers and newsagents? Where did they get their estimates for the cost of running a business? Will the Minister say more about the claims we saw as a result of the rioting across the country?
Mike Penning
If I may, I will speak to amendments 1, 2 and 4. I know, because I spoke extensively to the right hon. Member for Tottenham before the Committee, that he has some concerns about amendment 4 that he did not have an opportunity to talk about, but I am more than happy to take an intervention.
Mr Lammy
I am grateful. I want to raise the question of the high street funds that were set up after the riots. I pay tribute to Sir Bill Castell, chairman of the Wellcome Trust and one of our great industrialists, for all the work he did to encourage big business to fund small business. I put it to the Minister that it cannot be right that any payment from charitable interests—a high street fund helping small business on the high street—is somehow offset against the riot damage. I want reassurance. Sir Bill raised this a lot at the time and I spoke to him today. We hope that that is not to be the case.
Mike Penning
It will. I completely agree morally that charitable donations should stay outside, whether from a lady putting 50p in a tin on the high street, as I know took place, or from some of our great businessmen coming together to offer help. I will set that in regulations. I hope that alleviates concerns on amendment 4.
On the £1 million cap, we have to be honest about what the Bill is for. It is a safety net for those who are not insured should a riot affect them and their businesses. Of course, if it is taxpayers’ money a limit has to be set somewhere, and 99% of all claims following the terrible riots that took place across the country in 2011 were below that limit. I am happy to share that information with colleagues before Report.
In looking at where to set the cap, we should not encourage people not to be insured or insurers to take the view that the state will pick up the cost for which they and businesses have responsibility. That is why we set the cap at £1 million. I will make the commitment today that that will be continually reviewed within regulations without the need for primary legislation. At the moment we have very low inflation nationally, although building and residential inflation is quite high, particularly in London. We will keep a close eye on that but there has to be a limit. There cannot be a blank cheque from the taxpayer; I think we all accept that.
In response to the shadow Minister’s point, if the money comes out of the police or Home Office budget, it is still taxpayers’ money and there is a limited amount available. I think £1 million is fair and we will keep it under review. We will also ensure that charitable donations, no matter where they come from, are exempt, and I will place that in the regulations for the Bill. I hope that the amendment will be withdrawn.
Mr Lammy
I am grateful for what the Minister said about the charitable donations set up after the riots and the points I made about the high street fund. I am still a little concerned about the £1 million figure because regionality has not really been addressed by the Minister. There are big differences across the country.
Mike Penning
Perhaps I could offer an olive branch. I will write to members of the Committee explaining the logic and thought processes behind the decision, rather than putting the question to a vote now, which would prevent it being brought back on Report. If the right hon. Gentleman is still concerned on Report, options will be open to him then.
Mr Lammy
I am grateful for that undertaking from the Minister. With that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 8 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 9 and 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11
Regulations
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mike Wood
Earlier, I referred to mobile businesses being within the scope of the Bill. To clarify, they are not in the Bill but the intention is to include property contained within mobile businesses in the regulations. I hope that the Minister will take that on board.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 11 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule agreed to.
Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill to the House.
Mr Lammy
On a point of order, Mr Howarth. May I put on record my gratitude to Mr Kinghan for all his work on the review, and for spending time with me? This has not come up in Committee, but there were five fatalities during the riots in 2011, and I am sure all hon. Members would want to send their sympathies to the victims’ families. Such fatalities are not the sort of thing that we associate with riots in this country. This is a very serious matter, and for that reason we are all grateful to have served on the Committee under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly to be reported, without amendment.
State Pension Age (Women)
David Lammy Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Lewell-Buck
My right hon. Friend is spot on. It would be embarrassing for the Government if the women affected by the changes decided to take individual legal action.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend recognise that for many of the women affected, who are our constituents, there is a real threat of stress and stress-related illness as a result of the failure to inform them? The Government should take that seriously when they are trying to understand why so many Members want transitional arrangements.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank my right hon. Friend, and I will come on to some examples from my constituency of women who are experiencing such stress.
In my constituency of South Shields we have a higher than average number of people with illnesses such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, left over from our proud heavy industry days. That means that we have a large number of women who are caring for relatives or husbands, including those who fall into the group disadvantaged by the pension changes.
One such woman is my constituent Lynn Wilson. She got a letter sometime in 2011 or 2012 telling her that she would be getting her pension not at 65 but at 66. That was a complete and utter shock to her, as she was still of the view that she would get it when she was 60. Lynn’s husband Derek was diagnosed with lung cancer four years ago. Owing to the pension changes Lynn has had to continue working, but she has had to reduce her hours so that she can care for Derek. She does a difficult and physical job, and she suffers from serious back problems and arthritis herself. She tells me that she has a small private pension that she and Derek could manage to live on if her back got worse, but that it would not last the whole six years she needs to wait for her state pension. She tells me that she continues to struggle, but we agree that it just should not be this way.
Police Funding Formula
David Lammy Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mike Penning
I congratulate all the Lancashire Members who took the time, and were considerate enough, to meet me. Members of all parties listened to our proposals, and then presented their own ideas. That, too, helped us to make the decision to delay the process.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner will be taking £1.3 billion out of the Metropolitan Police budget. Will the Minister tell us how much the Met needs to save or keep, and what bearing that has on the announcement that he has made today, in the context of borough amalgamations here in London?
Mike Penning
Decisions on front-line operations are a matter for the commissioner. He is an excellent commissioner, and we await his proposals for his force. However, no decision has been made because the comprehensive spending review has not been announced. As I said a few minutes ago, the funding formula will be announced in December.
Police Federation Reform (Normington Report)
David Lammy Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on an excellent speech. I thank him and the other sponsors of this Backbench Business Committee debate for ensuring that the House can discuss the recommendations of the Normington report at an early stage. This is our first opportunity in many years to have such a discussion, although we often discuss policing issues in the House; we discussed the police grant here only yesterday.
I begin by paying tribute to the hard-working police officers in the police service, including those such as PC Craig Smith. With an off-duty paramedic, David King, he struggled to free the driver of a burning car in Leicestershire and saved the person at risk. He was a runner-up in the police bravery awards, which I, with Ministers and others, attend annually to pay tribute to the marvellous work being done throughout the country by individual police officers.
I have to say that, following a proposal from the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), the Select Committee on Home Affairs has unanimously agreed to hold an inquiry into the Police Federation. The terms of reference will be announced next week, and I hope that they will provide an opportunity for a full-scale inquiry into the matters that have been raised. I shall return to this point at the end of my short speech.
