The Coroner Service

Debate between George Howarth and Maria Eagle

Thursday 28th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. As a fellow Merseyside MP, I know you have long-standing experience of some of what I will discuss, particularly the first inquests into the Hillsborough disaster. I think you are the only person present who actually attended one of the many inquests at the time, so you know better than anybody how catastrophically wrong they went.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who is the Chair of the Justice Committee, on the way he introduced this important debate. I welcome the Minister to his post. Immediately after we produced the report, all the Ministers were cleared out in the reshuffle of the Ministry of Justice. It is not something that is ever helpful for getting continuity of effort and speed of response but it is not the Minister’s fault that he has only just come into his role and I wish him well. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said he is a can-do Minister, and I hope he is a will-do Minister too.

The report into the coroner service is not only knowledgeable and good—I am bound to think that, given that I am a member of the Justice Committee, which produced it. It also identifies issues that have come to light not just over the last couple of years but, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, over a couple of decades in some cases. I was the courts Minister in the MOJ for a period of time, back when Jack Straw was the Lord Chancellor in the late 2000s, as well as being the prisons Minister thereafter. I was also one of the Ministers who took the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 through the Commons, although I was not the lead Minister. Bridget Prentice did the policy development, but I did some of the work in respect of the Bill.

I recall the debates about whether we should have a national coroner service. It is always a question of cost, but somebody will have to grasp the nettle and deal with this issue at some point. As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, it is anomalous that it is still a local service. No matter the value of a local service, the consequence of having a local service is that people get a postcode lottery, which is not acceptable for the delivery of basic elements of our justice system. That is something for the Minister to grapple with in due course.

Perhaps my most important qualification for wanting to speak in today’s debate is as a constituency MP from a Liverpool constituency. I have been the MP there for almost 25 years, and I have a long-standing involvement with many of the bereaved families and survivors affected by the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. I have seen the horrendous experience of our justice system that they, as wholly innocent bereaved and traumatised people, have had to endure, partly because of the appalling failings of the first coroner’s inquest, which took place in 1990. That was not only the fault of the coroner who handled it at the time; in part, it was a consequence of the behaviour of public authorities, particularly the South Yorkshire police.

I am very much in favour of putting bereaved people at the heart of the coroner service, and it is not only about Hillsborough. I have had dealings with other families who have been caught up in other disasters, such as the sinking of the MV Derbyshire, although that did not involve the coroners. It happened at sea, so that involved a wreck commission. It was long before my time as an MP, but the ongoing trauma felt by bereaved families was still there when I became the MP for what was then Liverpool Garston.

There was also the Alder Hey organs scandal. Scandals and disasters happen every few years, and they can lead to decades of trauma for families.

I have had constituents who have had to deal with coroners’ inquests at the worst time in their lives—after they have lost a loved one, often in traumatic, unexplained or contentious circumstances. They have had to face a public authority that is being defensive, that is lawyered up to the eyeballs and that seemingly has an unlimited budget to spend on avoiding the blame and minimising its responsibility. That is how it often seems to bereaved relatives, who are going along as interested parties—the same status as the public authority before the court—simply to find out the truth of what happened to their loved one and to have a measure of justice done, so that they get the right verdict according to the facts. That is what families who go to inquests want, whether they are a member of a group of bereaved people who have lost their loved ones in awful circumstances or a single family who have lost a loved one and the coroner needs to be involved.

I want to say a little about the experience of families caught up in public disasters. In the case of Hillsborough, the interim report of the Taylor inquiry into the cause of the disaster—remember, this was filmed; it was on TV live, and people saw what happened—reported within four months of the 1989 event. Although time has proven it was wrong in some respects, most notably on the emergency services’ response, it has been proven entirely correct—remarkably so, given that police were changing statements to try to affect the way in which the inquiry apportioned blame—in finding that the main cause of the disaster was a failure of police control. That report was done within four months. It was quite clear at that stage what had gone wrong, yet South Yorkshire police did not like that finding and refused to take responsibility, as Taylor had said in his conclusions that they should. Instead, they used the inquests to give a very different impression, which set the tone that persisted for three decades—three decades of hurt and pain caused to the families and survivors.

There were procedural issues at the time of the first inquests. The inquests were difficult to handle and took more than a year. At that time, they were the longest inquests that had ever taken place in British legal history. The way in which the coroner chose to handle them did not work. The police exploited the way in which he chose to handle them to have evidence put that supported their story. Every individual who died had their blood alcohol levels taken, even though a third of them were children—the youngest was 10. The coroner allowed that.

So the impression was given, during the inquests, that the police story, which Taylor had refuted—that it was not the police’s fault but that of the victims and the Liverpool fans—was perpetuated, ingrained into the public imagination and reported in the newspapers every day for a year. Funnily enough, 30 years later some people still think that is what happened at Hillsborough. It was the coroner’s inquests being inappropriately conducted that led to that hurtful and difficult outcome—a year of propaganda leading to the wrong verdicts.

It took Hillsborough families until April 2016 to get the new, correct inquest verdicts of unlawful killing—a full 27 years after the events. The second inquests were not as terrible as the first. For example, the pen portraits introduced at the beginning of those inquests, which enabled families to say something about the deceased, are a wholly welcome innovation, which I know has been taken up in other proceedings. That is good. But imagine, 25 years after the events, family members having to sit and listen for two years—that is how long it took—to the same old lies being told in court by those who were still being defensive, despite the intervening years and the vast amount of evidence. It was deeply traumatic for those families and very difficult for them to cope with. Many felt they had to go every day and listen. Twenty-five years later, they had to go every day and listen, and it took two years—pretty tough.

