Bovine TB: Compensation

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Derek Thomas

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas]

I agree, and I welcome that intervention. I believe that the Government pay the value of the meat as if it was to go into the food chain. My hon. Friend is right, and I know farmers in my constituency and elsewhere in Cornwall who have lost prize herds through bovine TB. It is a really tricky issue.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) is right. In my constituency, the assessment for compensation can be wholly inadequate. For example, the economic losses to dairy farms, in the case of lost milk yield, can be further impacted by financial penalties imposed by dairies through breaches of contract when farmers are not able to meet forecasted milk yields because herds have had to be put down.

[Derek Thomas]

I welcome that intervention. Both interventions are important. The previous Secretary of State requested a review of the compensation scheme and the eradication strategy. As far as I understand the situation, it has reported back, and we are waiting to hear from the current Secretary of State about what the implications might be.

The National Farmers Union and other representative groups have argued for clarity, for the process to be accelerated, for better communication and for fairness. I am just arguing for fairness. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Fay Jones) said, there is a commitment to deliver wildlife and a farming community free of bovine TB. That is absolutely the prize to reach. Today, we are discussing the compensation scheme, which is relevant to all my farmers, including those with dairy herds.

This is where it gets a bit tricky. I recognise that the change to a bovine TB compensation scheme requires legislative change. I understand why the Government might have other things on their plate than revisiting that piece of legislation. I also know that in 2018 the Secretary of State ordered a review of the strategy for eradicating bovine TB in England. I understand that the compensation scheme is included in the review report, and I would like the Minister to indicate when the Secretary of State expects to issue her response to the review.

On the wider issue of the compensation scheme for bovine TB, which my hon. Friends raised in their welcome interventions, it would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity to ask the Minister whether, as part of his deliberations, he will consider what they said and look at improving the communication between Government bodies and the farming business. There is definitely a breakdown between DEFRA and the farming community, whether it is about surveillance testing, a TB breakdown or the details regarding when compensation will or will not be paid. Providing timely guidance gives clarity to farming businesses and instils confidence at a local level, within a complete bovine TB eradication strategy, helping to build a stronger partnership approach between the farmer and the Government or Government agency.

I know the Minister well: he knows how important it is that we continue to work closely with the farming community and landowners to ensure we can continue to drive down the incidence of bovine TB. One way would be to issue more details about the methodology involved in calculating the compensation values. We have heard about the loss of a prize herd. The compensation values would be beneficial in how they were calculated and would allow transparency in the current processes.

I mention again in closing my friendly butcher in Saint Just. It is my profound belief that compensation should also be paid to farmers when a TB reactor is identified by a vet at the abattoir. The whole process of a steer going to an abattoir to be slaughtered and then the entire carcase being lost because of Government legislation, which we support and agree with, must challenge the Government and the Minister to consider what compensation there should be, so that the difficulty that my local abattoir faced is avoided.

I hope that DEFRA does not oppose a change to the legislation. Unless a change in the compensation scheme is secured, it remains possible that Mr Olds and abattoirs large and small—especially, as we have heard, in badly affected bovine TB areas—could be affected by similar cases in the future. I know the Minister has been listening and is keen to get this right; it is a difficult and challenging issue that requires a change in legislation.

I really hope that, after more than a year of battling to resolve this particular abattoir’s issue, which is not isolated—6% of carcases are removed after slaughter because of an indication of bovine TB—there is an opportunity now to look at the matter again and simply change the compensation scheme so that farmers are compensated, at the request of the Secretary of State, when they lose animals. That is perfectly fair and reasonable, and I am delighted that the Minister is here to give us his response.

Prisoners: Parental Rights

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Derek Thomas

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for securing this important debate. I found her contribution and the other speeches interesting and profound, and I have learned a great deal.

