Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We consulted on replacing 18 of the existing powers with six new ones, but I am concerned about stories of victims reporting problems and not getting any action. Community trigger will give people the opportunity to ensure that action is taken by the police or other agencies, and we will work with a number of leading local areas, including Manchester and West Lindsey, to pilot the trigger this year, offering a better service to victims and communities.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

The antisocial behaviour injunction is a tool used by social landlords to clamp down on nuisance tenants. Those landlords have obtained legal advice that if the Government replace that tool, the likelihood is that they will be left, to quote from the legal judgment, “literally powerless” to act, possibly for years. Will Ministers therefore keep the injunction?

[Mrs May]

I am very well aware that injunctions are often used effectively by social landlords to deal quickly with ASB. We want to build on their success in our new proposals so that they can be available to other organisations. We recognise the vital role that landlords play in tackling antisocial behaviour and are committed to strengthening their ability to deal with it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The Government do indeed have a joined-up approach on that. The report was the result of work by an inter-ministerial group that I chaired, working closely with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and with representations from several Departments, including the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government. I am pleased to say that the inter-ministerial group will continue to meet to monitor the work that the team are doing as a result of the report. Indeed, we held our first such meeting last week.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Last week, the ringleaders of a gang of youths were given antisocial behaviour orders after making the lives of shoppers and businesses in Rochdale a misery. If they breach the ASBO, these youths will get a criminal record, but according to page 18 of the Government’s consultation document, “More Effective Responses to Antisocial Behaviour”, a breach of the Government’s proposed crime prevention injunction

“would not result in a criminal record.”

Will the Secretary of State confirm that that is the case?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady is well aware that we will be implementing several proposals to deal with antisocial behaviour and gangs, and I remind her that I have referred already this afternoon to what we are doing with gang injunctions. In the case to which she referred and similar cases, gang injunctions will be available.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. I certainly recognise the issues that many communities face from antisocial behaviour and the fact it perhaps was not previously taken as seriously as it should have been. We propose to combine the most effective elements of the various dispersal powers available to the police into a single simpler police power to direct people away from an area where they are committing or are likely to commit antisocial behaviour. We intend to legislate on the new powers at the earliest opportunity.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

As the Home Secretary has acknowledged, vandalism, antisocial behaviour and theft from war memorials repulse everybody, particularly in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday. Given that much of that activity is related to the illegal metal trade, why will Ministers not bring forward legislation right away? What is the hold-up?

[James Brokenshire]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her position on the Front Bench. I certainly agree with her that the attacks on war memorials in the run-up to Remembrance Sunday are absolutely despicable. I am sure that the whole House will join me in condemning those shocking crimes. The Home Secretary has mentioned a number of steps that the Government are already taking. We are working with the Association of Chief Police Officers to put in place an action plan. Steps are already under way and we are working with other Departments to take further action as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns about this issue and I also appreciate the particular geography in that part of her constituency. These matters of deployment are for the chief constable to decide and it is better that Ministers do not try to second-guess those, but I am happy to draw her concerns to the chief constable’s attention.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Do Ministers believe that a local police station is a front-line service?

[Nick Herbert]

I think that what is important is the visibility and availability of police officers, which is variable between police forces. In many cases, it can be significantly improved. I have said to the House before that if police forces can find innovative ways to increase their presence in communities—for instance, by being in supermarkets—that can often be very much better than maintaining empty or underused offices that are rarely visited.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

There have been no specific discussions with the Secretary of State for Justice on this issue. However, the Ministry of Justice is a member of the inter-ministerial group on violence against women and girls, which is chaired by the Home Secretary. Discussions on the support provided for all victims of violence against women and girls is discussed at its meetings.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Two wards in my constituency have seen increases in domestic abuse of 38% and 44%, which is way out of sync with the national or local trend. Will Ministers consider targeting work in areas where the figures are so far above trend?

[Lynne Featherstone]

The hon. Lady raises an important issue. I will look at the areas that have higher rates of domestic violence, with an eye to seeing what has happened in those areas.

Identity Documents Bill

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to have been given an opportunity to make my maiden speech in this debate. Whatever disagreements different Members and political parties may have about how to tackle crime, terrorism and identity theft, we can all agree that they are issues of great concern to our constituents, and it is for all of us to address them. I congratulate every Member who has made their maiden speech today. They were truly excellent speeches, which I must now follow.

Let me begin by paying tribute to my predecessor, Geoff Hoon, who represented Ashfield for 18 years. Geoff was a barrister by trade but was born and bred into a long line of railwaymen, and I know that the values he learned from his family shaped his political outlook. Above all, he was determined to put those values into practice as a Minister. He spent six years as Secretary of State for Defence, making him the second longest-serving Defence Secretary to date. Much of that is known about Geoff, but less well known is his passion for pop music and his encyclopaedic knowledge of bands of the 1960s and ’70s. Geoff Hoon was very serious about his music, and, to be honest, he would probably cringe if he looked at the music on my iPod.