Being an interested party at the inquest gives the bereaved family no greater locus than that of those who may be at fault for the death or who, by natural omission, failed to prevent a death, even though bereaved families have lost far more. Often, the public authority is simply using lawyers to seek to avoid blame or to protect its reputation above all other considerations. To avoid liability or cost is sometimes the main aim of the public authority that behaves in that way. It does not necessarily think about the consequences for the family.

That was certainly the case with Hillsborough, although I think there was also an institutional unwillingness by South Yorkshire police to accept any criticism or blame for the Hillsborough disaster. Even though—or perhaps because—Taylor had found them to be at fault, they were intent on proving that they were not, blaming someone else. The lack of consequences and the impunity for those responsible for that approach meant that South Yorkshire police were able to continue with it for decades. Right up to the second inquest, they were still advancing the same case, which had repeatedly been shown to be nonsense, to the deep hurt and pain of the families. Had the chief constable been dismissed after Hillsborough, after Taylor, a lot of what happened might have been avoided: a lot of that institutional impunity and appalling behaviour, and 30 years of extremely expensive legal actions, might have been avoided.

I met the families after I was elected. I had known some of them before, in my capacity as a junior lawyer in Liverpool at the time. They told me that the inquest had overturned Taylor—that the inquest verdicts had overturned the result of the public inquiry. As a lawyer, I said, “Oh no, they do different things,” but actually the families were right, because that is what the police set about doing and did—that was the consequence.

Not until September 2012 and the report of the Hillsborough independent panel, which was a non-legal procedure, was the truth finally known and accepted by the vast majority of people in public life in this country. Before that, politicians and other people frequently said that Hillsborough was about hooliganism. It certainly was not, but that was the impression left by the first inquests. That is what can go wrong if things are allowed to go wrong.

Although the public authorities and the bereaved families in essence had the same status—that of interested parties—at that time and still do, the fact is that the police had far, far more resources at their disposal. They seemed able to use unlimited amounts of their public funding to pursue those arguments about who was really at fault and how it was not really them. Only when the second inquest came along did the families have exceptional case funding, which I am sure ended up being extremely expensive, but they were at last able to have equality of arms.

Equality of arms between interested parties in contentious and adversarial proceedings, whether for individuals or in a disaster such as Hillsborough, is essential to establishing and getting justice and the right verdicts, and to persuading families that yes, they have been party to a proper proceeding. Bishop James Jones, in his 2017 report on the lessons of Hillsborough, recommended what he described as the “proper participation” of bereaved families at inquests. That is vital.

The bishop’s specific recommendations are similar to some of those in our report. He recommended:

“Publicly funded legal representation for bereaved families at inquests at which public bodies are legally represented”—

not all inquests, but those where public bodies are represented. He recommended:

“An end to public bodies spending limitless sums providing themselves with representation which surpasses that available to families”,

and which does not have the same tests applied to it. He recommended:

“A change to the way in which public bodies approach inquests, so that they treat them not as a reputational threat, but as an opportunity to learn and as part of their obligations to those who have died and to their family.”

That is a fundamental shift in attitude, if it can be encouraged. He also recommended:

“Changes to inquest procedures and to the training of coroners, so that bereaved families are truly placed at the centre of the process.”

One still hears examples of appalling insensitivity, if I can put it that way, by coroners. I am not saying all by any means. Some coroners are excellent at involving and engaging families properly, but not all are.

Our report proposes an automatic entitlement to non-means-tested legal representation for bereaved people at inquests into mass fatalities. That is tremendously important, but we also recommend more broadly that the MOJ should by 1 October—that deadline has passed, Minister—

“for all inquests where public authorities are legally represented, make sure that non-means tested legal aid or other public funding for legal representation is also available for the people that have been bereaved.”

I know that the Government responded to that recommendation, albeit not particularly positively. Bishop James also proposed a statutory duty of candour for police officers; our report proposes it for the coroner service, and for the Government to consider whether that should be extended to all public bodies.

There should be an equality of arms: legal aid or some kind of funding support for families in these circumstances, along with a more extensively applied statutory duty of candour. Together, those two things are a substantial part of the Hillsborough law, the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, which Andy Burnham proposed before he left the House and of which I was co-sponsor at the time. I believe that those measures, along with the Public Advocate Bill, which was prepared by Lord Michael Wills and me, and which I have again introduced in the Commons in this Session, would go a long way towards preventing what happened to the Hillsborough families from ever happening again to families of those bereaved in public disasters.

There have been public disasters since Hillsborough, and unfortunately there will probably be more over time. One thinks of Grenfell, and one can already see things going wrong with that. The families are not satisfied with the way that the inquiry is enabling them to represent their views, and one suspects that that disaster has a long way to run before getting to the end of all the legal proceedings that are likely to happen as a consequence of that terrible disaster. The proposals made by Bishop James and in my Public Advocate Bill are not just a relic of some past disaster that would have made a difference; they will, if enacted, make a difference in future to families in that terrible situation.

It has taken the Hillsborough families 32 years to get to the position they are now in, where there is general acceptance—the truth has been officially acknowledged. They have had a measure of justice, in respect of the second inquest’s verdicts of unlawful killing; they have not had accountability for those who caused the disaster, and who over all these decades have sought to blame those who died and the footballs fans in the ground that day, rather than themselves. The Hillsborough families have not had accountability, and if we were to talk to them, they would not say that they are totally satisfied with the outcome, even after 32 years, because nobody has been held to account for what was done—the unlawful killing of 97 people. That cannot be a good day for justice in this country, if that is the outcome after all these years.

