Serious Violence Strategy

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

The rise in violent crime in recent months should concern us all. Lives have been needlessly lost and the public are rightly concerned. The position we find ourselves in has many factors at play, and I agree with the serious crime strategy’s assessment that tackling serious crime is not a law enforcement issue alone, but I am firmly of the view that the cuts to our police forces up and down the country are key to the recent rise in violent crime.

The Government must surely recognise the severity of the situation when an apolitical figure such as the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police suggests that Government cuts have played a significant part in increasing levels of violent crime. For far too long, the Government’s stock response has been to accuse the Labour party of playing politics. When I raised this issue at Prime Minister’s questions last month, the Prime Minister attempted to dismiss my concerns as hyperbole and even suggested that the shadow police Minister was alone in seeing a correlation between the rise in serious crime and cuts to police numbers.

Cressida Dick’s recent comments have vindicated the sterling work of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) and showed that these are indeed genuine, well-founded concerns. If the country’s most senior police officer is suggesting that we are in the midst of a funding crisis for our police forces, it is high time the Government took note and reversed the chronic underfunding that has gone on for far too long.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is clearly a link between police cuts and violent crime? I represent a seat in south Yorkshire that has seen a 57% increase in violent crime in the last year—one of the highest in the country.

[Ellie Reeves]

I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a link between the rise in violent crime and police cuts, and our concerns cannot be dismissed as playing party political games. As a London MP, I am acutely aware of the damage that sustained central Government cuts have had on our police force. The Met has had to make savings of more than £600 million, and more savings are required. Around my constituency, both safer neighbourhood front desks, in Catford and Penge, have closed, and across the capital officer numbers are dangerously close to falling below 30,000.

Some may argue that the Met gets funding from the Mayor of London. They would be correct, but even after the council tax precept increase, which has already been raised to the highest level by the Mayor, the Met will still need to make additional savings of £325 million by 2021. More importantly, the Met relies on central Government for over 70% of its funding, and this shortfall has been caused by successive Conservative Administrations. The reality is that there is nobody for them to pass the buck to when it comes to the issue of police funding.

Yet while we have seen funding continually fall over the past few years, there has been an irrefutable rise in serious crime. In London, knife offences now total over 12,000 each year, which is a 17% increase since 2013, and firearms offences are up 34% to over 2,000 a year. When I spoke about serious crime in London during Prime Minister’s Question Time, the number of murders in the capital this year stood at 57. Now, five weeks on, the number is approaching 70, and 41 of those murders have been stabbings. Since my election last year, I have met a number of constituents who have been directly affected—most tragically, the families of two young men who were stabbed to death.

Only cross-party efforts can help us to fully rectify the horrendous rise in violent crime. Political decisions can change the situation for the better. The Mayor of London has done his part, allocating an extra £110 million to the Metropolitan police through a rise in the precept, but we have a Conservative Government who are still blind to the fact that chronic underfunding of police forces has its consequences. The serious and organised crime strategy choreographed by the former Home Secretary—the present Prime Minister—raised some important points, but they are meaningless if our police forces are unable to carry out their day-to-day duties because of reductions in central funding. It is another case of the Government’s giving with one hand and taking with the other.

The strategy raised several points about youth involvement that are entirely valid, and the aim of spending £40 million on early intervention and prevention is welcome, but it is set against a backdrop of sustained long-term cuts in youth services and schools since 2010. The cuts in services that may have previously helped young people at risk of being involved in serious crime are symptomatic of the “cuts and austerity” culture that the Government have normalised, with utter disregard for the results of their actions. Moreover, the Government can come up with as many strategies for combating serious crime as they like, but unless our police forces are given appropriate levels of funding and resources, they are wasted exercises filled with hollow words.

The Government can do something, and they should do something. They should do something today. The Conservative party has previously positioned itself as a party of law and order. That rhetoric has long ago worn thin, and it is patently obvious to many in the House and beyond that increasing police funding from central Government is crucially important if we are to deal effectively with serious crime in the long run. More funding would see more officers and better resources. Do it today: do it now.

Windrush

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Thank you for the warning, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is an honour to follow a former member of the Anti-Nazi League. I have always thought that the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) was a bit of a closet pinko; she obviously needs to be looked into by the Conservative Chief Whip. I should like to congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on bringing a proper level of scrutiny to bear on this issue, including the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper).

In particular, I want to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who really kick-started this and brought the issue out into the public spotlight. I should like to point out that his predecessor was Bernie Grant, who was a friend of mine. He came here from Guyana—it was British Guyana when he was there—with his head held high, proud of where he came from and proud of where he was going. That is the whole point about this scandal. People like Bernie are now being threatened with deportation. I say “people like Bernie” because he cannot be threatened with deportation; sadly, he passed away some years ago.