Ashfield is a constituency shaped by industry, and proud of it—and those industrial roots have shaped those privileged enough to represent it. Everywhere I went during the election campaign, I was reminded just how large the shoes are that I have to fill—including those of Frank Haynes, who, after years below ground as a miner, represented Ashfield in this House from 1979 to 1992. In doing my research, I learned that Frank was famous for having one of the loudest voices in the House of Commons. When I promised the voters of Ashfield that, if they sent me to Parliament, I would shout up for them, I was speaking metaphorically. Frank clearly promised the same thing, but meant it quite literally. He was loved by many in Ashfield and by many in this House. Everyone tells me how popular he was. His key quality, which I shall always try to emulate, was that he was always himself. I love the image of him asking Margaret Thatcher a tough question at Prime Minister’s questions and calling her “duckie”, which is the legendary term of endearment that Nottinghamshire folk use every day. I am assured that the Iron Lady smiled.

I am the first Member of Parliament to begin serving Ashfield with no local men underground mining for coal. Our most famous sons were from mining backgrounds. They include Harold Larwood, a Nottinghamshire and England fast bowler who left school at 14, before the war, to work in the mines. His statue still stands today in Kirkby-in-Ashfield. D. H. Lawrence was born in the town of Eastwood and was the son of a miner who could barely read. He called Eastwood “the country of my heart”. It is not only the decline of mining that has hit Ashfield hard. I am delighted to be here as the first woman to represent the constituency, because women played a full part in building Ashfield’s prosperity by working in the textile industry, but one by one the textile factories have gone the way of the pits. Yes, new jobs have been created, but too often they do not pay as well or offer the job security of those they replaced, and there are not enough of them.

Ashfield could be forgiven for thinking that its best days were behind it, but my mission in representing the people of my constituency in this House is to prove that that fear is misplaced, because the thing that has seen Ashfield through good times and bad is its sense of community. Indeed, I could say that the big society is alive and well there. For us, that is not a smart phrase invented by those from the leafy lanes of Notting Hill: one can smell it in the novels of Lawrence and see it there today. Every village has its community hub: the Stanton Hill community shop, the Huthwaite community action group, the Eastwood volunteer bureau, the Kirkby volunteer bureau, the Acacia avenue community centre and the Friends of Colliers Wood—I could go on and on. We do not just look out for each other in Ashfield; we stand up for ourselves, too, as those involved in the Kirkby and Sutton area residents associations prove every day by trying to keep the green fields in Ashfield green. D. H. Lawrence might be our historical hero, but it is the local heroes who are alive and well today who I want to support and pay tribute to. We can read about them each week in the Ashfield Chad and the Eastwood & Kimberley Advertiser.

I came from a pretty poor background, and I believe that it is thanks to my party speaking up for people from backgrounds such as my own that I was able to go to university, have a successful media career and today speak from these green Benches. I believe that Governments can and should help to transform people’s lives for the better. Of course it takes individual effort and the support of the family, but there is something else that transforms people’s lives, and that is community.

I know that it is fashionable for some on the Government Front Bench to talk about community, and I am delighted that they have rediscovered the word—along with “society”—but I am not convinced that they really understand it. They have presented a false divide between the big society and big government. I am arguing for an enabling Government who help people to come together and look after their interests. It is not a matter of choosing between society and the state; it is about binding the two together, for then, truly, the whole is worth more than the sum of the parts. The result is an empowered community and a flexible, responsive, enabling state, working together, rather than one replacing the other.

It is ironic that the so-called new politics, which suggests that state and society are somehow opposed and that one can flourish only if the other withdraws, should so precisely mirror the mistakes made by the worst of old Labour, which sometimes gave the impression that the state knew best and should dictate what happened. Underneath its rhetoric, the new politics represents the flip side of the same coin. Its adherents seek to trumpet society at the expense of the state, which the Conservative party says should be smaller as a matter of principle. I do not know whether its supposed partners agree with that, but I guess that we will find out eventually.

It is dogma to suggest that, if we roll back the state, the big society will flourish in its wake. Places like Ashfield need strong communities and strong government. If that means big government, then that is fine if that is what is needed. We do not need big government for its own sake, of course, but we do need strong and active government, for a purpose. After all, were Sure Start or community support officers examples of big government? Is a Government-initiated apprenticeship one?

Today, Ashfield needs a new economic backbone to enable local people to develop their talents and become the D.H. Lawrences and Larwoods of the future. We need it to promote the talents of people who come from Ashfield and ensure that those talents stay in the area to develop its future economic strength.

We know that tough economic times lie ahead. Ashfield can cope with a lot, but it is up to Government to help us. Ashfield is a place with a tremendous sense of community, but we need the Government to help us on the way. Ashfield has a big heart and lies at the heart of England. We will be as strong, vibrant and successful as we were in our heyday, but such a renaissance will happen only with a strong state and a strong society working hand in hand. If hon. Members on the Government Benches cannot see that and make it happen, when we get our chance, we will.