In what I would say was a somewhat disappointing response to our report—I think the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst was harsher—the Government have effectively played for time. I take the view that if they are playing for time, they have not completely said no to all the recommendations that they have played for time on. This is where the Minister comes in. This is where he can be a can-do Minister—a will-do Minister. The Government have accepted only six of our 25 recommendations.

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that another speaker has to be brought in, and I will call the Front Benchers at 2.38 pm. Will she take that into account?

[Maria Eagle]

I will—apologies, Sir George. I will make sure that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has time.

I hope that the Minister will consider Bishop James’s report and our proposals, and come forward with a much more positive set of responses to the issues raised. In view of the time, I will not say what I wanted to about the prevention of future deaths, but more needs to be done on that. If more is done, lessons can be learned to prevent future deaths instead of the same thing happening time and again, with different coroners sending letters saying the same thing to the Government, who then do nothing about it for many years.

Fur Trade

Debate between George Howarth and Maria Eagle

Monday 4th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Maria Eagle]

I agree with my hon. Friend; I do not think that it is possible to hunt humanely with those kinds of traps. Indeed, they have been banned in this country for decades longer than fur farming has been banned. We should not allow that kind of trade into this country.

This is not a party political debate. I hope that the Minister realises that there is widespread support across parties—as there always has been, and as there was at the time of my Bill—for banning this inhumane and appalling way of treating animals. It is not a party political issue, but perhaps the Minister would like to talk to some of his colleagues, particularly in the Lords, who appear not to have fully understood the nature of the ban introduced in 2000. When the Select Committee took oral evidence from Lord Henley, he said:

“I have no desire to close things down. I am not in the business of banning things.”

Lord Gardiner said he was

“committed to improving the welfare standards of animals across the world.”

Lord Gardiner ought to know that that cannot be done with fur farming; there are no welfare standards that are acceptable. He said that animals

“for whatever purpose are reared and then killed in a humane manner”

and that the fur industry needs

“to be thinking about how we produce fur in a more humane manner…fur farming, if it is to have a future, needs to be concentrating on humane and sustainable farming and trapping.”

The Minister needs to go back to his Department and have a seminar with his colleagues in the Lords about how impossible it is to do the things they seem to think are possible. If they represent the Government’s attitude to the issue, we are not going to see any progress. It is not possible—I cannot stress this enough—for fur farming to be done humanely. It has to be banned. After all this time, as the first nation in the world to ban fur farming, we can take a leadership position around the world, but we will only do so if Ministers in the Department understand that it is not possible to do this farming better.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. The core of her argument—I agree with it—is that the ban can be done. Does she agree that it is within the scope of the Government and the Minister to change the practice of importing fur in a way that would please not only those of us taking part in the debate, but the majority of our constituents?

[Maria Eagle]

I think it is possible. It was certainly possible for us to ban fur farming in this country even though we were a full member of the EU at the time and were not talking about leaving. Leading by example is a very good thing. We have done it before: following our ban of fur farming—we were the first country in the world to do so—there have been full bans across many European countries, inside and outside the EU. Austria, the Netherlands, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia and, most recently, the Czech Republic have banned fur farming. I gave a seminar to Czech parliamentarians ahead of them considering their legislation, and I heard the same arguments from their fur trade people that I heard 20 years ago from the then remnant of our fur industry. There are partial bans in Belgium, Denmark and Hungary. The Germans have just increased their regulations to require all farmed mink to have water to swim in. I doubt that will do much for the viability of mink farming in Germany—in fact, I think it will make it completely unviable.

Progress is being made, but it is too slow. Given the statistics about the level of the trade and the fact that it has not died out, as we might have hoped 20 years ago, now is the time for us to take that next step. I do not agree for a minute that it matters whether we are inside or outside the EU; we can do it either way. We do not have to ask anybody; we can do it ourselves, and parliamentarians should do it. I think we will, and I hope that in considering the matter the Minister will take a view that his colleagues in the Lords did not sufficiently understand the nature of the trade to properly set out the Government’s position to the Select Committee.

I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to express that the Government, of which he is a member, will take forward the banning of this trade, because it is time. It is something that our constituents want. Over decades they have shown a very high level of support for banning the trade and for looking after animals properly. The idea that we can have 135 million animals killed for their fur every year, having put up with the most appalling suffering, is unconscionable. We need to act. We need to lead the world again. The Minister is in a position to do it, and I hope that he will. Perhaps he will tell us so today.

[Philip Davies in the Chair]

Education Funding (South Liverpool)

Debate between George Howarth and Maria Eagle

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Maria Eagle]

I will indeed—and I think my hon. Friend has himself just pushed the Minister for a response. I am sure the Minister will want to make some points in reply and set out his understanding of the impact of the national funding formula, which seems not to advantage schools in our area as much as I would like.

Liverpool City Council told me that, according to its calculations, the Garston and Halewood constituency will lose £390 per pupil—a cut of more than £4.5 million between 2015 and 2020—which is not dissimilar to what my hon. Friend said is happening in his area. That is the equivalent of a cut of 125 teaching jobs. The local authority told me that across Liverpool as a whole the loss is £487 per pupil, or a 9% cut overall, and a cut of almost £28.5 million between 2015 and 2020, equivalent to 778 teaching jobs.