Morale in the police service is at an all-time low, as the Stevens report recognised. Indeed, if Members talk to any police officer stationed here in the Palace of Westminster, they will hear that people are deciding to leave the force because of the current state of affairs in policing. That is regrettable. There is an obligation on all of us to ensure that we have the best police service in the world—which I think it is—and we also need to ensure that the concerns of Police Federation members are met.
I want to mention the case of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). It is not the subject of the debate—we are talking about the Police Federation—but the right hon. Gentleman and his family have gone through a terrible ordeal. I believe that he has now been vindicated, given that 11 of those involved have now become the subject of misconduct hearings and one has gone to prison. The cases of three witnesses who appeared before the Home Affairs Committee are still outstanding and are the subject of an Independent Police Complaints Commission inquiry that has been held in abeyance because of a judicial review application.
Those of us who have been around for a long time have asked ourselves: if this could happen to a serving Cabinet Minister, what hope would there be if it happened to one of our constituents? The right hon. Gentleman has done the House and the public a great service, from his position of power as an elected Member of the House, but his situation is quite different from those of people in Leicester and elsewhere in the country. He has been vindicated, and it is important that a line should now be drawn and that people should move on, for the sake of him and his family, and of the reputation of the police as a whole.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend makes his point very effectively. Does he agree that in cases such as these, continuing litigation could eventually bankrupt someone, and that the organisation is capable of going way too far? What would that mean for our ordinary constituents, who simply would not have the means to defend themselves in similar circumstances?
Keith Vaz
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I am a little concerned at the number of cases in which someone criticises a serving police officer and ends up being served with a legal notice or threatened with legal proceedings as a result of raising issues of legitimate concern. The Select Committee inquiry will want to look at such cases.
The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield and his family must have been through a terrible ordeal. It is time to draw a line and move on, and to think about how we can reform the structure, now that the personal issues have been resolved and people have gone to jail or faced misconduct hearings.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
It is wonderful that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has secured this debate, although it is sad that we have reached a point where there is such deep concern across the House about one of our most noble and great professions. It has been a great privilege for me, over the past year or so, to serve on the police parliamentary scheme and spend time with front-line officers across London and beyond. The scheme continues and I am looking forward to spending time with front-line officers next week. Overwhelmingly, the scheme has confirmed my childhood belief, which began at about the age of nine when I said to my parents that I wanted to be a police officer, that the men and women who serve in our police forces across the country do a fantastic job.
These officers do a fantastic job at a time when, as has been said by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, morale is pretty low, they feel pretty battered and they feel that contracts forged with them, particularly in relation to their pensions, have been totally changed around them—reform has come, as it has to so many other professionals across this country. I know how these officers deal with the public not just because I was there to see it, but because I have met many hundreds of officers. I have seen how they interact with tricky situations. I have seen how they have dealt with the vulnerable—alcoholics, vagrants, drug addicts. I have seen them do an assortment of things, and I have seen armed officers deal with the huge burden and responsibility of carrying a gun, and it has overwhelmingly left me impressed.
It is against that truth that this discussion and this debate are so important. All of us have had the privilege of travelling to countries where corruption is endemic in the police force. I think of sitting in meetings in Brazil and also of the challenges and problems in eastern Europe. However, we all understand that, in a growing democracy such as ours, how we treat the most vulnerable and the areas of our life where light often does not shine is an indication of the state of our democracy. The day-to-day job of the police is to deal with a small criminal minority—fortunately, it is a small minority in our country. The light often has not shone and certain practices can build up. That is why it is so fundamental that here in this Chamber we are able to shine that light.
Julian Smith
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the report shows that the light is not shining in the Police Federation on women or on people from ethnic minorities? One of the most shocking things about the report is the lack of effort that the federation has made on people and on serving members other than white men.
Mr Lammy
The hon. Gentleman makes his point strongly. That point comes across crystal clear in the report. I was going on to say that many of us have watched in this country as cases involving minorities have often been overlooked. The truth is that there are many cases, some of which emanate from my own constituency, where there have been concerns about the Police Federation and a closed shop, particularly in relation to getting at the truth. However, what is so startling is that what may have been a minority concern has broken into the mainstream. When three officers so blatantly tell mistruths and so blatantly refuse to apologise over an event involving a Cabinet Minister in a country such as this, it must tell us something about a culture of impunity that has become endemic in the system. It must also say something about the necessary reform that must now come. I am pleased, therefore, that the Police Federation has accepted the report’s recommendations. The tipping point must surely have been reached if it has come to pass in this way.
As we have this debate in 2014, it is clear that a number of our institutions need to reform and to look closely at these closed practices. We as Members of Parliament are premier among them. We have had debates about closed practices in the NHS and the need for a stronger whistleblowing culture. In the Leveson report, we saw real concerns about parts of the journalism profession. Now, as we come to the police, we must see an end to those closed practices and to the refusal to get to the truth.
We have such discussions not to attack but out of sadness. The practices under discussion have chronic effects on ordinary people’s lives and they put tremendous pressure on families. It is the nature of any state that it leaves the individuals caught up in this feeling desperately powerless. That is why we juxtapose the situation in which the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) has found himself with so many others.
Mr Raab
The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that the way in which the Police Federation uses its funds in litigation is critical to the balanced approach that he is discussing? It is one thing for it to defend its own members from litigation—to use the fund as a shield—but another thing to use those funds as a sword to pursue other people, especially victims or other members of the public?
Mr Lammy
Absolutely. The point is that some of those funds involve taxpayers’ money, which must demand close scrutiny. I am pleased that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee suggested that scrutiny should be No. 1 on the agenda. It is also the case that the federation has seen fit to go after leading members of our society who are looking at police reform issues. Why is it that it thinks that it can get away with challenging a senior Cabinet Minister? Is it because parliamentarians, MPs and Ministers at this point in the cycle just happen to be a minority group that is up for attack and the federation thinks it can get away with it? There is a connection with the way it might deal with certain types of criminals. There is a connection with the way it might deal with some parts of the Irish community in this country, who would say that they have experienced some sharp practices from parts of the Police Federation. I am talking about the notion that, “It is a minority, the public don’t care that much and we can get away with this.” We must challenge that, because the honour of a great profession is at stake. Some £8 million is spent annually in relation to litigation. These are important budgets. We must ensure that they are being used for the right purposes.
I have been concerned, especially in the Duggan case, that officers have been advised by the Police Federation not to give interviews. Attempts to suspend officers facing serious allegations are always fought, whatever the circumstances. If any of us were caught up in a situation that involved the death of another individual, we would not be able to refuse to give an interview. Why would we accord that power to people who are in uniform? This is a very important issue.
