Domestic Abuse Victims and Family Courts

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered progress on protecting victims of domestic abuse in the family courts.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Ryan. We are here, for what seems like the millionth time, to talk about any progress on and the still numerous problems in the family court. We have been here before. We sought approval from the Government, and made gains with them, on issues presented by the all-party group parliamentary group on domestic violence. Unfortunately, a general election then got in the way, so all the progress that could have been made was lost. It is important to mention that, because that lost progress is not just one of those things; it means that, during this intervening period, hundreds and hundreds more women are being treated poorly while we do not get our act together.

I must say a massive thank you to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and my hon. Friends the Members for Hove (Peter Kyle), for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) and, especially, for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith). Together, as a cross-party collective, we have been fighting for an improved family court system for victims of domestic abuse for a very long time. It is a pleasure to fight alongside them.

I must also thank the previous Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), who took a huge amount of flak from some quarters, some of which I think was because she was a woman. She was the only person in a ministerial post who ever really listened to us about this subject. She broke the deadlock and got the Government to agree with us, and I cannot but think that having a woman in such a position was the reason that that happened.

I thank Women’s Aid, which has done so much campaigning in the area, and many others: this week I have received briefings from all over the place, including the Law Society, the Magistrates Association, Barnardo’s and SafeLives. There is often friction among specialist women’s organisations, the judiciary and lawyers with regard to issues to do with violence against women and girls, and the court system. Often the problem is that we do not all sing from the same hymn sheet. Every single one of the briefings, however, whether from the Magistrates Association, the Law Society or one of the specialist organisations, makes at least one of three recommendations to Government. I will therefore focus on those specific recommendations and ask the Government to do something about them.

The first relates to perpetrators being able to cross-examine victims in the family court. If the general public had any real sense that that was happening, they would be absolutely horrified. Members of Parliament have come up to me in this place to say, “You’ll never guess what about this case in my constituency, Jess—her perpetrator was allowed to cross-examine her in court.” They are stunned to find that that is allowed to happen.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech, and I congratulate her on securing the debate. Does she agree that that loophole in the system makes those—usually women—who have been victims of domestic violence victims twice over, not only in the attacks that they have sustained but in a court setting?

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. It is, fundamentally, revictimisation and—if the Minister cares to browse the Equality Act 2010—illegal. There is a very real case for a public sector equality duty on the basis of gender to be made against existing practice in the family court. If such practice does not change soon, that is absolutely the route that people such as me will take, because our public sector is not meeting that duty.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this incredibly important debate. Does she also agree that one problem in this country is that, still, only about 30% of judges are female? In other European countries the average is much more likely to be about 50%. In this country women often feel that their voices are not heard in that environment, thereby adding insult to injury. Terrible stories are being judged in court, but sometimes the women feel that they are not getting justice, simply because people often do not understand as no one else is female.

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. We have to change the nature of our justice system from one that is fundamentally old fashioned and, at its very core, fundamentally male.

Every single one of the organisations that has been in touch with me has suggested specialist domestic abuse and sexual violence training for those involved in making judgments. Later, when I read out some of the victim testimonials, we will hear about the things that victims have put up with in court. It is as if some of those judges have never met another person, let alone know anything about domestic abuse.

The idea that in this country—still, today, right now, in the courts—a perpetrator is cross-examining a victim of domestic abuse, perhaps in order to gain access to their children, is absolutely harrowing. James Munby, the outgoing head of the family division of the High Court, made it very clear that he wished the practice to end. It is, of course, not something that happened by accident or that we ever saw when I was working in domestic abuse services; the practice is a direct consequence of the changes to the legal aid regime made by the coalition Government and this Conservative Government. As a result, it is now the case that not only perpetrators but—we must not forget this—victims must act as litigants in person. That practice would never be allowed in the criminal courts in our land. The Ministry of Justice, whose Ministers sit across from me today, rules out the use of that practice in a criminal setting on human rights grounds, but the very same Department allows it to happen in our family and civil courts every single day.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The hon. Lady is making an incredibly powerful case. Does she agree that it is absolutely obscene that people who need help the most, at a time of such vulnerability, are denied even the most basic support via legal aid to make their case? As others have said, that is revictimisation a hundred times over and it has to stop.

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. The Minister will no doubt respond by saying that the Government have made changes to legal aid in civil and family court cases involving domestic abuse, but every single day I am notified of at least one case of domestic abuse victims not being able to access legal aid in the family court. I am writing lots and lots of letters to the Legal Aid Agency to remind it of its duty to victims of domestic abuse and of the ruling on how long someone has to be free from violence or abuse. That limit was changed from two years to five years by the Government, but that was thanks once again to campaigners taking them to court—the Government did not make that change out of the kindness of their heart.

[Melanie Onn]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. Has there been any analysis of the long-term mental health impact on victims of cross-examination by their perpetrators? The justice system is facilitating and enabling such cross-examination.

[Jess Phillips]

I certainly do not know of any. I will mention the recent study by Queen Mary University of London, in partnership with Women’s Aid, of how people are treated in the family courts. I am not aware of any Government reviews of the effect of litigants in person and, more broadly, of people being cross-examined by people who abused them, but I would certainly like to see one. If our courts and the Department are happy for that to go on, it is only right that they review whether it should continue.

Queen Mary University of London found that 24% of domestic violence victims who had gone through the family court system had been cross-examined by their perpetrator—someone who may have raped them, kept them prisoner or made them look on while they abused their children. We have the “achieving best evidence” standards in this country. I am not sure I can remember the bit in those standards that says the best way to get evidence in a justice environment is to allow someone who is utterly terrifying and has abused the victim to question them. I am not sure that we currently meet any sort of standard for achieving best evidence.

James Munby made it clear that the hands of family courts are tied—they simply cannot stop that cross-examination. Legislation is not in place to allow them to stop it. I know the Government want to stop it, too, and I am glad they heard our calls about that. I suggest that they do it. When the right honourable—I am not sure whether he is right honourable, and I am certainly not sure whether he is right or honourable—Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) embarrassed them on upskirting, a Government Bill was suddenly introduced to address that. It has been widely publicised that the House will sit for two days next week. I would gladly come back then to see through a piece of legislation that has been passed once already—it has already gone through rigorous scrutiny by the Clerks and the House. I would gladly pop down on a train from Birmingham to stop the cross-examination of victims of domestic abuse by their abusers.