The Minister may well say that the revisions that were made to the national funding formula in July and September, with the finding of savings from his Department and the raiding of various capital budgets for £1.3 billion, will make a difference to that, but many of the schools in my constituency have reported to me that they have or are planning to cut teaching and support staff posts. One headteacher of a local primary school, which the Minister’s letter tells me will see an increase of 0.9%, told me that

“the current staffing levels are unsustainable due to the differentials between school income and school expenditure on staff… The Governors are currently planning a staffing review to identify how we can reduce staffing costs by making teachers and teaching assistants redundant. We need to lose three teachers by 2019 if we are to manage our school budget without going into deficit. This will mean we will not have a qualified teacher in each class, which by law we must have. We are looking ahead at troubled times in schools.”

That is not the only school to have told me it is planning staffing reductions. One school, which has already seen a significant cut in teaching and support staff and a narrowing of the breadth of its curriculum as a result, is now contemplating further reductions to the curriculum, to pastoral staffing and to the length of the school day and the school week.

Some of my schools have been hit particularly hard, according to Liverpool City Council figures. Springwood Heath Primary School in Allerton is a unique school. It is a mainstream primary with enhanced provision places, which integrates children with significant physical and medical needs into its community. The city council projects that it will lose more than £719 per pupil—a 14% cut. Although that may be ameliorated by the changes to the national funding formula, which the Minister will no doubt tell us about later, it is already losing teachers and support staff, and to lose support staff at Springwood Heath is to put at risk the ability of some pupils to continue to attend because they depend on those support staff, who enable them to attend that mainstream school. That would be a particular concern to me. It might be said, “Well, so you lose a few support staff,” but if those staff are ensuring that severely disabled children can attend a mainstream school, that is more than simply losing support staff; it is losing a richness and quality of education that no other school offers. If the Minister comes to Liverpool, which I invite him to do, I hope he visits Springwood Heath Primary School. Then he could tell me whether in his experience there is another school like it. I am not sure that there is.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

A few moments ago my hon. Friend made the point that the evidence is that the funding formula adjustments announced in the summer have not really resolved the problems in south Liverpool. As she is aware, my information is that all bar three of the schools in Knowsley—so this affects her constituency as well—will have either no change or further reduction to their funding. The sort of situations that she described in that one important school will then be played out across Knowsley, to the detriment of the education of the children concerned.

[Maria Eagle]

My right hon. Friend is correct. He and I, as representatives of the borough, know that there is an issue of attainment in Knowsley schools. It is a long-standing one, which we continue to try to tackle, as Governments of all stripes have tried to do. It is certainly not ameliorated and improved by taking money away from schools. That will just deepen and worsen the attainment gap that is already there. If that were to happen, it would be a very great worry.

Liverpool City Council figures also tell me that Stockton Wood Primary School in Speke, one of the most deprived wards in the country, will lose £659 per pupil, which is a 13% cut; Garston Church of England Primary School will lose £616 per pupil, a 12% cut; and Childwall Valley Primary School, in Belle Vale, will lose 12% or £671 per pupil.

Lest the Minister believe that only schools in the most deprived wards are being hit, I can tell him that St Julie’s Catholic High School in Woolton is facing a £555 per pupil cut, which is a 10% cut, and St Francis Xavier’s College—the school that first contacted me to express worries and about which I wrote to his Department in February—is facing a cut of £508 per pupil, or 10%. Given that the school told me at the time that its financial situation was unsustainable and that it has made 13 staff redundant, with a further six posts unfilled, I wonder what the Minister thinks will be the impact on it of the revision to the national funding formula. The revised figures from the National Education Union suggest that SFX will still lose 5% per pupil. His letter tells me that the school will have an increase, but since the new figures were produced no one has told me—certainly not the headteacher, to whom I have spoken—that it will be able to avoid painful decisions about what to do in respect of its provision.

I note that the Minister sent me a letter—as I am sure he did to many other Members—dated 14 September about the impact of his revisions to the national funding formula on schools in my constituency. For the life of me, I cannot work out how he has come to the conclusion that he came to, which is that every school on the list will have an increase in its funding. The Minister’s letter refers to “illustrative figures”, stressing that they are “not actual allocations”, which might provide some clue as to what is going on. There is also an assumption that the new formula is being implemented in full this financial year, without any transition. The baseline figure is from a year subsequent to the one in which the £2.7 billion cuts were implemented, so it is not clear how realistic the figures produced are. All that sounds like a way of saying that the table the Minister has produced contains fantasy figures that bear no relation to what is happening, and that those figures are all mysteriously going up, even though schools and headteachers still tell me that they are facing budget shortfalls that necessitate their cutting teachers and having to consider other painful decisions in order to balance their budgets.

The National Education Union has revised its own list of the impact of the new funding formula to take into account the extra, recycled £1.3 billion of Department for Education money that the Secretary of State announced in July she had found and expanded upon in her statement in September. The NEU figures at least have the merit of setting out their methodology in full: based on the core schools budget, which represents 75% of school spending, and using block funding allocations for 2015-16 as the baseline, the NEU figures compare the 2019-20 amounts for schools in the Government’s NFF document, apply the Office for Budget Responsibility estimate for inflation, and take pupil numbers from the most up-to-date school census. On that basis, 29 of the 31 schools in my constituency lose out, some seeing a cut of up to 12% and many of those with the highest number of pupils receiving free school meals losing the most.

To my mind, that is one of the most pernicious effects of the Government’s new way of funding schools. How can it be right that Middlefield Community Primary School, where 68% of pupils are entitled to free school meals, is set to lose £558 per pupil, a cut of 10%, and that even Enterprise South Liverpool Academy, where 81% of pupils are entitled to free school meals, is losing £61 per pupil, a cut of 1%? I do not call that fair funding; I call that hitting the most deprived communities the hardest.