One of the fundamentals of our system is the fantastic idea that we have policing by consent. That is at the heart of our police service. Here in London, there are only 32,000 police officers, and a population heading towards 10 million. In reality, it is the 10 million people who work alongside the police who give us that feeling that we are safe almost anywhere in London. The idea is that we police by consent, not by fear as is the case in America or in parts of continental Europe where police officers carry guns. It is an idea that we must treasure and protect. It is grossly undermined when a minority of police officers misbehave, they are not challenged sufficiently, there is not sufficient scrutiny, and there is the sense of a closed shop where even those who are blatantly lying are protected. That is why this report is so important, why the House must look closely at implementing it and why we must revisit these issues not just in Backbench debates over the coming months and years but in debates in Government time where we are absolutely rigorous about protecting this important fundamental of our democracy.
Deaths in Custody (Black People)
David Lammy Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
On 27 June, I was invited by Matilda MacAttram, of Black Mental Health UK, to attend a conference in Wolverhampton. I did not know what to expect, but this was a woman I liked and trusted immensely, so I travelled up to Wolverhampton for a conference on deaths in custody. It was an extraordinary, moving and profound occasion. The conference comprised men and women, most of whom had lost sons, grandsons and nephews in custody, in either a mental health or a police setting. They bore their grief with great dignity and fortitude, but there was huge upset and anger in the room at how they had been treated by the establishment, by the system. I shall come to that in a moment.
Many relatives of the deceased bore witness to their treatment at the hands of the state and of authorities that we should trust. It was gruelling to hear. I am afraid that much of the commentary focused on the treatment meted out by certain police officers and the Independent Police Complaints Commission. I do not want this to be an attack on the police, so I want to say this now: there were many senior police officers at the conference, and the pain was etched on their faces as they listened to the experiences that families had been put through by some of their colleagues in the police force. It was a terribly moving day, but as I said, there were some very good police officers there. The police must be part of the solution, so we need to take them with us.
African-Caribbeans account for about 3% of the population of this country, but approximately 20% of deaths in custody. This has been a running sore and an open wound for 30 years, and it is incumbent on us, the political class, to address it, because if we do not, whatever side of the House we are on, we have no hope of engaging with this community constructively. They have lost trust in us. When I was preparing for this debate, I talked to several journalists, and one of them said, “But Mr Walker, isn’t it just about racism? Isn’t this an issue of racism?”, and I said, “Well, racism is an ugly, ugly word. It is a word I do not want to ascribe to people I do not know or institutions I am not experienced of.” But let me say this: for the past 30 years, since I became an adult, I have been aware of grieving black families on the steps of courts or inquests flashing across my television screen. I have seen the faces of those families and the young men they are mourning flash across my television screen, and up until this point I have chosen to do nothing. Now I am standing up and trying to do something. I may want to ask others this question, but I have to answer it: why, for 25 or 30 years, did I do nothing? Until I answer that question satisfactorily, I will not cast aspersions on others.
Another person said, “But Charles, you are talking about deaths in custody. You are a white male, why are you talking specifically about black people?” Well, I feel there is something very egregious about the treatment of black people in custody and detained environments. Any death in custody is regrettable, sad and tragic, but I am speaking as a parent because I think about what would happen if it were my son or—hopefully—when I am a grandfather, my grandson. It would be too much to bear.
I have been helped to prepare for tonight by some fabulous people—I have mentioned Matilda MacAttram, and Lord Victor Adebowale has done great work with the police on restraint and how we look after people in a mental health crisis in a detained environment. I also pay tribute to Deborah Coles of Inquest who has been extraordinarily generous in the time she has given me when preparing for this debate. I know that I will not do this subject justice this evening, but at least I can start to do my bit.
We must address the whole system of inquests. In June I met families in Wolverhampton who had waited six, seven or eight years for an inquest into the death of their child, their brother. That is wholly unacceptable. I know the Government are committed to holding inquests in good time, but many families are still waiting for two or three years. We must ensure that inquests happen in good time, but an inquest is only as good as the information presented to it, so we must ensure that inquests deal with good information.
We must address the fact that police officers are not required to answer questions put to them by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. That is simply ridiculous; I am aware that many senior police officers in the Association of Chief Police Officers believe it is a nonsense and needs to be addressed. We must also have equality of arms. When there is a death in detention, the various parties of the state have legal representation—the mental health trust, the police, the chief constable may have legal representation, all funded by the taxpayer. The family of the deceased, however, will too often have their finances gone through with a fine toothcomb—not just the parents, but grandparents, aunts, uncles and extended family—to see whether they should pay for some or all of their legal costs. That is a disgraceful way to treat a mourning family, and if we do nothing else, it is incumbent on this House to end that inequality in arms.
When someone dies in a mental health setting, as opposed to a police custody environment, we must ensure an independent investigation that carries the confidence of the family of the deceased and the wider community. Let us be in no doubt about the sense of anger and frustration at the current state of play. I do not know how we do this in law, but we must also end the culture of briefings. When someone dies in custody, the organisation that had responsibility for that individual’s care and safety can go into a sort of institutional meltdown and lockdown. It goes into a default position of getting its side of the story across, and the names and reputations of good young men are trashed in such a way that that becomes the accepted narrative—“Because the inquest is so far away, if we go on and paint a wholly false picture of this young man, that will become the accepted story.”
Can one imagine how it affects a grieving family—the weaker party in all this— to see the reputation of their son, grandson or nephew destroyed, and they have no right of reply? I do not know how we do that in law, but off-the-record, unofficial briefings should be regarded as acts of gross misconduct, and those that participate in and promote them should lose their jobs.
An issue of great importance to Black Mental Health UK is the use of face-down restraint, which is a very aggressive way of controlling someone who is distressed. Too often it can cause severe physical damage and can kill. We in this House should be in no doubt about the importance of this issue to those in the African-Caribbean community. They feel that it is used disproportionately on their young men, and we need to address that concern in a serious way.
I want to go back to the need for inquests. I am dealing with one family whose son called the police—there was a domestic dispute and he felt that he and his child were being threatened—and ended up being arrested. He was taken to a detained mental health environment. His sister came to see him. He said, “Please get me out of here. If you don’t, they will kill me.” He was dead the next day. It took the family a year and a half to recover the body of their son and brother. When they did recover his body, it was beaten, bruised and covered in Taser marks. That is a tragedy. I can understand why that upsets people so much. It upsets me today and I know that it upsets my colleagues who are here for the debate.
I do not pretend to understand the African-Caribbean community, but from the people who came to see me there is a total loss of trust in the establishment. There is a feeling that for the past 30 years we have allowed the causes of these deaths to go unaddressed. Somehow, we have turned away. The establishment has turned its back; it has chosen to walk on the other side of the road. If we are to bring the community closer to us we need to understand the sense of hurt we in this place, and the institutions of the state, have caused. The healing process needs to start at the very top. We need the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to stand up and say, “I want to hear your stories. I want to listen. I am so sorry that we allowed this to happen for so long. Please tell us your experiences and let us work together to ensure that we do not allow these injustices to continue.”