The second area that everyone who has been in touch with me has given a lot of attention is practice direction 12J and new practice direction 3AA. I believe practice direction 12J was reaffirmed for magistrates courts and our family court system because, frankly, it was not being followed. For those who are not as geeky as I am about the old practice directions in the family court system, practice direction 12J basically undoes the idea that someone who has been abusive has a right to see their children. That is not an automatic right, especially in cases where there is domestic abuse. Practice direction 12J gives that steer to people making such judgments. I handled hundreds of cases involving domestic abuse, and I cannot say I ever noticed that practice direction being used. I have great faith in the Magistrates Association, and I believe from what it wrote to me this week that that direction has been affirmed.

I wonder whether the Minister will join me in stressing the importance of this very simple message: “If you beat, coerce, humiliate and abuse your children’s mother, you waive your right to be their father until the moment the non-abusive parent decides otherwise.” I am not saying for one second that no one who commits domestic abuse should be able to see their children, but they should not have a right to demand to see them where the non-abusive parent does not wish those children—and the children do not wish—to be put in that situation.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate and for the speech she is giving, and I send solidarity from all the women’s aid organisations in Scotland, which want this change to be made, too. I understand that in England there is a presumption that the welfare of the child is best served by the involvement of both parents. That is not the case in Scotland, where decisions are taken on the facts of the case. Does she agree that looking at each case individually—looking at the facts of the case, the situation and the risk—is a much better approach than an automatic presumption?

[Jess Phillips]

I totally agree. I can only praise Scotland for the progress it has made in this area. I very much would like the Minister to look at what happens there. I am sure it is by no means perfect, but it is a lot better than what we have here.

New practice direction 3AA requires courts to consider whether those involved in family proceedings are vulnerable and, if so, whether that is likely to diminish their participation in proceedings or—as I said—the quality of their evidence. What are the Minister and the Department doing to review the use of practice direction 12J following its reaffirmation? It has been around a long time. Can we conduct some sort of review of whether it is working or whether it needs updating, and of new practice direction 3AA? Both are key to ensuring that we can rebuild trust among victims of domestic abuse.

The third thing that every single person who has been in touch with me has raised is the issue of special measures in the family courts, which are woefully behind those in criminal justice proceedings. In some cases, the same woman may present at the same courthouse—literally the same building—and be offered different things. She would most likely be greeted at the door of the criminal court by an independent domestic violence adviser co-located in that courthouse, who would have arranged different times for her and would explain the system and help her find the special area for her in the court. She may then walk around the back of the building and go through a different door into the family court, where someone may say, “Oh, there’s Larry—you can just sit next to him, regardless of the years of abuse you have suffered.”

There is absolutely no excuse for the tardiness with which we have reacted to something we have known about for a long time. At least since I came to this place, we have been raising the need for separate rooms, separate arrival times and better evidence-giving opportunities, so that people do not just have a curtain around them but can give evidence from elsewhere via video link. Those are well-trodden practices in our criminal court system, but for some reason in the family court we seem unable to recognise that there is a victim. The fact that family court proceedings are civil proceedings in which both parties are considered equal does not mean that both parties are equal.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The hon. Lady is being generous in giving way. A number of my constituents who have gone through traumatic and abusive divorces have raised concerns with me about the family court. Is it not terrible that women do not feel our legal system protects them at the time they are most vulnerable?

[Jess Phillips]

I agree entirely. The plain and simple fact is that currently it does not protect them. The family court system fails victims of domestic abuse more often than it succeeds. I say that with absolute confidence.

[Melanie Onn]

What does my hon. Friend consider the ramifications of that failure to be for those victims? Does she think a lack of confidence in the judicial system, and particularly in the family courts system, could give rise to people staying in a domestic violence situation, thereby prolonging their situation and perhaps causing greater damage to their health?

[Jess Phillips]

There are lots of case studies in the papers in front of me where the consequence of a lack of trust or of a lack of safe and free access to our justice system is that women return. Women are now convinced that they will not win in a family courts setting. I would stay with somebody who beat me black and blue every day if it meant that I got to watch over my children and did not have to leave them alone with him. If someone has a violent partner and the choice is, “Leave them with this man, who you know is violent, or take the beating on behalf of your children,” we would struggle to find a single parent in the land who would do anything other than return.

The worst ramifications are, of course, that we are leaving people in violent homes. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge has handled one of the worst cases of failings in the family courts—the case of her constituent Claire Throssell, who is a personal hero to many of us in this House, and my hon. Friend will talk about that later. The ramifications are the deaths of women and the deaths of children. That can no longer go on.

I cannot understand why the special measures issue has not been sorted yet. It is not that hard to sort out. Every single court in the land has a robing room for the judges. How about putting the victims in there? I think the judges could put their robes on in the corridor. We manage it—I put my coat on just earlier. I have a fancy job, but I do not need a special room.

On the issue of special measures in courts, James Munby has said:

“In too many courts the only available special measure is a screen or curtains round the witness box. What, for example, about the safe waiting rooms for which the APPG has…called?”

I feel that he is personally talking to me in this quote. He goes on to say:

“The video links in too many family courts are a disgrace—prone to the link failing and with desperately poor sound and picture quality… The problem, of course, is one of resources, and responsibility lies, as I have said, with HMCTS and, ultimately with ministers.”

Those are the words of the outgoing president of the family division. Special measures are something we should invest in, and we should do so immediately. I welcome whatever the Minister can say today about any schemes currently in place to improve the situation, because 61% of the women surveyed by Women’s Aid and Queen Mary University of London were offered no special measures at all in the family courts.