Providing a good and rounded education for all citizens is one of our society’s greatest benefits and achievements. It also has the merit of being a great leveller, enabling people to make their way in life, to succeed and to make the most effective contribution they possibly can to our society, no matter what the circumstances of their birth. I want all my constituents to be able to benefit from an excellent education. That must start, however, by enabling those born with disadvantages to overcome them and to flourish.

In many of the schools I visit in my constituency, I see teachers and staff striving to deliver those life chances to children and young people who face significant barriers to learning. However, I increasingly see disadvantage being reinforced rather than eliminated. That is being exacerbated by the policies being implemented by this Government. In the Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council area no academic A-level provision is now available—none. That has happened because of funding arrangements that effectively require the same density of pupils who want to study academic A-levels in the most deprived areas as in the most affluent, when in reality there are likely to be fewer, at least until the attainment gap is closed, which in practice has proven stubbornly difficult to achieve.

Last year the last sixth form providing academic A-levels in the borough—Halewood Academy in my constituency—was closed because the school could not attract enough pupils to make it pay at a time when the forced academisation of the school meant that it had to balance its budget. I do not blame the headteacher or the governors for what happened, and I am glad that the academic achievements of the school improved this year—including, ironically, at A-level—but it is not right to make it harder for pupils from deprived areas to get easy access, in their local communities, to the opportunities that studying A-level subjects provide.

The barriers to success are already formidable, without making pupils travel out of area when they are less able to do so because of their families’ financial circumstances. In addition, I do not think it right that multi-academy trusts, all based and run from outside Knowsley MBC’s area, should be able in effect to choose which local pupils they wish to offer opportunities to with no accountability to local communities.

[Mr Howarth]

My hon. Friend is generous in giving way again. She, my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) and I have been pressing the Government to provide support for sixth-form A-level provision in the borough. Does she agree that if we do not get that, the effect on other secondary schools will also be detrimental?

[Maria Eagle]

I believe it will be—my right hon. Friend is correct. That is essential. I hope that we can make a difference and that the Government will come through to help us get academic A-level provision back in the borough, because if that does not happen, in due course—this will not take long—young families will not locate themselves in Knowsley. They will not think it is a place to bring up their kids unless there is a good chance of their staying in a school all the way through to do their A-levels and to go on to university from there.

Where is the accountability to local parents and communities in the existing arrangement? Knowsley no longer has any community secondary schools and all the academies are controlled by different MATs, all based outside the borough. The local council still has the obligation to provide for education in its area, but it has no levers whatever to pull to affect the provision, except for persuasion. The multi-academy trusts are all controlled elsewhere and will make decisions based on factors that may or may not matter to Knowsley communities but will certainly relate to the financial circumstances of their own organisations. In addition, when the council controlled schools, local people could vote out their councillors if they did not like developments. Now, there is no way for them to affect provision. The MATs have no accountability to the communities whose future they influence so greatly.

I worry that the school provision and funding structure developed by the Government can soon go wrong in areas where there is an attainment issue and can be hard to put right. I worry that provision is now being determined by financial considerations above all else. Communities such as those in my constituency need greater local provision to enable everyone to reach their potential, but that provision is in retreat. I worry that the phenomenon of the loss of sixth forms and academic A-level provision in Knowsley could continue to spread, and that young people soon will have less chance to go down that route if they do not live in a more affluent area that can easily meet the increasingly high numbers of pupils needed to provide academic A-levels.

I would like the Minister to assure me that he is aware of those problems and is determined to reverse those trends, so that young people from the communities of south Liverpool have no fewer chances to reach their potential than those who come from more advantaged areas. If he cannot do so, our education system will have lost one of its great features: the ability to facilitate social mobility and life chances for those whose family circumstances may not give them such opportunities. We will all be poorer for that.

Social Care (Liverpool)

Debate between George Howarth and Maria Eagle

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) on obtaining this crucial and timely debate. She set out in full and with great clarity the situation facing Liverpool and other local authorities in the city region, as the council seeks to set a lawful budget while desperately trying to keep going the public services on which so many of our constituents depend. She set out in great detail and with pertinent facts and figures many of the things that I was going to say about Liverpool. I endorse her speech fully—it was excellent.

Liverpool has had £420 million cut from the city budget since the Lib Dem-Tory coalition imposed cuts in 2010. There has also been the never-ending slashing of public services provision by this Government and their predecessor, and another £90 million has to be found. To illustrate that, Liverpool raised £147 million in council tax in the last financial year, but it spent £151 million on adult social care. I will emphasise that: Liverpool is having to spend more on adult social care alone than it can raise in council tax.

My hon. Friend set out some of the other concerns and problems. The demand for social care assessments is rising. Despite the cuts she described to the money that can be spent on adult social care, the demand for help of those depleted services from our citizens and constituents has increased by 15%. The demand for social care assessments in Liverpool has gone up from 18,000 a year in 2020 to 21,000 a year now. As she set out, Liverpool supports 9,000 people annually to some degree with a care package at home. That is fewer than half of the people who have asked to be assessed, so it is clear that only those with the highest needs get help, and they may well not get a level of support from which they benefit and which might keep them out of more acute services for longer with a better quality of life.

Liverpool City Council announced in its budget proposal that it intends to increase council tax. It will of course do so reluctantly, because many of our fellow citizens will find it difficult to afford an increase, but that course of action must be taken. I say in all sincerity to the Minister that it is not credible to claim that the shortfall that results from resources being cut by 70% can be made up by efficiency savings. I could not lose 70% of my resources and make up the difference in efficiency savings.