When I left the conference in Wolverhampton on 27 June I had one overriding emotion as I sat on the train: I felt ashamed that the country I love so much, and which has given me so much, could let a group of good people down so badly. It is quite something to have that emotion at the age of 45. I always knew that we do not live in a perfect place, but I always thought that it was a good place and that, if challenged, this country did the right thing. We have not done the right thing by the African-Caribbean community. All is not lost: we have the opportunity to do the right thing. I know I have not done this subject justice, but I hope that the Government hear the growing number of voices from all communities and lead the nation to a better place.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the way in which he has made his remarks on this very important issue. Does he agree that one of the great sores in this debate is not just that no police officers have been prosecuted for the many deaths—hundreds—that have taken place in the past 20 years or so, but that the police continue effectively to investigate themselves because so many IPCC staff are police officers? That issue continues to be raised consistently in relation to deaths in police custody.
Mr Walker
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am aware that since 1991, although there have been nine verdicts of unlawful death passed down by inquest courts, there has not been a single successful prosecution. When I was at the conference at Wolverhampton and heard Dame Anne Owers of the Independent Police Complaints Commission present, I felt that perhaps the organisation was not fit for purpose. I had this terrible vision that this was the Care Quality Commission in front of me—we know that it is trying to address the failings of the past—but I felt that the IPCC was not in a good place. Now it is under new leadership, but I fear that it has so much ground to make up that it will never recover the credibility required to make it the force it should be.
With that, I shall conclude. I know that the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) is going to say a few words.
Oral Answers to Questions
David Lammy Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
As a former Legal Aid Minister, I recognise the hard decisions that have to be made on legal aid. Civil legal aid and judicial review are fundamental to our system. It has been fundamental since Magna Carta; if the state decides to take away someone’s home or children, or refuses to give them appropriate education, they ought to be able to challenge that. Will the Secretary of State look again at the issue, given the small amounts of savings he has suggested that there will be?
Chris Grayling
I hate to correct the right hon. Gentleman, but he talks about people’s entitlement to judicial review since Magna Carta. That took place in 1215—we will be celebrating its 800th anniversary shortly—whereas judicial review was introduced in 1974.
Criminal Legal Aid Reforms
David Lammy Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I will try to be brief, Mr Davies, because of that stricture.
Does the Minister accept that price-competitive tendering must always lead to the reduction or complete withdrawal of client choice? As long as we begin from the principle that we are not only entitled to a fair trial, but must be seen to have a fair trial, the latter is incompatible with the prosecuting body limiting the defendant’s choice, or even choosing the person employed to defend them. If the Department plans to put contracts that guarantee an equal share of work out to tender—as stated in the document it has produced—by necessity, choice is being limited. The central concern about choice therefore remains. As I said in the legal aid debate called by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), the establishment of choice goes back to the Magna Carta. It is fundamental to our system, and I have yet to hear why the Lord Chancellor thinks it can be discarded in this way.
Even if the Government are not interested in the perception or the subjectivity of receiving a fair trial, tendering, and the guarantee of work without quality control, can lead only to an objectively less fair system. The system proposal means that firms will be forced to compete on price rather than on quality, and I do not want lawyers doing that. The lower firms bid, the fewer resources they can commit to each case. That is why, when we went down that road with those who would provide food for our children in schools, we ended up with turkey twizzlers. It is why, when the NHS decided to contract out the cleaning services in our hospitals, we ended up with MRSA. So I say to the Minister, let us remain committed to quality in the system—a point well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier)—and not discard it for a cheap and, by definition, substandard service.
The savings we need can be found in other places. The significant bulk of the £220 million, as the Minister knows, comes from high-cost cases, half of which deal with banking fraud. Why does the banking sector not have an insurance scheme for fraud against its banks? That would halve the sum that the Minister is looking for. Again, it would be nice if the Lord Chancellor could say whether he was considering taking banking fraud out of criminal cases so that we could find the savings in a way that was much more friendly to our justice system.
Do we want the situation that we see in the United States of America, with substandard lawyers and huge miscarriages of justice? There are an estimated 10,000 cases of innocent people convicted of a felony there. Do we want that system? We need to think very carefully about price-competitive tendering.
I want to end briefly with the proposals that still stand on judicial review. This matter affects us all. If the state comes to take my kids away, I will seek judicial review. If the state wants to bulldoze my home to make way for High Speed 2, I will seek judicial review. If the state is unwilling to provide a care home for my mother, I will seek judicial review. Seeking to restrict judicial review is a travesty. It is a fundamental area that has largely been protected by law, and the inroads into it should be of great concern to every individual in this country. We really need to consider the matter again, given that the savings are so minuscule.
The caricature of fat-cat lawyers has been a disgrace—most lawyers are high street lawyers in places as different as Cornwall and Tottenham, and are on less than nurses and teachers. The clamour outside this building is not being made by just the legal profession. It is not about the lawyers, but about the many people who will see miscarriages of justice if the measure goes through.
Legal Aid Reform
David Lammy Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I am very grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your forgiveness for being on the move, but I was consulting colleagues about whether, given the importance of this debate, a vote of this House might be required, and whether I could invite colleagues to join me in the No Lobby after this debate. That would, of course, require Tellers.
Why is this so important? It is important because the Secretary of State has caricatured this debate as being solely about producers and suppliers of legal services. He has sought to suggest that it is about fat-cat lawyers and their fees. He also sought to suggest that this follows in a long line of reform to legal aid over the last 10 years and that ultimately it is about saving £220 million of taxpayers’ money. I think it is hugely important that Members are able to assert that that is not the case.
These are profound changes that would completely unsettle our constitutional arrangement, which begins with Magna Carta, where it was said we should not sell justice, deny justice or delay justice to anyone. When this House last met to discuss issues of such importance, the subject was the suspension of habeas corpus. On that occasion, the House met for three days, there was huge debate, we sat through the night, and then the House was able to vote. It is a travesty that the Secretary of State is not present, and that the Government seek to make such a profound change in our country by secondary legislation. That is why I urge Members to follow me into the No Lobby after the conclusion of this general debate.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the removal of people’s choice of advocate is a very profound change?
Mr Lammy
It is absolutely the case that in our system the choice of lawyer is fundamental and essential. In fact every democratic country we can think of enables that choice. That this Government should seek now to say that someone facing criminal charges cannot choose, and therefore have confidence in, the person to be charged with preserving their liberty is a huge exception to the democratic system we have sought to preserve for so long. Of course it will lead to huge miscarriages of justice.
Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and I hope he gets extra time for taking a second intervention. I hear what he has to say, but does he agree that whoever was in power at the moment, having to make difficult choices, would almost certainly have to look at what is one of the most generous legal aid systems in the world and make savings to that budget? Does he agree that the problem is not so much the principle of the savings but how this is being done and the fact that there needs to be consultation on a number of specific points that, to be fair, the Government have agreed to reconsider?
Mr Lammy
The hon. Gentleman is right. It is totally unacceptable that the Government have sought to rush this measure through after a speedy consultation that lasted less than two months. It is wrong that there should not be a vote in the House and it is wrong to caricature previous changes to legal aid as having any relationship with these changes. When I was legal aid Minister, changes were made to scope in personal injury in an attempt to take out those who were caught up in speeding or traffic cases in the legal aid system. We introduced fixed fees to maintain costs. We introduced online and phone systems for free legal advice to limit costs. Those were the sorts of changes we introduced; we did not attempt to charge and make an attack on judicial review.
Judicial review is so important. Most people in this country feel that public authorities are benign until they have a disabled child, or one with special needs, and seek to challenge the local authority or the school, until they have an elderly relative in a care home and abuse goes on in that care home, or until they live in the path of High Speed 2 or Crossrail. There are people in this country who would seek to use judicial review and it is a travesty that this Government would run a coach and horses through it for £6 million.
The hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham) mentioned savings and savings can be made in other ways. Tagging a defendant costs £13.41 in Britain, but £1.22 in America. Let us find the savings through cheaper procurement. Let us find the savings in the court system. Let us not rip up a democratic, constitutional system that we have had for so many years and that has served us well.
We have heard that the parents of Jean Charles de Menezes would not have received legal aid under the changes being made to the residence system. In fact, after these changes, babies in our care system aged under one would not get legal aid, even though children sometimes need access to it. There are many headlines at the moment about Jimmy Mubenga, a young man who lost his life in a deportation case. His family would not get legal aid. Is that really the kind of country we want to live in? Is that what we want to arm our Foreign Secretaries with when they are trying to speak powerfully to foreign Governments who seek to oppress their citizens? It cannot be, so I ask the Department to think again about the decision and to think very hard about the changes it is attempting to railroad through Parliament.
Those are the reasons it is important that we have the opportunity to vote. It is deeply concerning that it has taken senior Back Benchers going to the Backbench Business Committee to bring this discussion to the House in the first place. I cannot think of an occasion in the past few years when that has happened on such a major issue. I ask the Secretary of State to be mindful of the petition signed by thousands of people because they, too, are concerned about the situation.
The caricature that implies that those who are caught up in the criminal system are thick and therefore do not need a choice of lawyer is a disgrace coming from a Secretary of State for Justice. For legal aid lawyers to be caricatured as fat cats when their average salary is less than that of nurses and teachers in this country and when we are talking about high street firms in Bristol, Swindon and Brixton—places as different as that—is unacceptable. This is not about the producer, but about the citizen and the consumer. It is about hard-fought battles that have taken place in this Chamber over many years. I ask the Government and hon. Members to join me in the No Lobby after the debate.
Robert Neill
It seems to me that the Secretary of State has adopted a careful and measured approach. What the hon. Lady says is thoroughly misleading. I am sorry to say that she does herself no service by making such a thoroughly meretricious point.
This matter has been the subject of great public debate. I have referred to the former Lord Chancellor’s speech in 2009, in which he made specific proposals, including bringing in fixed fees and graduated fees as a precursor to best value tendering. He may not have delivered on those proposals, but the ideas have been out there for a long time.
The Lord Chancellor has met the chairman of the Bar Council and the president of the Law Society. It is right and wise that he chooses temperate interlocutors. He has been most willing to engage with Members of this House who are interested in legal matters. The hon. Lady therefore does herself a disservice to characterise the process as rushed.
Robert Neill
The right hon. Gentleman had no difficulty serving in the Government of Tony Blair, who observed in 2003 that it was time
“to derail the gravy train of legal aid”.
He might like to think about his own background before he criticises anybody on the Government side of the Chamber.
Of course choice is important, but if we are to have a sensible and intelligent approach to choice, we must recognise that when choice is funded by the taxpayer, it should not come with a completely blank chequebook. It is legitimate to look at the way in which choice is delivered. We should link to the question of choice the important commitment to a proper quality standard. I hope that the Bar Council and the Law Society will work with the Ministry of Justice to develop a quality standard to ensure that the lawyers who come forward under this scheme are not just acceptable, but really good and able.
Mr Davis
If the hon. Lady will forgive, I am very tight on time. I will give way if I can a little later.
That does not tell the whole story, however. Time and again, we see trials delayed and extended by CPS incompetence. In my part of the world alone, the newspapers are littered with cases of lawyers not turning up, evidence not being presented and cases being adjourned again and again. I suspect we all have constituency cases just like that. This happens right across the country. We should not pretend that the legal aid system is a model of efficiency, but when it comes to finding savings and better, effective justice across the whole system, we should look first at the CPS itself before we let the axe fall again on legal aid.
I am yet to be convinced—this addresses the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab)—by Government assurances that the quality of legal aid providers will be guaranteed by a state body. This debate comes barely a week after the Care Quality Commission scandal. That demonstrates how difficult it is to guarantee the quality of complex intellectual services, which, of course, justice is. We should notice that even where the state has direct control—namely, the CPS and the Serious Fraud Office—it cannot guarantee quality there either. A judge in a recent murder case described the CPS lawyer as “completely inadequate”. The judge said that the lawyer cited old law, did not understand the current law, fell out with the prosecution team, and then simply did not show up on the following Monday. As a result, the trial had to be held six months later. If we cannot guarantee our own system and our own service, how are we going to guarantee 400 private operators around the country?
Mr Davis
The right hon. Gentleman is almost taking the words out of my mouth. I cannot believe that a Conservative Government are going to mandate how many companies and providers there should be. I know of no example in the world where a Government mandated the number of companies and then improved the efficiency of provision—not one. This is a Soviet proposal that I do not want to see. I do not mind if there are better ways of finding efficiency—as has been said, that is what we must find—but please do not lay down laws like that.