Another issue that was raised was specialist support and advocacy for women going through the family justice system. I believe schemes are under way to pilot that issue up in the Northumberland area, where the brilliant Dame Vera Baird is the police and crime commissioner. There will be lots and lots of evidence of the value of the independent domestic violence adviser role in the criminal court and in community-based domestic violence services. With independent sexual violence advisers, the arguments are long ago won: having these advisers maintains victims within the process and means that they understand the process and can continue to try to get their rapists convicted.

There is no Government scheme or nationally recognised network for women facing civil issues through the civil courts, and I might argue that there is a far greater need there, not only because of the issue of litigants in person, but because—in an era when we have no representation for a lot of these women and many do not have any legal aid—having a system of advocacy in our family courts so that victims can understand exactly where they are meant to sit and what they are meant to present is something the Government should look at funding. Independent domestic violence advisers were launched under the last Labour Government, with match funding from local authorities and the Home Office, and I recommend that the Ministry of Justice creates a similar scheme, in partnership with the Home Office, for the family courts system. Certainly, every single one of the organisations that wrote to me called for that.

The next issue that everybody raised, which we have already touched on, is legal aid. Legal aid is currently available to victims of domestic abuse going through the family courts system, but that is still on a means-tested basis. There are all sorts of reasons why that system continues to fail victims of domestic abuse, meaning that they cannot access legal aid. The Law Society, which has written jointly with Women’s Aid to the Secretary of State for Justice, has called for a review into all the things I am talking about, but it and the Magistrates Association wanted me to stress today that the capital element of means-testing for legal aid is massively disadvantaging women.

Yes, a woman may well have been left after her ex-partner has put her through the wringer and no doubt left his name on her property, and it has probably taken her two or three years to get it off. She has already been through all that process, and she has managed to maintain a home where she and her children live, and that home now means she cannot access legal aid. I am not talking about the people who buy houses around Westminster; these are people living in my constituency, where it is about £120,000 for a three-bed semi, with one car on the drive. They are not rich people, and their capital means nothing in terms of their ability to pay. We cannot for a second suggest that they should be selling their house to protect their children from a violent perpetrator, yet, seemingly, we do suggest that.

Everybody has called for an end to the capital means test, which in many circumstances means that the equity in someone’s home should be used to fund legal costs. Of course, that is a double-edged sword, because if I were to use the equity in my home, I would then lose my home and would be much less financially secure—and when a woman is not so financially secure and has a precarious housing situation, it will be about 15 minutes before a social worker is saying to the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service that she should not be looking after her children, and we will end up in exactly the same situation we were in at the beginning. We are exacerbating things.

I am here to tell hon. Members from personal experience that, currently, victims of domestic abuse in the family courts system are, more often than not, unable to access legal aid. That has to change. The problem in the family courts with perpetrators, which I highlighted at the beginning, has been caused by this Government’s policy on legal aid—let us not use these things to twist the knife.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

May I also add the support of Welsh Women’s Aid and campaigners such as Rachel Williams from Newport, whom my hon. Friend knows, for the debate? Is it not the case that such situations become more difficult because victims can be forced to return to family and civil courts time and again?

[Jess Phillips]

Absolutely. I will mention Rachel in closing. It gets lost that coercive control does not stop when a woman leaves her partner. Women’s risks massively increase once they leave, and they are more likely to be murdered. In Rachel’s case, this was when the most harrowing consequences played out for her and her children. Coercion does not all of a sudden go away, and we—the state—allow perpetrators to re-victimise women again and again by hearing the same case over and over.

There are judges who try to stop that pattern of abuse in courts, but they are not the norm. There are hundreds of cases in which the same woman will be taken through the wringer again and again. She will be told that she is mad, and things will be given to the court to show that she is mad. And, yes, she is mad: she has been driven mad by having to fight the same battle again and again. There has to be some limitation. A line has to be drawn in cases where domestic abuse is evidenced. That is incredibly important.

Let me move on to CAFCASS. I may start forwarding all the complaints I receive about CAFCASS to the Minister. I have an entire folder in my email inbox called “Complaints about CAFCASS”, which has around 800 emails in it. I get them from people from all over the country, and because I am standing up and saying this, I will get hundreds more. I create a file of all the problems that people have with CAFCASS.

There is a constant feeling that the children and the women are not listened to, that their experiences of domestic abuse are diminished, that they are considered to be in the wrong and that they have to constantly prove that they are telling the truth and have understood their own experiences. The main complaint I receive is that CAFCASS does not pay nearly enough attention to listening to children, which is a grave error. Barnardo’s said exactly the same in a submission to me—that there is a barren wasteland in all of this when it comes to listening to the voice of the child. We must work much more closely with them.

SafeLives sent me a series of briefings on its concerns about CAFCASS’s parental alienation models. We will all have heard about parental alienation from some idiot dressed as Spider-Man crawling up the side of a building—the idea that women purposefully alienate children from their fathers is well known.

Those people have won the war of rhetoric. If we ask anyone in the street whether they think family court proceedings are more likely to fall in favour of a man or a woman, every single one would say it was more likely to fall in favour of a woman. The reality is entirely different. In cases of the most severe domestic abuse, 38% of violent perpetrators—people who have been criminalised for abuse—are granted unsupervised access to their children. It is absolutely not the case that family courts are favourable to women. CAFCASS plays a severe role in marginalising women in that process.

Rachel, who has already been mentioned, sent me 199 pages of testimonials this morning, with about 10 to 13 testimonials on each page. That is thousands of testimonials about the situations that women face in the family courts. I will read a couple out:

“CAFCASS is not working in the best interests of the children, who are victims of domestic abuse themselves”;

“CAFCASS is enabling the perpetrators of abuse to gain more control”;

“CAFCASS did not talk to my children, who, too, are victims. Their voices were nowhere on the accounts”;

“They think that abusive partners are good dads”;

“They were incompetent, stupid, easily taken in by a manipulative perpetrator and aggressive towards me. One woman couldn’t even be bothered to know my name. They called my 999 call a ‘minor disagreement’ in their official records. They are a complete disgrace”;

and,

“I, too, have had a terrible time with CAFCASS and the family courts. They were more supportive of my abusive ex than actually listening to my kids. Also, when my son made a statement and showed signs of abusive behaviour, they continued to put him through the court and pooh-poohed and belittled everything that we had to say.”