I am dealing with between 30 and 40 cases in my constituency. I have a big Windrush community. As a proportion, I am dealing with a very large number of cases. These are people who have been threatened with deportation, and I will give two brief examples. The first is a woman, and she is a classic Windrush baby case. She came to Britain as a baby in the 1960s, and she cannot remember Jamaica, which is where she was born. She has a broad east London accent, and it is pretty obvious that she is as quintessentially British and a Londoner as anyone else, yet when she went to apply for a passport for the first time in her life, having brought up a family and worked here for all these years, she was told not only that she could not have a passport but that she was going to be deported back to Jamaica. As she said, it is a country that she cannot remember.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[John Cryer]

I can’t really say no, can I?

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. A constituent of mine who came to Britain as a child in 1972 was recently detained upon his return from Jamaica after visiting his father, who has dementia. He told me about his humiliation and that he has had no recourse to public funds since then. He now cannot visit his father again for fear of being detained. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a travesty and that my constituent, along with his, should be afforded the same rights as every other British citizen without further delay?

[John Cryer]

Of course, I agree.

My second example is more unusual and involves a woman who came from Jamaica when she was a baby. She was abandoned by her parents and grew up in a nunnery, which—Members can tell what is coming—was closed down and demolished after she left, and its records were lost. Again, this is somebody with a broad east London accent. She is quintessentially British and has the right to stay here, but she was told, after she had been through all that, “We’re going to deport you.” That is the sort of culture that we are dealing with at the Home Office, and I suspect that it goes across Government, which I will come to in a minute.

Vote 100 and International Women’s Day

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I feel immensely privileged to speak in this debate to mark International Women’s Day, 100 years after some women first got the vote. I represent the borough of Lewisham, where, I am proud to say, 100 years after women got the right to be Members of Parliament, we have three female MPs. I am delighted to serve alongside my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), and for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), who have given me immeasurable support before and after my election to this place. The borough of Lewisham has been pioneering in gender equality. In the 1970s, the council set up the Lewisham women’s rights working party. I am proud to say that we have no gender pay gap on Lewisham Council, and we have more women in senior council roles than men.

So much has been done over the last 100 years to promote gender equality—the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999, and the Equality Act 2010 to name but a few—but there is still a great deal more to be done. Having worked as an employment rights lawyer for many years, I all too often saw women demoted or dismissed after returning from maternity leave, and employers putting up unnecessary barriers to flexible working. I saw women being paid less than men for work of equal value, and women who were too afraid to speak out when they were discriminated against, for fear of losing their job.

Those experiences motivated me to try to make a difference. Two years ago, on International Women’s Day, after I had become a mum, I launched my business providing affordable legal advice to women who faced maternity and sex discrimination at work, which I ran until I was elected to this place. I wish there was no demand for such a business, but there was, and that is borne out by the statistics.

In 2016, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Equality and Human Rights Commission undertook a major piece of research on the prevalence and nature of maternity discrimination at work. The results, based on survey interviews with more than 3,000 mothers and 3,000 employers, are quite shocking. More than three in four mothers—77%—said that they had a negative or discriminatory experience before, during or after their maternity leave. One in five mums reported experiencing harassment or negative comments from colleagues or their employer relating to pregnancy or flexible working. Ten per cent. of mums said that their employer discouraged them from attending antenatal appointments, and 11% said that they felt forced to leave their job after having a child. Scaled up, that amounts to 54,000 women a year being forced to leave their job simply for becoming a mum.

According to the Fawcett Society, the mean aggregate gender pay gap for part-time and full-time workers stands at 18.4%. At the current rate of progress, it will take more than 100 years to close the gap, which is just not acceptable. There is a huge amount more that should and can be done to end gender inequality at work. The Select Committee on Women and Equalities has made strong recommendations in this area that have yet to be enacted by the Government.

To start with, all jobs should be advertised as flexible by default, unless there is a strong business case for them not to be. In the age of technology, being sat behind a desk in an office from 9 am until 6 pm, five days a week, is rarely necessary, yet the culture of presenteeism—of staying late in the office but not necessarily being productive—persists. A cultural shift is needed in the way that we work, with compressed hours, home working, staggered hours or term-time working becoming the norm, so that families—both men and women—can better strike a work-life balance, and so that having children does not diminish prospects at work.

We urgently need proper paid paternity leave to be introduced. Shared parental leave has been a step in the right direction, but take-up has been low—it is only at an estimated 2%—and the statutory rates of pay mean that it is only really an option for those in high-income families or those with savings. In addition, the model of transferring leave from mum to dad does not work for all families. Instead, non-transferable paternity leave, paid at a rate closer to actual earnings, should be implemented. Only then will we get the cultural shift at work needed to end stereotypes about women being a burden on business, and the assumption that they alone will be responsible for childcare duties. That would go a long way towards ending the gender pay gap sooner rather than later.