I wish briefly to discuss a couple of other troubling issues in the consultation document, the first of which is the 12-month residency test. That could deny justice to people who have suffered because of the actions of the UK Government—under UK jurisdiction—which we are responsible for resolving. Just to mention cases in which I have been directly involved, I can cite those of Binyam Mohamed, Serdar Mohamed, Yunus Rahmatullah, who is still in Bagram prison, and Baha Mousa. We are talking about: people who were subject to torture in which Britain was complicit; an innocent man beaten to death by British soldiers; people who have been rendered—and still are—to other countries; people who have been handed over to our allies—[Interruption.] From a sedentary position, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton mentions de Menezes, who was shot, although accidentally, by the British Government. All those people would be denied their justice. More important, given that in many of those cases the person is deceased, the British people would not know about the misdemeanours of their own Government.
That brings me to my final point, which is about judicial review. I sympathise with Ministers who find it irksome that we have so many judicial reviews, but the Government are in danger of getting themselves a reputation for wanting to act above the law. Irksome as it is, judicial reviews are what keeps British Governments honest—it does not matter of which party or of which origin, they keep the Government honest. I say to the Government that before they strike down these things at their own convenience, they should think again, come back more slowly and present this House with some primary legislation we can then be proud of.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
May I first of all declare an interest? For many years, I practised family and criminal law, both as a solicitor and barrister, and many of the cases were legally aided.
The effects of these reforms will be extremely detrimental to solicitors and their practices. Inevitably we will have advice deserts and this will impinge even more on the situation in Wales, where there is a requirement to provide services through the medium of Welsh. The Justice Secretary, sadly absent, has admitted that the Ministry only considered this factor a month into its consultation and his impact assessment does not even mention the Welsh language.
The consultation process in general so far has been nothing short of a sham allowing professionals only six weeks to get up to speed with proposals that will fragment the professional world they inhabit. To add insult to injury, the Government intend to introduce these reforms by secondary legislation without proper scrutiny by Parliament. This is scandalous. Unless these plans are stopped now and quickly, there will be no turning back.
Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)
Before I make some brief remarks on behalf of the many members of the legal profession and the general public who have approached me, may I say a word to the House on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee? The Committee granted this debate to the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) and the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) as a general debate with no Division to allow for a wide-ranging and frank discussion, which I think all Members would agree the House is having. We are also extremely mindful of the fact that the debate is over-subscribed and the House needs to give more time to this subject. Does the right hon. Gentleman want to intervene on me at that point to say anything?
Mr Lammy
The hon. Lady is a member of the Backbench Business Committee, and I wonder whether she is saying more time could be made available for us to return to this topic and have a vote. I am also mindful that the shadow Secretary of State has not yet spoken, however, and that I may not need to press this debate to a Division.
Jane Ellison
I hope it is possible not to do so, for the reason I have just explained. There is also a short, but important, debate to follow.
Jeremy Wright
I note that the right hon. Gentleman did not take the opportunity to share where he was the last two times, but I suggest that we might want to move on.
This is an important debate, as hon. Members from all parts of the House have said. Before I try to respond to a number of the specific points made—the House will understand that the time constraints we face mean that I will not be able to respond to everything, and I apologise for that in advance—let me say something about the context of these reforms.
It is right to say that the previous round of legal aid reforms, culminating in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, will have already removed about £320 million from the legal aid budget by 2014-15, but those proposals were primarily focused on civil legal aid scope and eligibility. Alongside those changes, we have made sweeping reforms to the central administration of the legal aid system. We have strengthened accountability and introduced a more rigorous approach to financial management by creating the Legal Aid Agency. But the successful delivery of that programme has not eliminated the need for reform. In order to meet the ongoing financial challenges facing the justice system, which many who have spoken have recognised, the Government have had to look again at the cost of civil legal aid, as well as turning their attention to arguably the most difficult part of the legal aid reform agenda: the reform of criminal legal aid.
Jeremy Wright
The position is, as I have just said, that the bulk of the work done under the 2012 Act dealt with civil legal aid and the bulk of the work being done under these proposals will deal with criminal legal aid. The total value of the savings that these reforms would make if fully implemented as currently proposed would be £220 million by 2018-19. That is a significant figure, given our financial circumstances.
Many hon. Members have questioned the need for further reform, while others have said we should go much further. My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) made an interesting speech about more radical options we could pursue. The answer is simple: criminal legal aid accounts for £1 billion of the overall legal aid budget, and in the current financial climate, the Government, being committed to eradicating the deficit and the national debt, cannot overlook such a sizeable portion of Government spending. We have had to make extremely tough choices in other areas, and it would not be right to exclude this one.
Many hon. Members have said that we should look for savings in other areas of the criminal justice system. My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery) made that point, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Simon Reevell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and the hon. Members for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) and for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland). All of them were right about the importance of looking at other areas. I think we heard some good suggestions today, and of course the Government will look in all those areas for savings, too, but that does not get us away from the need to keep the legal aid budget under proper scrutiny.
The package of proposals on which we have consulted is intended to ensure that our legal aid system commands the confidence of the public—that is important—and remains financially viable both now and in the years ahead. We are looking carefully at the 16,000 responses to the consultation, and, with reference to what my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central said, I can reassure the House that I and my ministerial colleagues will treat everything said in this debate as important contributions to that process. We will listen carefully to what has been said today as well as to what was said in the consultation.
We are duty bound to ensure, however, that taxpayers’ money is spent only where it is justified and only on those who genuinely need the state’s assistance. The taxpayers, who fund the legal aid scheme, have every right to demand that their money be well spent and to ask important questions. They have a right to ask why the taxpayer should be paying the legal costs of the very wealthiest Crown court defendants up front; why the taxpayer should be paying for criminal legal aid for claims made by prisoners that can be better resolved by other means—I will return in a moment to prisoner law— and why the taxpayer should pay the legal costs of those with no strong connection to the UK.
As others have said, our legal aid budget is disproportionately high. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) made that point very effectively. We have an extremely good legal system—it is greatly admired and, as others have said, it contributes significantly to our society—but that does not mean that it should be immune to the realities that the Government face. Efficiencies have to be made, and reform is the mechanism for achieving them.
Mr Lammy
No one is suggesting that there should not be reform. Has the Minister considered the fact that 45% of criminal legal aid goes on high-cost cases, many involving bank fraud? Why does he not ask the banking industry to come up with an insurance scheme and take that out, rather than dismantling the whole system?
Jeremy Wright
The right hon. Gentleman is right that very high-cost criminal cases are an important area for us to focus on, and we propose to take about 30% of the cost of those cases out of the system, but he would be wrong to assume that those cases, on their own, could achieve the savings we need to make. We need to look more broadly.