Those are just a few. Accounts were sent to me over the weekend from women who said that their perpetrators, some of whom had to be handcuffed, and who even kicked off during the family court proceedings, were congratulated by judges for remaining calm.

There is testimonial after testimonial from women who have been stared down by their partner and have capitulated in front of judges, just to make it stop. It is our responsibility to make it stop, so will the Minister commit to a timetable for when it will? I know that the Government want to stop this, but when will we actually do it? If I were to review the Government’s current policy, or this era in politics, I would write, “We did a review.” I ask the Minister to actually do something.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I thank the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for securing the debate. Like other hon. Members, I pay tribute to the huge amount that she has done to protect victims of domestic abuse—not only the work that she has done as an MP, which includes chairing the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence, but what she did before she was elected, in working for a charity supporting victims of domestic and sexual abuse.

We all know, and have heard today, that domestic abuse has devastating effects. I heard about some of those when I attended a meeting of the APPG at which a victim gave evidence anonymously about her experience. Since I have been a Justice Minister, MPs have come to me to share their constituents’ experiences of domestic abuse. I am pleased to have had the opportunity both to discuss those concerns with experts such as Katie Ghose from Women’s Aid and Jo Todd from Respect and to hear about domestic abuse victims’ experiences of court from professionals in the courts, such as Her Honour Judge Rachel Karp, and academics such as Rosemary Hunter.

The Government are committed to tackling domestic abuse—dealing with abusive behaviour and improving support for victims. We want to do more to protect and empower victims, communities and professionals to confront and challenge domestic abuse wherever they encounter it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) and other hon. Members mentioned, the Government have launched an extensive public consultation on domestic abuse to inform our approach to future reform. We have received more than 3,000 responses, which we are analysing now, ahead of publishing a Government response in the autumn. That will include a domestic abuse Bill, which we hope will further protect victims of domestic abuse.

As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley said, we need to ensure that the court experience supports victims of domestic abuse and is not a forum in which to continue abuse. The Government have already taken a number of measures, to which some hon. Members have referred, to improve the court process. We have made practical changes following work with the senior judiciary. Last November saw the introduction of new rules requiring the court to consider whether those involved in family proceedings are vulnerable and, if so, whether they need assistance, such as a video link or protective screen, to participate or give evidence.

I was disappointed to hear that the experience of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is that those measures are not working well, because I recently met a family barrister who told me that her experience was that they were working. We do need to keep this under review. Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service is collecting data, so that we can see how it is operating. We will consider whether we can do more, as we examine consultation responses in due course.

We have also introduced fresh training for family court staff on how to support vulnerable court users—by ensuring that separate waiting rooms or secure entry into and exit from the building are available, for example. The training has now been rolled out across England and Wales. Courts are also preparing local protocols on vulnerable court users, in consultation with their designated family judges. The president of the family division and the Judicial College have also taken steps to improve domestic abuse training for family judges. Issues of domestic abuse continue to be addressed on an ongoing basis as part of the college’s regular training for family judges. I recently visited the courts in Liverpool and was interested to hear from a family judge that he had found the training very helpful.

A further positive development came last October, when the president made changes to the guidance for family judges dealing with applications for child arrangements orders where domestic abuse is alleged. As hon. Members have mentioned, that is practice direction 12J. The revisions included a number of important changes, such as making it clear that family courts should have full regard to the harm caused by domestic abuse and the harm that can be caused to children from witnessing such abuse. The revised practice direction also includes an expanded definition of domestic abuse.

These changes are a positive development. At a roundtable on domestic abuse that I held recently, I heard from family judges and practitioners how they were working. I was asked during the course of this debate whether we can review the practice direction. That is primarily a matter for the judiciary, but I am happy to discuss it with the incoming president of the family court, whom I am meeting tomorrow. I should add that the current President, Sir James Munby, will be retiring shortly. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned, he has been a strong advocate for improving support and protections for the vulnerable. I pay tribute to the significant action he has taken in this area.

Many hon. Members mentioned the provision of legal aid. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley mentioned, we have changed the law to make it easier for victims of domestic abuse to access legal aid and support by reforming the evidence requirements for legal aid in private family cases. The changes included introducing new forms of evidence and removing the time limit previously placed on evidence. We are already seeing a positive effect on the number of victims accessing legal aid. The latest statistics for January to March show that 21% more victims applied for legal aid than in the same quarter last year and there was a record high number of grants. We will continue to monitor those figures.

We have made changes to support victims of domestic abuse, but we need to do more. The hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley and for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) were right to highlight the importance of bringing forward legislation in relation to the cross-examination of domestic abuse victims by their perpetrators. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley has made a powerful case for this for some time and she made it again today. It is right that we get it on the statute book. She has already rightly identified that the Government want to see this legislation on the statute book. The Government remain committed to delivering this as soon as parliamentary time allows.

[Jess Phillips]

Will they introduce it before the recess?

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Lady knows that it takes some time to go through parliamentary procedure and it is not possible to do that on Monday or Tuesday next week.

I have also heard concerns about the issue of abusers making repeated applications to the family court, as a means of further abusing their former partners. I recently held a roundtable with judges, academics and others from the legal profession, to discuss this. I also met the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) to discuss the private Member’s Bill she proposed on the matter. The family court does have wide powers to manage such situations, but I am looking again at whether there is more we can do across the system to tackle this issue. We will be examining this as part of the next phase of work on the consultation.

Many hon. Members mentioned important points. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley made interesting points about the recognition society and Government have of the nature of abuse, and that it is not just physical abuse and violence that form domestic abuse. He also discussed the need to see how the courts are operating. I have visited a number of courts already and spoken to a number of judges on a variety of issues. He raised the Istanbul convention, which, he rightly said, the Government have signed and remain committed to ratifying. Some of our measures in the UK, however, go further than the convention requires in some areas.