I could have left the role of prisons and what goes on there for other colleagues to debate. I represent St Ives and the Isles of Scilly, and there are no prisons nearby and crime is relatively low. I can count on one hand the people I have met who have had contact with prisons, and only two of them, as far as I could see, should ever have ended up there. There are therefore plenty far more pressing concerns that could legitimately occupy my time. However, within each person is a heartbeat, and I believe that we have a responsibility to work to create an environment and opportunity that allows everyone to play their full part in society. On that basis, how we treat and manage prisoners is important and can lead either to full lives and safer communities, or to broken lives and chaos.

For me this is about the purpose of prisons. Prison is a method of keeping communities safe for the time that the prisoner is inside, but it is also a place where lives can be reset and people can be rehabilitated. It is right to take someone who is judged to be a risk to society out of that community, but I believe that from the day a prisoner arrives in prison, work must be done to prepare for their release.

Other than keeping an individual away from a life of crime, prison achieves little if nothing is done to address their behaviour when he or she is released. Families play an important part in that process and I want to spend a few moments considering the need to enable prisoners to fulfil their parental responsibilities, which I believe could, and should, be a focus for reform. Bringing men in particular face to face with their enduring responsibilities to the family is indispensable to the rehabilitation culture that we urgently need to develop in our penal system, and that must be integral to the changes sought. Consistently good family work can help to equip a father to play his role in the home, and that will pay dividends once the sentence is served.

The inspirational prison reformer Elizabeth Fry—she has also been mentioned by the Justice Secretary—called for arrangements by which prisons

“may be rendered schools of industry and virtue.”

The best family work taking place in prisons has brought men face to face with their enduring responsibilities to the family left in the community, particularly their wives, partners and children, but also their parents, siblings and grandparents. It helps them to forge a new identity for themselves—an important precursor to desistance from crime—based on being a good role model for their children, a caring husband, partner and friend, and a reliable provider through legal employment. Some men are already alive to those responsibilities when they go to prison, but they mistakenly think that using the proceeds of crime is the best way to fulfil them. If prison is to have any role in rehabilitation, work must be done to harness the virtue but adjust the means.

Responsibilities are not discharged in a vacuum. Families need to be willing and able to engage with the rehabilitation process, and harnessing the resource of good family relationships must be a golden thread that runs through processes in all prisons—my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) also made that point. Prisoners’ responsibilities to their families should be seen as an important lever for change, and families are often significant assets for offender management during and at the end of sentences. Prison staff find that their responsibilities and efforts are aided when good family contact and engagement is nurtured and maintained. Unfortunately, however, experience has shown that sentence planning by the offender management team rarely takes into account the understanding and knowledge that family members have about a prisoner. There are exceptions such as HMP Forest Bank and those Scottish prisons that involve a prisoner’s family in release planning, but it is uncommon.

In Scotland, the integrated case management case conference provides a mechanism for involving a prisoner’s family in release planning. An ICM case conference is a meeting held at set intervals during a prisoner’s sentence, between the ICM case co-ordinator, prison and community-based social work, and the prisoner. The prisoner may invite his family to those meetings if he wishes. The ICM case conference provides an important opportunity to prepare and advise families about the issues arising on a prisoner’s release, thereby supporting them in their own right as well as preventing reoffending.

At one men’s prison in Louisiana USA, families are involved as soon as the individual arrives in prison. The director of re-entry invites a family member or someone close to the prisoner to the prison for an informal meeting, allowing the director to learn about the prisoner’s background and how he can be best supported. There are further examples of where families are integral to the penal system. For example, in HMP Winchester, staff from the charity Spurgeons carry out first-night screening, which includes detailed questions about a father’s responsibilities. That also gives them an opportunity to hand out dad packs, where appropriate, which include top tips on how to be a father inside prison. That is an early way of grounding someone in their family responsibilities at the start of their sentence, when it is easy for them to turn in on themselves.

A new personal officer model is being trialled in 10 pathfinder establishments. That could be used to carry out a more ongoing form of assessment. Those officers will have daily contact with the prisoners, and be aware of how their family relationships are faring. I researched the role of the personal officer. The article I read stated:

“During your first few days in prison you will be allocated a Personal Officer. This is a prison officer who has been assigned to act as your point of contact while within prison, and is the officer who is expected to provide a ‘reference’ for you whenever you apply for jobs, change of status from Basic to Enhanced etc. The duties of this officer are not very much, but a good officer will come and speak to you and ask if you have any issues they can help with, a poor officer will introduce themselves once and then may favour you with a grunt as you pass on the landing.”