Laws on maternity discrimination and enforcement of breaches also need toughening up. To start with, it should be made harder for women to be made redundant after their maternity leave. Regulation 10 of the Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999 gives women some protection against being made redundant while pregnant or on maternity leave, but the protected period ends when the woman returns to work. That does not make sense, given that very often it is exactly when a new mum comes back to work that they begin to feel pushed out. To strengthen our discrimination laws, the period of protection against redundancy should be extended to 12 months after a women returns to work following her maternity leave.

We also need stricter sanctions against employers who breach discrimination laws or fail to publish details of their gender pay gap. I welcome the Labour policy launched today by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler). It would help to close the gender pay gap by ensuring that all private and public employers with more than 250 staff had to audit their gender pay gaps—and, furthermore, prove that they were taking action to close the gap—or face strict penalties. If employers risk losing money, they are more likely to comply with their legal obligations.

Finally, rights are often far too difficult to enforce. According to the charity Maternity Action, the introduction of employment tribunal fees led to a reduction of 40% in maternity discrimination claims. I am alarmed that there have been suggestions by Conservative Members that fees might be reintroduced, albeit at a lower level. Tribunal fees are a clear barrier to access to justice for women who have been discriminated against at work.

The time limit for bringing a claim for maternity discrimination in the employment tribunal is three months from the act complained of. Both the Women and Equalities Committee and the Equality and Human Rights Commission have said that this is not long enough. Those with a newborn baby at home are likely to be having sleepless nights, not to mention feeding round the clock and endless nappy changes. New mums also often go through a huge period of readjustment, physically and mentally, so the notion that they will engage with a complex legal process is simply unrealistic in many cases. It is likely that far more women would assert their rights if the time limit was increased from three months to six.

Later today, I will be proud to mark International Women’s Day by speaking at an event in Lewisham alongside some of the original members of the Lewisham women’s rights working party. We will reflect not only on how much has been achieved over the past few decades, but on how much more we still have to do: ending the gender pay gap once and for all; making flexible working the norm rather than the exception; and promoting shared caring responsibilities. Only then will we achieve true gender equality at work.

Women’s Suffrage Centenary

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

Yes. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. It is delightful to hear that he took his daughter around to see the great opportunity and stature of this place. I hope it gave her some inspiration. He has put his finger on it. It is all about ensuring equality for women, but there is still so much to do and I hope that he will support some of our plans this year.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement about encouraging more women into Parliament and I am immensely proud to be here today representing my home seat 100 years after women first got the vote. Does she agree that sitting well beyond 10 pm, as we did numerous times in December, is hardly family friendly and hardly encourages women to enter Parliament? Does she further agree that a lot more still needs to be done, including introducing baby leave, as proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), to make this place more welcoming and open to future female MPs?

[Amber Rudd]

I agree in principle with the hon. Lady. This House has come a long way, as Members who have been here a lot longer than me would point out. There are occasionally longer sittings, but I think that they are pretty unpopular with many Members of Parliament. I urge the Chief Whip and shadow Chief Whip to engage in more constructive discussions. It takes both parties to agree not to sit past 10 pm.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

2. What the change in the number of frontline police officers is estimated to be between 2018 and 2020.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

5. What the change in the number of frontline police officers is estimated to be between 2018 and 2020.

[Jo Platt (Leigh) (Lab/Co-op)]

13. What the change in the number of frontline police officers is estimated to be between 2018 and 2020.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Reeves]

In December, I went out with my local Safer Neighbourhood team. Despite the tremendous work they do, two officers per ward is not enough. Added to that, my local police station in Penge recently closed. Met police numbers are set to fall below 30,000. Given the rise in violent crime in London, will the Government now commit to investing in our police and reversing the cuts?

[Mr Hurd]

Police numbers in London have been stable for some time, going back to 2008. Any decisions on future projections are to be taken by the Mayor and the head of the Met. If the Mayor does what we are empowering him to do, this settlement will mean an additional £43 million for the Met on top of £200 million of reserves. The force has made great strides in efficiency but, according to Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, continues to require improvement. Of course, public safety in the capital matters a great deal, which is why the Met police have 1.6 times the number of officers per head than the national average.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point in his particularly distinct way. He is absolutely right—he has put his finger on it—that the police do have a concern and we are having the review to address that concern. I hope that I will be able to come back to him with some progress soon.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Over the past six months, 35 motor vehicle thefts and a rise in moped-related crime have been reported in Penge. Yesterday, it was reported that an acid attack occurred in broad daylight. Many of my constituents are becoming increasingly concerned. What exactly is the Department doing to combat such crimes?

[Amber Rudd]

I share the hon. Lady’s concerns. We take this matter seriously and we must address it, particularly because such crimes tend to evolve and can hold a fashionable attraction for different communities. That is why we are having this review. That is why we are bringing together the different parties, and I urge her to engage with the process.