The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) raised the need for CAFCASS workers to be trained. I should point out that CAFCASS workers do receive comprehensive training. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) made a variety of sensible points. He rightly observed that, in a number of areas, the Government have already taken measures, some of which I have referred to. It is important to see how those operate and keep them under review. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised the impact of domestic abuse on victims.

I have left to the end the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith). She asked a number of questions, one of which was about the scope of the review and whether we will consider options for reform of the family justice system in the consultation that has just closed. I can tell her that that will form part of the consultation exercise. I left her to the end because she mentioned the terrible story of Claire, for whom we all must feel sympathy. I hope that this Government, with the support of hon. Members across the House, continue to bring forward measures to protect women like her, to help support them and ensure that her story is not repeated.

In closing, I hope hon. Members will agree that we have taken positive steps to improve the family justice system and its response to domestic abuse. We need to build on that and deliver further improvements. The domestic abuse consultation and the programme of work that will flow from it provides one way of doing this. I look forward to working collaboratively with hon. Members to take this important work forward.

[Jess Phillips]

Like the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson, I thank everybody who has spoken. My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) never fails to move me when she talks about Claire. I have known Claire for two years now and have heard her story a million times. It still moves me to tears every single time I hear it, because it could have been avoided.

I thank the Minister for her comments. At the latest, the timetable for changing these things must come in the domestic abuse Bill. If they are not in it, we will ensure that they are put into it. I look forward to working on the domestic abuse Bill. I am sure that we will be able to make some progress.

On the issue of CAFCASS workers receiving appropriate training, I say to the Minister that it is not working. There needs to be a Government review of CAFCASS and the way its workers are interacting with victims, as well as of settings where families go for visits. There needs to be a real look into that. Most importantly, I thank all the women who write to me every day to tell me about how we should make this system better. We should hear their voices.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered progress on protecting victims of domestic abuse in the family courts.

Legal Aid: Birmingham Pub Bombings

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) for a forensic trot-through of the problem that we face. I will not cover the same ground, but I associate myself with everything he said in laying out exactly how long we have been to-ing and fro-ing on this issue.

I feel as if I am on a merry-go-round. I have been on it for only about four or five years, from just before I was elected. I meet with the families regularly. They are in their 40th year of dealing with this issue, and I feel tired of having to bring it up once again. We have won this argument before, and we have been here before. They were refused legal aid at the inquest stage and there was a lot of hullabaloo from many of the same people who are in the Chamber today, from both parties. We won that argument, yet here we are again.

For me, the fundamental problem is inequality of arms. These people are ordinary citizens. It is not okay for the public bodies involved, whether they be police forces, Government Departments, or in this instance the coroner, to have a resource that is simply not available to the party that represents the victims. Not a single one of the families of the 21 people murdered on that night wishes to be in this position. They do not want to be any trouble and to have to constantly make these arguments. They wish, more than any of us, that we were not standing here having this debate. They wish that in a way that most of us in this place will never understand, although unfortunately some Members of the House do have personal experience in that regard. The fact that we are here again, with ordinary citizens feeling as though they were begging the state to allow them to be represented, is a source of deep sadness. I feel a bit tired by this constant battle, although having met the families I know that they are battle-weary but fairly tough.

I want to go over some of the reasons why legal aid, at this stage, has been refused, most recently to my constituent Margaret, who was the mother of one of the victims. Just to big up the women who come from my bit of the world, hon. Members will never meet a woman as tough, steely and certain as this woman. She makes me look like a wallflower.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Good God.

[Jess Phillips]

Yes—you can imagine. As her MP, I know what it is like to sometimes have to disappoint her. The fact is that as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield outlined, the most recent round of legal aid has been endorsed by the coroner as the only fair way for justice to be served in the appeal process.

The reason given to the families for legal aid not being granted is that, despite the eligibility of one applicant, the other families cumulatively have sufficient resources to fund the legal action. I know these families. They are not rich people. They are ordinary people who live in ordinary houses. They are all extraordinary people in their own way, and in what they have been fighting, but they are not like the people we meet in this building. They are not people with thousands and thousands of pounds in the bank. They are ordinary people who perhaps own ordinary houses.

Are we saying, as the state, that if someone—a normal Joe or Jill—wants to seek justice, they will probably have to sell their house? That if someone’s family is murdered, in order for them to go through the process of getting justice we will take away all their assets? My constituent will also be judged on the assets of her children—we are going to strip away those assets because they want to go through the process. What they want is justice. Taking away their assets is not an acceptable standard for any of us here; I am certain that Government Members do not feel that it is. I wish that I could hold up photos of these people’s homes, so that hon. Members could see what ordinary lives they lead. They are ordinary Brummies.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

The hon. Lady is making a very good point. There is an absurdity to any argument that justice should be means-tested, in the sense that property prices are so significantly different around the country that there is an in-built disadvantage for some parts of the country. I do not know whether the Minister knows what the average property price is in the west midlands, but the average home in the west midlands is sub-£200,000. Most people living in London could only dream of a house at that kind of level—they do not exist anywhere in London—so straight away there is an absurdity to the argument that a person’s principal home should be considered as part of a means test for achieving justice. It just is not right.

[Jess Phillips]

It certainly is not. I remember giving the figures on the day when the threshold for inheritance tax was raised to £375,000, when I stood up and told the Minister that, in my constituency, eight people would benefit from that, and they had to be dead. My husband said that that Budget day was a great day to be dead. That gives a bit of an idea of the property prices in the area that I represent and live in.

The second issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield raised was the idea that because the families have previously been successful in raising funds themselves, they could probably lean back on that. To be clear, are we saying that if families, victims or anyone else wants to seek justice, the state currently feels that it should fall to those who can shake a tin best, or perhaps run a fun run? We could dress up as—I don’t know—victims, and do the London Marathon, and see how many people wanted to give us some cash so that we could find out some of the answers that the families have waited decades for. Even for those who do not know the families and do not have personal involvement, that cannot be a standard for our justice system. Crowdfunding and who can write the best tagline on a website and bleed the most hearts should not be the most likely way for people to access justice, going up against a state actor that is paid for by the same people’s taxes—we are the same people.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend will be aware that on 6 November 2014, Nils Muižnieks, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, addressed this issue. His ruling, which we signed up to and support, was:

“It is clear that budgetary cuts should not be used as an excuse to hamper the work of those working for justice.”