My constituency of Garston and Halewood also covers part of the Knowsley metropolitan borough, which is a smaller authority but, thanks to this Government and the Lib Dem-Tory coalition Government that preceded it, it faces financial challenges that are just as severe. Its revenue is currently £148 million. It has had to make cuts of £86 million since 2010 and will have to find a further £17 million over the next three years. That is a total loss for a small authority of more than £100 million. Both Liverpool and Knowsley are among the top five hardest hit local authorities. Knowsley’s income will have gone down by 56% by the end of this process.

Knowsley raised £43.2 million in council tax in the last financial year, yet it spent £47.1 million on adult social care alone. Are we seeing a pattern here? Just like Liverpool, Knowsley had to spend more on adult social care alone than it was able to raise in council tax this year. The pressures on the social care budget are huge. Because the population is ageing and people are living for longer—something we should all celebrate—Knowsley expects to face additional pressures of £10 million in the next three years for adult social care alone.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the picture she paints is grim, particularly for Knowsley? Does she, like me, envisage a time in the not-too-distant future when Knowsley simply will not be able to meet its legal responsibilities unless additional funds are found to ensure that adult social care is available?

[Maria Eagle]

I well understand my right hon. Friend’s concerns. Indeed, the fear is that it will simply be impossible. Knowsley has not had 56% of its statutory obligations removed—just 56% of the money with which it is supposed to meet them. Knowsley, too, is looking at a council tax increase of 4.99%, with 3% ring-fenced for adult social care. This will be the first time that it has increased council tax in five years, and it will do so reluctantly, but that will generate just £1.9 million a year—a total of £3.8 million over the three-year period. That will pay for only just over a third of the pressures that are expected in adult social care alone.

Some additional money will come through the improved better care fund, and there will be one-off allocations—albeit of less than £1 million—through the adult social care fund, but none of that will meet the pressures that are apparent now. I say again to the Minister in all sincerity that one-off payments cannot deal with permanent pressures that are increasing relentlessly day by day when budgets have been cut so drastically.

Unfortunately, Government actions elsewhere mean that those pressures could easily increase rather than decrease because of what is happing in the health service, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside mentioned. Greater pressures on our NHS hospitals and acute services, which have financial problems, the Government’s never-ending austerity mania and real-terms reductions in resources for the NHS over the next few years mean that our NHS services, too, are under enormous pressure. That is where the Merseyside and Cheshire sustainability and transformation plan comes in, but that aims to offset £908 million of financial pressures on the local NHS. It has changed from something that was welcome as a way of improving co-operation and transforming our services into something that is simply about saving money over the next few years. I am afraid that that will not make things easier.

There has been a lack of consultation between the STP leaders and the councils. Neither of the councils that I have mentioned feels like they have been consulted at all about the proposals that are supposed to be going ahead for the NHS, despite the fact that they will face pressure from hospitals that want to get people back into the community—but to what? There is ever-decreasing resource in the community to help look after them.

Tomorrow’s Budget is a chance for the Chancellor to tackle some of those problems with vigour. We hope that he will, but if the Government’s briefing in the newspapers is to be believed, it looks like he will not. It is reported that he will announce an emergency fund of £1.3 billion to tackle the social care crisis. That is only half of the £2.6 billion that the Local Government Association estimates the spending gap will reach by 2020, and it appears that the Chancellor will direct it at schemes that aim to tackle bed-blocking. Knowsley will not benefit from such money, because it has tackled that problem already. Indeed, the Minister always prays Knowsley in aid when he tries to say that bed-blocking is not a problem in some authorities. Knowsley has lost 56% of its resource, and it now looks like it will be punished for being efficient while less efficient local authorities get a slice of the money that the Chancellor will give out tomorrow.

Apparently, the Chancellor will also establish another long-term review of social care funding. Although that is welcome, because this needs to be tackled in the end as a proper long-term policy issue, it will not tackle the problems that Liverpool and Knowsley face now. I must also observe that both Governments the Minister has been a member of have done the same, and they simply ignored the proposals that ended up emerging. The shadow Cabinet of which he was a prominent member before 2010 sabotaged the attempts by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) to have cross-party talks about a solution seven years ago for a cheap election poster alleging that Labour was proposing a death tax. So we will see.

Meanwhile, the social care crisis in Liverpool and Knowsley worsens and the Government simply pass the buck, play politics and offer zero leadership—I am afraid we have come to expect that from them. Those who lose out are the elderly and the vulnerable, who rely most on the services that this Government’s actions decimate the most.

Defibrillators in Public Areas

Debate between George Howarth and Maria Eagle

Monday 16th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing forward her Bill. Yes, it was done under the 10-minute rule procedure, but it is now there, and I echo her call for the Government to adopt it. As she realistically observed, the only reason it may not progress in this Session is that there is no time given its position on the list for private Member’s Bill Fridays. The Government could transform that in an instant by taking on board aspects of the Bill—or the whole Bill, preferably—and putting them into some of their own legislation. The Minister might have something to say about that.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the eloquent and forceful speech she is making. She has already paid tribute to the King family. May I add my tribute to them for their great dignity and the constructive way in which they have taken the issue forward? I agree with the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield) that the ten-minute rule Bill has virtually no chance of getting on to the statute book, but the Government could, if they had a mind to, adopt it and turn it into a Government Bill. Of course, if it is defective in any way, it could be amended, but nevertheless the spirit of it could be carried forward.

Education: Knowsley

Debate between George Howarth and Maria Eagle

Tuesday 13th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that for a borough such as Knowsley, which has a substantial population, the idea of having no academic A-level provision is embarrassing for all the schools and education institutes? It does not bode well for the future of the borough if our young people cannot get the education they need—of whatever variety—in the place that they live.