I want to turn to the particular proposals and concerns that hon. Members have concentrated on. Many Members have focused on the effect of the proposals on smaller firms and on the issue of price competitive tendering. In 2011, we said that competitive tendering would likely be the best way to ensure long-term sustainability and value for money in the legal aid market. Some Members were concerned that this was a new idea suddenly springing into the political landscape, but of course that is not the case. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan)was gracious enough to point out that the idea was first considered under his Government. In March 2010, the last Government produced a Green Paper entitled, “Restructuring the Delivery of Criminal Defence Services”. Among other things, it said:
“Currently the criminal defence service is highly fragmented, with a large number of small suppliers and relatively few large suppliers….We believe that these market trends are not sustainable. Therefore we believe a future tendering process would ensure a more consolidated market, with a smaller number of more efficient suppliers, required to undertake the full range of the services we need.”
That is what the Labour party thought in 2010, and lest we should run away with the thought that it has changed its view since then, let me quote from what I am sure is a very well-read blog written in October 2011 by the right hon. Member for Tooting. He said—as, to be fair, he also said today—that:
“I recognise that cuts need to be made…I would have carried through a new scheme for contracting of solicitors for criminal legal aid and lowered criminal defence advocate fees in the Crown Court…This more efficient contracting of legal services from solicitors has bizarrely not been implemented by the coalition government”.
So he criticises us for not doing it, then he comes here and criticises us for proposing to do it.
Another point that has been made repeatedly today is the effect that the proposals could have on smaller firms. I need to make it clear that the proposed competition model would see the number of contracts, not the number of firms, reduced from 1,600 to 400. Our proposals do not prescribe how many lawyers should be available or how those that have the contracts should divide up the work allocated to them.
The matter of client choice has also been raised by many hon. Members today. We have listened carefully to the concerns that have been raised not only in the debate but by those who responded to the consultation. Let me reassure the House that quality-assured duty solicitors and lawyers will still be available, just as they are now. The Legal Aid Agency will need to ensure, as part of the tendering process, that all providers are capable of delivering the full range of criminal legal aid services across their procurement areas. That is also true in relation to the points raised about rural sparsity and about the Welsh language.
We have a number of things to consider, and we will consider them carefully. We will come back with our conclusions in the autumn. I am grateful that the debate has taken place today and for all the contributions that have been made. We will consider them properly and respond accordingly in the autumn.
2011 Public Disorder (Compensation)
David Lammy Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)
I am grateful for this opportunity to raise an issue that is of great interest to my residents in Croydon North and to many other people across London and in other parts of the country that were affected by the riots in the summer of 2011.
It is almost two years now since the riots hit Croydon. Businesses were burned to the ground, shops were looted, and homes were destroyed. The Prime Minister and the Mayor of London walked along the devastated London road in the central part of Croydon and promised people that they would not be forgotten and that, while the state had failed to protect them during the riots, it would stand by them as they tried to rebuild their lives. Since becoming the Member of Parliament for Croydon North last November, I have met business owners and residents whose lives were damaged by the riots. They feel completely abandoned by a Government who promised to help them when the TV cameras were on but walked away when the media glare died down.
It is instructive to know how much has actually been paid out compared with the amount that has been claimed. I put in a freedom of information request to the Metropolitan police and found out that that now, nearly two years after the riots took place, only one seventh of the £250 million that was claimed had been paid out—that is, £35.8 million. The Metropolitan police rejected outright half of all claims that were filed, yet the Government continue to claim, and I fear may claim again tonight, that the majority of cases have been settled. The Government might have closed the files, but the cases have not been settled to the satisfaction of the people who were affected. They feel very strongly that the Government have given up on them and walked away. It is no wonder that the chair of The High Street Fund, Sir William Castell, has described the Government’s compensation schemes as a “disgrace” because of how slow they have been at paying out to people who need and deserve that additional money.
I have here some quotes from the Prime Minister during the debate in this Chamber on 11 August 2011. He said:
“I confirm that any individual, home owner or business that has suffered damage to or loss of their buildings or property as a result of rioting can seek compensation under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886, even if uninsured.”
In response to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, he said of the money that would be made available that
“the Riot (Damages) Act has no cap at all…people will be able to apply to the police and the Government will stand behind the police.”—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1054-59.]
The Government’s promises were good. What the Prime Minister offered to do was exactly what they should have been doing; the tragedy is that the reality has not matched the rhetoric.
What I hope to demonstrate, and hope the Minister will respond to, is my fear, and the fear of many people who have suffered as a result of the Government’s failure to intervene, that the Government are hiding behind definitions to avoid paying up. For instance, they are refusing to replace damaged, old business equipment with new business equipment, even though in many cases businesses are unable to buy like for like, and therefore cannot replace them, get their businesses going again and get their livelihoods back.
The Government, and the Metropolitan police, have also failed to define the riots properly in some parts of London. My right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) has been in correspondence with the Home Secretary about Chalk Farm, where the riots were defined as “public disorder”, which means that the Riot (Damages) Act does not apply to businesses and individuals in that part of London who were affected.
Statistics do not give the full scale of what happened. They fail to tell us the human side of the Government’s failure. Individual stories tell us much more than statistics. I would therefore like to refer to two specific cases involving constituents of mine whose lives remain blighted by riots that happened nearly two years ago.
First, a gentleman called Mr Mumtaz Hassan and his wife ran a dry cleaning business on the London road in west Croydon. Their business was burned down by a mob and as a result their livelihood has been destroyed. Two years later, they have not been paid a single penny in compensation. All they have been offered is like for like. It was an old business that they had taken over. They cannot afford, with what is on offer to them, to pay for new dry cleaning equipment. As a result, that family risk losing their home, because they have no livelihood or income to maintain their mortgage payments. Two years later, the riots are still creating new victims and it is time that the Government stepped up and helped people as they promised in the immediate aftermath of those events.
Secondly, Miss Charlene Munro is a single mother who at the time lived in a flat above a business on the London road with her three-year-old son. When they saw rioters rushing down the London road, smashing and looting their way through the shops, they fled their home. They returned the next day to find the shop and the flat where they lived burned down and all their possessions destroyed. Absolutely everything they owned was gone. She put in a not unreasonable claim of just £6,000 for all her possessions. She received a paltry £2,500 in payment, which is absolutely inadequate to replace all the possessions, clothes and electronic goods that the family owned. She is unable to replace them. In her attempt to build a new home for her three-year-old son, she had to go into debt and is now so burdened with debt she has been forced to file for bankruptcy. The Government say that her case has been settled. It is not settled in any meaningful way other than that the Government have simply closed the file and are refusing to provide her with the support she deserves and was promised.
Some businesses are still being held liable for rent or mortgage payments on properties that have been burned down. Many insurers are going far too slowly in dealing with claims for damaged property and goods.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the manner in which he has brought this issue back to the House. Is he also concerned about premiums rising in riot areas such as his and mine, and does he agree that the absence of engagement with the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 means that areas are being abandoned and that that could lead to a Detroit-type scenario in this country, with completely barren areas without any insurance presence?