We as a nation support that. Should we not extend that to this horrendous case?

[Jess Phillips]

I could not agree more. There are probably endless quotes from the bishop who did the inquiry into the Hillsborough situation, and we will almost certainly face the exact same arguments when the Grenfell disaster eventually comes before inquiries, courts and inquests. This is not just about the families in Birmingham; it is about a standard of justice. It is a David and Goliath situation, where David is the one paying for Goliath. That cannot be right, yet these families, having already lost family members, are having to do the heavy lifting for the rest of us to have a better system. For that, on behalf of anybody who has ever gone up against a state actor, we owe a debt of gratitude to families such as the Justice for the 21 families and the Hillsborough families, who are doing this on behalf of all of us to make justice better and fairer.

I worry that the Legal Aid Agency is using its powers to make decisions on whether it grants funding based on the merits of a case, and is deciding that it has authority on those merits. A High Court judge has agreed that the review should take place. It is perfectly reasonable that the coroner feels they have the right to appeal against that decision—that is absolutely fine—but it is not acceptable for the Legal Aid Agency to decide on the merits of that case. Are we saying that in the very complicated hierarchy of justice that these ordinary people have had to learn—they could probably sit legal degrees with ease now, these ordinary people with ordinary jobs, who did not know anything about this—the Legal Aid Agency now sits above a High Court judge in deciding which cases have merit? I hope the Minister can answer that question, because I am confused. She is learned; I am not learned—nobody gets to be learned just from being street smart, unfortunately. If only there was a degree in that.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend would be a professor emeritus.

[Jess Phillips]

I would be an emeritus professor in street smarts.

I feel that the Legal Aid Agency or the Government will eventually renege on this point. I associate myself with all the requests made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield, but we have had to go around the hamster wheel again to ask whether, if the Legal Aid Agency is not the route for families, justice can be served through extra funding that the Government allocate from elsewhere.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point. Most people can remember where they were on the day when this tragedy happened. It is interesting that the Government can find the money when they want to do something, but when ordinary families want to take legal action and get justice, the Government cannot find the money. I always thought it was the Government’s duty to protect people, and one way to do that is through securing justice for them. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Jess Phillips]

Quite. I cannot remember where I was on that day, because I was not yet born, yet it has stayed in the history of the city that I come from and have lived in all my life. If Birmingham were cut, it would bleed still with this unsolved disaster. After years of quite rightly hearing about the miscarriages of justice for those who were convicted of the crimes, the victims in the story have been lost, and it is now time for their story to be told.

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend—the Government will perfectly easily fund the side that fights against this. I have no doubt that the coroner will have all the resources that are needed. Why can they always find it for one side and not the other? This is not a case of people making vexatious claims that will open the door to everybody being able to make a load of claims against the state really easily. If these families have proved anything, it is that this is no picnic. It is not easy. There is nothing easy about this process, and that suggestion should be disregarded as a reason why what seems to be an austerity measure is affecting them so much.

I finish my remarks by paying a massive tribute to the families in this case. I am often proud to be from Birmingham—in fact, almost daily. These families make me incredibly proud of my city’s resolve in keeping on going.

Parole Board and Victim Support

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks and confidence in me. On this occasion, however, I fear that I am not entirely in agreement with him. I think that this needs to be a decision made by an independent body on the basis of the evidence in front of it, but it is also right that such independent bodies are conscious of the need to ensure that victims and the public more widely have confidence in the decision.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

When I did the job of victim liaison, working with probation to keep victims informed, in the west midlands, where I worked, there were many people in probation working in that area. Since the privatisation of probation, in the west midlands, there is one victims officer—for an area with 3 million people. In this review, will the very welcome new Justice Secretary look at what was taken away and potentially why an email to a victim is not enough, when a relationship is what we used to have?

[Mr Gauke]

I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks. I do not think that this particular issue is, in truth, about resources. In terms of the requests for information made by some of the victims and the forms in which that was to be provided, which were established in 2009, some of the victims also requested to be informed at a later date. I stress, however, that I want a system that works adequately for victims.

Birmingham Pub Bombings: Legal Aid

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I called this debate with the support and backing of all the Members of Parliament for Birmingham. Special credit goes to my right hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), and my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) for joining me here today. I want to say a massive thank you to all Members from across the midlands, especially the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) and the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), who have always supported the campaign. I also thank Northern Ireland Members who are here tonight to give their support. I wish to give a special mention to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who recently gave voice to the issue in this place.

Today I will focus on two areas. I want to breathe life into a debate that has become about claim and counter-claim and a very famous miscarriage of justice. It is time that in this place and outside it the story of the 21 people who died became our focus. I will also cover some of the issues that the families of the 21 victims have faced in the fight to receive fair and equal access to our justice system.

I am sure that the Minister is poised to tell the House that yesterday the families were informed that they would be granted some form of legal aid funding. That was not the case when I called for the debate, so perhaps I will do a little less fist-waving—I do love to do that—than I might have. However, their treatment and the legal funding that has been granted still pose fundamental questions that must be answered.

For Brummies, this is a bit like knowing where you were when Kennedy died. Anyone from Birmingham has a story to tell about the night of the pub bombings. My parents were driving away from the city with my two brothers—then a baby and a toddler—in the back of the car when they heard the blast. My dad returned to work the following Monday to find that a young woman he taught had been killed. That young woman was 18-year-old Maxine Hambleton.

Twenty-one people died in the Birmingham pub bombings on 21 November 1974. Those 21 people have been largely forgotten in a story that for so many people became about six men. When I was a kid, the story of the Birmingham Six was everywhere. It is worth noting that it was not the justice system that acted to correct itself in these matters; it was the actions of a Member of this House at the time—namely, Chris Mullin—that led to their release. This House has had, and can have again, an important role to play in the story.