[Mr Howarth]

My hon. Friend puts that very well. I agree with her entirely and was just going on to add a word about the impact of the negative publicity and comment.

Before setting out some ideas that I believe will help improve secondary education, I want to note some positive things that are already happening. Hard-working heads and teachers are understandably demoralised at the continual denigration that they experience in the media and from the Government; parents and school students are understandably upset that their hard work and achievements are continually rubbished. Yet there is so much good work going on that never gets a mention.

Ten days ago, for example, I visited the Lord Derby Academy, part of the Dean Trust, and met head of school Vicky Gowan and assistant headteacher, Josette Arnold. On a tour of the school, it was obvious that they were doing a lot right. The sense of discipline and the rigorous approach to teaching were obvious and commendable, and promise to bring about big improvements. Much the same could be said for the other secondary schools in Knowsley. Similarly, I recently had the privilege of opening the new Northern Logistics Academy in Kirkby, a joint undertaking between St Helens College and Knowsley Community College. It provides logistics training for those seeking to work in that industry, which is a real growth industry in our city region.

Knowsley Council, having disowned the ResPublica report, has now established an education commission, chaired by Christine Gilbert, previously chief inspector of schools in England and head of Ofsted, and supported by other distinguished commissioners, which is charged with producing an improvement plan. That approach should be supported and I would ask the Minister to commit the Government to that. It is worth noting that the commission has the potential to signpost ways in which other deprived areas such as Knowsley can also make appropriate improvements.

Two developments which could lift achievement are the Shakespeare North and Bio-Inspire projects. Both implicitly offer opportunities to raise aspiration for school students in Knowsley, and I hope that the Government will continue to support both initiatives.

If we are to improve social mobility in areas such as Knowsley, the single most powerful engine for doing so is education. That being so, and given Knowsley’s high level of deprivation, it came as a surprise that Knowsley was not one of the six opportunity areas recently announced by the Government. I feel that the methodology used to identify those areas was flawed. Will the Minister undertake to review the methodology? Will she undertake to look at how Knowsley could be included in any further strategies to improve social mobility?

I want to make a suggestion about how educational attainment could be improved. Before doing so, I should say a word about how attainment is measured. Attainment 8 measures a student’s average grade across eight subjects, which are the same subjects that count for progress 8. Those new metrics are a significant change to education reporting; performance measurement is spread across a wider range of subjects and is no longer based solely on attainment, and there is an emphasis on progress.

Knowsley ranks bottom in the north-west, with an overall attainment 8 score of 39, compared with Liverpool on 47 and Trafford, which is top, on 57. It also has the worst progress 8 score in the north-west, with a score of minus 0.88 compared with Liverpool on minus 0.35. Those figures illustrate the scale of the challenge in Knowsley.

I expect that the commission established by Knowsley Council will look at how post-14 education could be radically reorganised. There is, in my view, a case to be made for creating a choice post-14, but not through a grammar school. Many students in their later years do not regard the sort of education on offer as suited to their future aspirations. Sir Michael Wilshaw has, on a number of occasions, called for a skills revolution in the UK, arguing that every multi-academy trust should run a vocational university technology college for youngsters aged 14 to 19. He said:

“We need to say to youngsters, ‘there are other paths than university’. If you’re going to make a success of Brexit, this should be the number one priority of government. Not grammar schools ... Otherwise we won’t have the skills. And the prospects for growth in the economy and productivity in the economy will suffer.”

[Maria Eagle]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that Halewood Academy closed its sixth form not because it no longer wished to teach A-levels but because, and I do not blame the head and the governors for their decision, financially it is obliged to balance its budget and it simply no longer had enough pupils wanting to go into the sixth form—for various reasons—to enable it financially to continue? As a consequence, there is now no academic A-level provision in the entire borough. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is commendable that Knowsley, which has no longer has any levers to provide education in its own borough and gets blamed when it goes wrong, has done what it can in establishing the commission? We hope that the Government will do what they can, in supporting that process, for all the young people and families in Knowsley.

[Mr Howarth]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. She is right to point out the limited scope of Knowsley Council, which is the local authority that has suffered the greatest cuts in the country while also being among those with the highest need. As I said earlier—it is an extension of my hon. Friend’s point—it is no longer viable to offer sixth-form provision in Knowsley, and if we do not do something urgently it will become unviable to offer any kind of secondary education at all. I agree with my hon. Friend, and I also agree with Sir Michael Wilshaw.

In many cases it would be more effective if the opportunity for vocational education were available post-14, offering pupils a programme of GCSEs, technical and professional qualifications and work experience. That is not to say that those who aspire to a more academic education should not have that choice but, rather, that it should be a choice and not the only option.

Time does not allow me to give a detailed account of how such a reorganisation would need to be carried out. Who would offer the more vocational post-14 option and could the existing secondary system be adapted to provide the more academic option? Those are examples of tough questions that need to be worked through. It is also essential that the vocational and technical education courses on offer are of a high quality and of equal status to the conventional curriculum.

I should perhaps declare an interest at this point. I was one of the generation who left secondary school at 15 but went to technical college. I studied engineering and then went on to do an engineering apprenticeship. Later, in my 20s, I did a degree. Those were options I had, and options I could take, and my worry is that such options are no longer available for young people, other than through the apprenticeship system. The problem with some apprenticeships is that they are too narrowly focused on the needs of the employer and, therefore, the young people who go through them do not acquire the transferable skills that might be needed when they are ready to move on to another employer. Post-14 opportunities in vocational education offer the prospect of their gaining those skills.