It seems to me that a personal officer model could and should be extended to include a family liaison aspect, which could make the role much more rewarding and productive.

[Fiona Bruce]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, particularly given the examples of best practice that we have heard today, there is a need for that to be drawn together, from across the country, so that it can be shared more effectively among different prisons?

[Derek Thomas]

That is right, and I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention because it helps to support the point I want to make in concluding. As I said earlier, everyone has a heartbeat and we need to do what we can to support prisoners, their families and the wider community. The gold standard would be to ensure that, whatever their sentence and wherever they were sent, they will receive equal support and access.

There is a further matter to consider if we are serious about parental rights and parental responsibility. My constituency covers west Cornwall and Scilly, and a prisoner from Cornwall can be sent a very long way from home. If someone is sentenced to prison, the prison should be as close to their home as possible, wherever they live in the UK. Addressing the parental responsibilities of a prisoner is a significant part of the journey to a reformed life and a safer society. Therefore, where the prisoner is held in relation to their family home is an important consideration.

Marriage Week

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Derek Thomas

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) for securing this debate on a subject that is too infrequently spoken of in this place but that is important to the people we serve. Some 80% of young people aspire to marry, because they recognise the benefits of marriage for the parties, for any children they may have and for wider society. As my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said, marriage promotes stability in relationships. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate that it is therefore a matter of social justice that the Government support marriage, particularly because it is the least well off who have the least resilience to cope with the consequences of relationship breakdown.

There are many benefits of marriage. The health benefits are powerful for women and men. Marriage is associated with a significant reduction in depression and marital status affects the progress of Alzheimer’s disease in later life—singles have twice the risk of developing it. Married people are more likely to survive cancer, and they have a lower risk of suicide. The longevity effect of marriage can even offset the consequences of smoking.

We are all rightly concerned about the cost and scarcity of social care, but the social care burden is significantly greater if elderly people are not being looked after by their spouse. Those living with a spouse are least likely to go into an institution after the age of 60. A European study of 20,000 older people found that men and women living with a spouse were more likely to be satisfied with life. Older people living with a spouse are also the most healthy group.

Obviously, many people in couples find themselves alone in later life, and single people may find themselves bringing up children. As we have said many times when discussing this issue, there is no condemnation of any individual when we speak about marriage. We know and recognise that single parents work valiantly and often very successfully to bring up children, but statistics show that marriage is good for people and for their children. Studies consistently indicate that children raised by two happily and continuously married parents have the best chance of developing into competent and successful adults. During early parenthood, the single biggest predictor of stability—even when controlling for age, income, education, benefits and ethnic group—is whether the parents are married. That challenges the assumption that factors other than marriage—so-called selection effects —are at play. As we have heard, 93% of all couples that are still intact by the time their child is 15 are married. Indeed, 9% of married parents split before their child’s fifth birthday, but 35% of unmarried parents split.

There is a huge level of interest at the moment in young people’s wellbeing and mental health, but family structure is very rarely considered to be the important factor it is. I am patron of a children’s mental health wellbeing charity in my constituency; the chief executive has told me that it is having to care for children at a younger and younger age, and in nearly every case family relationship difficulties are one of the chief causes of their mental health problems.

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is right to mention the benefits of raising children in a stable family home. Does she agree that the Government have a real opportunity and responsibility to promote marriage because of what it is and what it does for children?

[Fiona Bruce]

Absolutely, particularly with respect to mental health. Teenage boys who live with continuously married parents have the highest self-esteem among teenagers, while teenage girls who live with continuously cohabiting parents have the lowest. I could cite a plethora of other research and statistics, but I am out of time. Marriage is indispensable to a flourishing society. We need to stop fighting that fact and start supporting it.