Along with similar miscarriages of justice at the time, the story of that fatal night became, for many, a story about the accused and the war in Northern Ireland. The lives and loves of the people who died got lost; today, we must remember them. They were: Desmond Reilly, Eugene Reilly, Maxine Hambleton, Jane Davis, Michael Beasley, Lynn Bennett, Stanley Bodman, James Caddick, Thomas Chaytor, James Craig, Paul Davies, Charles Grey, Anne Hayes, John Jones, Neil Marsh, Marilyn Nash, Pamela Palmer, Maureen Roberts, John Rowlands, Trevor Thrupp and Stephen Whalley. Their names are not enough. The people who died had lives and responsibilities.

That night, six friends stood around a bar at the Mulberry Bush—like we all do after a long day’s work—sharing a pint and a joke. It was Stan Bodman’s turn to buy a round of drinks. A larger-than-life character, the life and soul of the group, his mates included John Rowlands, an electrician, a father and a husband; and John Jones, a postman, who that day had returned from two weeks’ leave. Stan’s request for drinks saved the life of the barmaid, but ended those of him and his friends. When they were found in the rubble, they were positioned exactly where they stood, in a circle—friends in death, as they had been in life.

At the same time that Stan was ordering his last round of drinks, Paul Davies was walking past the Mulberry Bush. When the bomb went off, he and his friends died outright. He was 20 years old, with a young child and one on the way. His partner never got over his death, and she died in tragic circumstances a few years later, leaving her child an orphan.

Maxine Hambleton had popped into the Tavern in the Town to hand out tickets for a house-warming party that she was planning to give. That night, Maxine and Jane Davis, who was the youngest victim, at 17, both died, their lives extinguished before they ever had time to begin. I met Julie Hambleton, the sister of Maxine, five years ago. Until recently, we did not realise the connection between our families. Julie, her family and the families of many others who died that night have been campaigning for years to find out what happened to their loved ones. I want to stress today that the victims of these killings are not confined to those who died; they include those who were injured and the hundreds of people affected through the loss, grief and fear that followed.

Last week, Julie wrote to me:

“Maxine was our sister. She had an aura of such maturity that even now when I remember her, those memories are of a young woman who had a purpose and direction in life. My memories of Maxine are very few and far between, which as I’m sure you can imagine is hard…I would love to have…memories of her…I sit here at work, writing this to you, crying, fighting to try and remember more about my beautiful, kind, generous and funny big sister. I remember how we watched Thunderbirds together when we were living in Yardley in the old cottage opposite the Church. We used to sit and watch it every week…watching these programmes helps me to feel her…presence. Our love for her will never ever die for as long as we live and we will fight until our dying breath, because we know without any doubt, that she would have died for any one of us…to get to the truth.”

The families want to know who killed their loved ones. They want to know what happened in the investigation, which is still so shrouded in secrecy and questions. After years of individual battles, the families came together to form the campaign group Justice For The 21. Julie Hambleton, who was just a kid at the time of the bombings, leads this campaign with the same tenacity and emotion as if they had happened yesterday. I admire her resilience; she has fought this for longer than I have been alive.

And so to the issue today. In June this year, the Birmingham and Solihull coroner ruled that, on the basis of submissions made by the legal teams of three of the victims’ families, there was sufficient reason to resume the inquest. It is important to state that the legal support that has been offered to date has been provided completely for free to the victims’ families. Without the fight from the families, and the generosity of their lawyers, the inquest would never, ever have resumed.

Today is 26 October, and the day after tomorrow—on 28 October—submissions are to be made on the scope and process of the resumed inquest.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her speech; she speaks for all of us. I hope that the Minister will address the months since the inquest was granted in which the families have had to wait to hear about their legal aid. That simply shows a lack of respect, and an apology for that extra delay would be useful today.

[Jess Phillips]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; I could not agree more. The families involved were told only yesterday that arrangements will be made for their legal teams to work with another firm and receive legal aid. Does the Minister think that three days’ notice on this matter is sufficient?

I stress how much I welcome the progress that has been made since I called for the debate. At that time, the families still had no idea whether they would be granted funding at all, even though they applied for exceptional case funding from the Legal Aid Agency in January this year, and the resumed inquest was granted in June. In the meantime, the families also applied to the Home Secretary to seek the use of the Hillsborough funding and administration scheme. The families have been given messages of support all along the way from the former Home Secretary, who is now the Prime Minister, the new Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary. However, those warm words proved to be little else. The legacy of what happened at Hillsborough marked for many a turning point in how the families of those bereaved or injured in large public disasters would be treated. Lord Wills, in speaking to his Public Advocate Bill in the other place, stated that when he met families of those that died in Hillsborough in 2009, one

“message that came through over and over again was that they wanted to find a way to prevent other similarly bereaved families suffering and having to endure in the way they had suffered and endured for 20 years.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 January 2016; Vol. 768, c. 1519-20.]

The Prime Minister should rightly feel proud of her role in how the Hillsborough families finally got justice, but I am afraid that the systemic problems that these brave families fought against still remain. The current Home Secretary said that funding the Birmingham pub bombing families through the Hillsborough scheme would not be appropriate, but I take real issue with that judgment. Both the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have cited the way in which the inquests on the 7/7 bombings were funded, even though the scheme that those families used is no longer available, as the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 removed it.

The bereaved Birmingham families feel that they were strung along by the Home Secretary on this matter, and ultimately let down. They tell me that she told them that she had written to the Justice Secretary to give her support for exceptional case funding from the Legal Aid Agency. When Julie Hambleton and I approached the Justice Secretary in Birmingham, she seemed to have no knowledge of the case. The families then received a letter from the Justice Secretary saying that neither she nor any politician could influence the outcome from the Legal Aid Agency, which seemed contrary to what they had been told by the Home Secretary.

With three days to go before the process is to begin, the families are informed of an arrangement that has strings attached. They feel they have been misled and fobbed off. I ask the Minister to bear in mind that these are families who lost their sisters, mothers, brothers, daughters and partners. They are just ordinary working-class people who are trying to fight for justice in the face of powerful actors whom they already do not trust. The appalling way in which the funding for their case has been handled pushes them—and, I have to say, me—into really doubting that those in power want to see justice done. As with Hillsborough before, this is a David and Goliath fight.