I am clear, as is Knowsley Council and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood, that improvement is essential, and that a great deal of responsibility sits on the shoulders of the commissioners to come up with a way forward. Again, I ask the Minister to endorse that approach. Finally, it is important to point out that I have first-hand knowledge that young people in Knowsley are no less capable and no less ambitious than young people from better-off families. They deserve the same opportunities as young people from other parts of the country and from more prosperous areas. I hope that the Government will work with Knowsley Council, the commission, my hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood and for St Helens South and Whiston, and me to ensure that that is exactly what happens.

Food Banks

Debate between George Howarth and Maria Eagle

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle]

My hon. Friend is correct. I know that the two Trussell Trust food banks in my constituency have figures similar to the national average, which show that over a fifth—22% in my constituency—of people who resort to food banks for an emergency food package are in work.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware of the statistics from the Big Help project in Knowsley, which covers her constituency and mine: 23% of those who receive vouchers to go to the food bank are in work—in other words, the working poor. Even more alarmingly, 45% of the vouchers issued involve children.

[Maria Eagle]

My right hon. Friend is correct. The figures for the Knowsley food bank, which cover his constituency and mine, are pretty similar to the figures for the south Liverpool food bank: benefit delays 28.8%, benefit changes 14.5%, and low income—in other words, poverty pay—22%. This is a problem that he and I recognise from our constituencies, and it needs to be addressed.

Food Banks

Debate between George Howarth and Maria Eagle

Wednesday 18th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle]

No. Let me make it clear that I will not take many interventions because of the number—[Interruption.] I am seeking to give hon. Members in all parts of the House a chance to get into the debate, and it will not help if I take three quarters of an hour to open it.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

rose—

[Maria Eagle]

I will take one more intervention before I continue.

[Mr George Howarth]

As a fellow Knowsley MP, does my hon. Friend agree that it is a disgrace that, from April to 13 November, 756 children and 1,424 adults were referred to food banks with vouchers? We congratulate the agencies involved in doing that work, but is it not absolutely disgraceful that this is what we are reduced to?

[Maria Eagle]

I agree. My right hon. Friend and I share food bank provision in our constituencies, so I know that to be true.

Since April this year, over half a million people have already relied on assistance from the 400 food banks run by the Trussell Trust charity—that is double the number of food banks compared with this time last year. Of those half a million people, one third are children. In Britain, the seventh richest country on the planet, in the 21st century, it is a scandal, and it is getting worse. More people have been going to food banks in the past nine months than in the whole of last year. Half a million people have gone to food banks compared with 26,000 before the last general election.

Hillsborough Disaster

Debate between George Howarth and Maria Eagle

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

Every weekend, hundreds of thousands of people attend public events, including many sporting events. They leave their homes in the not-unreasonable expectation that those who are responsible for the management and safety of those events will do their jobs professionally, thoroughly and properly, and that all the experience available will be brought to bear in those situations. What they do not expect is that if something does go wrong, as things do occasionally at events, any victims will be turned into villains. At the heart of the continuing problem that the families, I and many Members have about what happened at Hillsborough is that that is exactly what happened—there was an attempt to turn the people who were victims, in the ways described by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), into villains.

My hon. Friend spoke movingly and eloquently, and I think that he spoke for the whole House. His speech was thorough and covered all the events, problems and things that have gone wrong since, but what he did by reading out the names of the victims was to bring things back to the human scale. I want to do that now by mentioning two people who were constituents of mine at the time—they have since moved—Mr and Mrs Joynes. They lost a son, Nicholas, who has been named by my hon. Friend, and I had a lot to do with them in the early years after the tragedy occurred. They would not want to be seen as being any different from any of the other families concerned, but I single them out because they typify the dignity with which people have responded to the loss of loved ones.

I mention Mr and Mrs Joynes because it was at their request that I attended a day of the inquest hearings, at which I was appalled. It was clear from the way those mini inquests were handled that the whole event seemed to be geared up to proving how much or little alcohol was in the blood of those who had been killed in that tragic and awful disaster. I note that there is a whole debate to be had about mini inquests, but it might be best to have that debate on another occasion. Is it any surprise that those people who had lost loved members of their families at Hillsborough were offended when, on top of the attempts to turn the victims into villains, they found that the inquest, which was supposed to be about establishing cause of death—nothing more than that—seemed to be a perpetuation of that calumny?

[Maria Eagle]

It was.

[Mr Howarth]

Indeed—it was.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on the role they have played in bringing about the release of all these documents, and I welcome, I think, the statement that the Home Secretary made today. As I understand it, she has said that all documents, including Cabinet minutes, will be made available and that nothing will be withheld from the glare of public scrutiny. If that is what she was saying, I very much welcome that. I followed her comments carefully and that appears to be what she said.

I want to make a slight qualification about the process of redaction. The Home Secretary will be aware that, wearing another hat, I sit on the Intelligence and Security Committee. When we produce annual reports or any other kind of report we use the process of redaction, which is necessary because issues of national security are sometimes involved. However, I am aware that redaction causes suspicion. What is left out gives the media vent to speculate about what might have been in there. In this particular case, the families who want to know everything, and rightly so, might feel that something has been excluded. The point I want to make to the Home Secretary is that more thought needs to be given to how that process is to be conducted, who is to be involved in it and who will have the final veto. The default position should be to have no use of redaction unless there are issues of personal medical evidence or of data protection to consider. Data protection should not be used to protect those who may have been culpable of failing in their duties, but other issues of data protection, including in relation to the families themselves, might be relevant. There should be redaction only in those circumstances, and even then each decision should be open to question by the families and the independent panel.