Mr Reed
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I compliment him on his work as the Member for Tottenham in standing up for riot victims not just in his constituency, but elsewhere in London. That has been of great reassurance to my constituents as well as his. I absolutely agree with him. The issue is not just that premiums have gone up in areas hit by the riots; businesses have even told me that they cannot get insurance at all.
If we hollow out whole areas of London, we will further blight the lives of people who, through no fault of their own, were victims of hooligan mobs trashing and looting their way through London. We need the Government to step up to the mark, take on the issues that confront these areas and work with insurance companies to ensure that whole areas do not get blighted because of incidents two years ago that were nothing to do with the people who were living their lives peacefully and running businesses there.
The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)
I thank the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) for raising this important subject. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to his predecessor, Malcolm Wicks, who was extremely assiduous, as all those who knew him would expect, in representing the victims of the riots in his constituency before his very sad death.
I am, of course, aware that the Croydon North constituency was one of the areas most severely affected by the riots of August 2011. I, like everyone in the House, sympathise with the individuals and businesses in that area, across London and across the country that experienced losses because of the riots.
Given the tone adopted by the hon. Gentleman, it is important to make sure that we have the facts and figures on the record. I note, for example, from local media coverage in March 2013, that it was claimed that as many as 40 claims for compensation under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886 appeared to be outstanding in Croydon alone. It is simply not the case that there are 40 outstanding uninsured cases in Croydon, as only 11 uninsured cases remain unresolved nationally, nine of which are in the Metropolitan police area.
The hon. Gentleman quite reasonably brought up some figures, so I am sure it will help him and the House if I quickly run through the latest statistics on compensation payments. They show that 577 uninsured claims were originally made, of which five remain outstanding—about 1% of the original total. A further 716 uninsured claims were later received by the Metropolitan police. These were largely made after insurance companies had repudiated claims. Only six of that latter group of claims are unresolved, which is again around 1% of the original total.
The largest category of outstanding claims represent insurance companies seeking compensation from police and crime commissioners for reimbursement of settlements paid to policyholders. This does not affect individuals or businesses who have received some form of payment from their insurance company: 3,935 of these types of claim were made and 270—about 7%—are outstanding. So far, PCCs, and in London the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, have paid out just over £30 million in claims.
The hon. Gentleman brought up the Government’s initial response to the riots. Indeed, through the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Government quickly set up funds to help individuals and businesses to get back on their feet, and these schemes paid out £10.8 million.
With specific reference to compensation payments under the Riot (Damages) Act, the Government took swift action by extending the application period from 14 to 42 days, by replacing the antiquated prescribed form with a simple claims form and by setting up a Home Office bureau to act as a single point of contact to advise claimants and take in applications.
From recent correspondence with Members, I am aware of a few individuals—the hon. Gentleman mentioned them—who have had to continue making mortgage payments on properties left uninhabitable by the riots. I should say that this type of loss is not covered by the Riot (Damages) Act, and I shall come on later in my speech to the inadequacies we have identified in a what is a rather old Act. I have recently written to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which has agreed to liaise with lenders to see whether a more sympathetic approach can be taken. I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman and other Members that my officials are working closely with them. In the end, this is a commercial decision for mortgage lenders, but as I say, we are taking action on this.
Damian Green
As I say, particularly in the case of the mortgages, it is for the mortgage lenders to decide in the end, but I have explained that I am doing what I can to persuade them to take a sympathetic attitude to individuals who deserve help.
As the House will know, all those who made claims under the Riot (Damages) Act were offered sums in settlement. In case they were unhappy with their offers, the PCCs—and MOPAC in London—established a right of appeal, which a number of people have exercised. At the outset of the riots, the Government made a commitment to back the costs incurred by police forces in meeting Riot (Damages) Act costs, because that was another potential problem. We have provided that backing, and will continue to do so until the few remaining claims have been settled. So far the Government have paid some £30 million to forces to meet Riot (Damages) Act costs, as well as meeting the operational costs of policing the riots, which totalled £97 million.
Damian Green
That is part of the principle of the Act, but it is not the whole point of it. The right hon. Gentleman has been a Minister and he knows that Ministers have to obey the law like everybody else.
I take the point about money, and MOPAC has been making some interim payments. I understand that about £10 million has been paid out, including some to residents of London road.
Underlying all this is the unsatisfactory nature of what is 19th century legislation. As I set out in a written ministerial statement last month, we have appointed Neil Kinghan to conduct an independent review of the Act. That has already begun and is expected to be completed by the end of September.
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill
David Lammy Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Burrowes
I do indeed welcome their prayerful support and, indeed, the fact that there has been engagement from those who are on all sides of the argument.
There has been much tolerance and respect in the debate from those on both sides of the House, but I must take this opportunity to say—I have informed the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) of my intention to do so—that there have been comments that have gone beyond tolerance. There have been intolerant comments that were, frankly, offensive to my constituents and many of his. How dare the right hon. Gentleman equate the position of Christian Members of Parliament such as me and others with the slave traders of Wilberforce’s time? Wilberforce supported traditional marriage and would, I am sure, have been on the side of the dissenters on the Bill.
Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that by playing the race card and accusing the Bill’s opponents of being in step with the racists and traffickers of years gone by, he is offending not just me—that does not matter—but the majority of the black and minority ethnic communities who are opposed to the Bill? He has offended the black majority Church leaders in his constituency and mine who wrote to The Times recently and said:
“If the Government gets its way, it will not be a victory for equality. Equality requires diversity, and diversity requires distinctiveness, and marriage is and always will be distinctively a union between a man and a woman… The Government is not respecting difference, and it is not promoting a plural society.”
Mr Burrowes
Unfortunately, we are running out of time.
What is pernicious is equating hon. Members’ opposition to redefining marriage with previous discrimination on the basis of race. That plays into the hands of those who have accused me and many hon. Members of being homophobic or bigoted simply for standing up for marriage—[Interruption.] I will give way to the right hon. Member for Tottenham shortly. Such intolerant reaction to our belief in marriage runs the risk of being fomented by the state orthodoxy in the Bill about the new gender-neutral meaning of marriage. For our constituents—those who really matter—those who disagree risk vilification and discrimination and they certainly will not get the protection they deserve under the Equality Act 2010.
Mr Lammy
I am greatly saddened that the hon. Gentleman chose to use the term “playing the race card”. My comments were merely sited in an understanding of equality. There have been many battles on equality in this House. The battles against slavery, racism and sexism were noble, and many people outside the House will recognise that the fight for gay rights is one of equality; it is not playing—
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) must have a chance to finish his speech.