The former chief coroner, who will chair the resumed inquests, called for parity of funding in inquests where there is state involvement.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a valuable speech. On seeking parity, would it not be useful to know how much public money is being made available to fund the legal costs of the police and other Government agencies in this case, and how that compares with the help for the families?

[Jess Phillips]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The former chief coroner, who will chair the resumed inquest, called in his annual report for exactly the same level of parity. Parity of funding means at the rates available to other parties to the resumed inquests. West Midlands police has apparently set aside £1 million so far. Former police officers will be represented through the Police Federation, and Government Departments will no doubt be represented by lawyers from the private sector.

Tonight I ask whether the legal aid for the relatives of the victims of the Birmingham pub bombings is appropriate or sufficient. I accept that it might be appropriate in many circumstances, but Hillsborough gives us a successful model, and there has been no explanation of why that cannot be replicated in this case or, in fact, in future cases of this kind. That is in the gift of the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady is speaking passionately from the heart. It is clear that the process lacks compassion for those who lost loved ones in the Birmingham bombing atrocity. Does she agree that the relatives should receive the same support that was given to the victims of Hillsborough so that they can find out the truth about what happened to their loved ones, who were murdered by IRA terrorists so horribly many years ago?

[Jess Phillips]

I think that this and other cases that will almost certainly be discussed in this place will require a specific mechanism for the future.

Will the Minister guarantee today that legal aid funding will provide the Birmingham families with parity? As a Birmingham tax and rate payer, and as a representative of Birmingham tax and rate payers, all I ask is that fairness is considered when our money is spent. Hundreds of my constituents and thousands of Brummies have signed petitions and written letters in support of the families. Without the certainty of parity, how can any of them—and, in fact, any citizen in this country—ever believe that if the worst were to happen to their relatives, those responsible would face justice? So many people in this country believe that powerful establishment figures act against them. The levels of disillusionment in the UK today should worry us all.

The Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and said that she would fight against burning injustice. She said:

“When we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful, but you. When we pass new laws, we’ll listen not to the mighty but to you.”

I stand here today to ask on behalf of the ordinary families in Birmingham whether this Government will help them to be mighty and powerful, or are those words worthless?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Courts and Justice (Sir Oliver Heald)]

May I join in the tributes to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and pay tribute to those who have supported her? We have heard tonight from the hon. Members for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), and from my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight).

I was a young student when the bombings happened. Like others of my generation, I remember the sense of deep shock and horror at this event in November 1974—it was shortly after the general election when Harold Wilson won by a narrow majority—when bombs exploded in two public houses in central Birmingham. Twenty-one people were killed, and 222 others were injured. At the time, it was the deadliest act of terrorism that had happened in Great Britain since the second world war. It caused great shock, not only in Birmingham, as the hon. Lady has said, but right across the country. People were horrified by what had happened. I remember the deep national mood of mourning at the time. The Government express their heartfelt sympathy to the friends and the families of all the innocent people who lost their lives in that shocking crime, and to those who were injured and had their lives changed by this awful event.

There are inquests where families need more help than they would get in an ordinary—if one can call it that—inquest, which is a matter of finding out fairly simply what the situation was, with the coroner asking the questions. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which has been mentioned, enables the provision of exceptional case funding for representation in such cases if certain tests are met. The Legal Aid Agency decides legal aid applications entirely independently, which is why Ministers have said—rightly so, I think the hon. Lady would agree—that it is not for politicians to interfere in its independent decision making.

Two applications have been received by the Legal Aid Agency. So far, one has been granted and, as the hon. Lady said, a way has been suggested of finding the other application to be within the rules. Those applications do not cover all the families who have been bereaved, so there may be further applications. I welcome, as she has, the fact that one of the applications has been accepted and that a way has been found to proceed with the other.

The Birmingham and Solihull coroner, Louise Hunt, has decided to reopen the inquests into these deaths, because she felt that there was sufficient reason to do so. That is partly because of the campaign that has been waged to resume the inquest and to look at the new evidence, which she feels should be investigated. I do not know whether the hon. Lady would agree, but I take the view that there is a role for campaigners to get behind an issue, to press and to push, and for Members of Parliament to help them. She mentioned Chris Mullin, and it is true that he took part in such a campaign, as she is doing in relation to this.

The exceptional case funding scheme is not intended to provide a general power to fund cases that fall outside legal aid. Legal aid is fundamental to our system. Resources are not limitless, as we all know, and it is always necessary to make sure that public confidence—

[Jess Phillips]

I wonder whether the fund that the other actors in the inquest will have is limitless.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

That is a point that the hon. Lady has made. I will come to it in a second, but I think there is an issue here that needs examination. The decision about whether to provide legal aid funding in an individual case should not be a political one. It is solely for the director of legal aid casework at the Legal Aid Agency to decide whether a particular case is within the regulations and the laws, which we in Parliament have set.

On the overall position mentioned by the hon. Lady, I want to make it clear that we acknowledge there is a wider issue. It turns on the perception that, as she mentioned, families in very difficult circumstances with complicated cases have gone unrepresented while public bodies and individuals are represented at a cost to the public. The Ministry of Justice and the Home Office are rightly working collaboratively to consider that issue.

As the hon. Lady said, the families at the 7/7 inquest received legal aid exceptional case funding, which was under an earlier scheme. The issue related to the terms and conditions for receiving legal aid. In fact, it is obvious from what has happened in recent days that it is possible to receive legal aid under the current scheme.

Questions have been asked about other possible funding arrangements, and the arrangement used for the Hillsborough families—the Home Office made direct grants for representation at the hearing of inquest—does raise a question. The Hillsborough inquiry was expertly conducted by Lord Justice Goldring, who investigated the case in a very sensitive, effective and thorough way, but there are lessons to be learned about the tragic history of Hillsborough. As the hon. Lady may know, Bishop James Jones, who played a distinguished part in tackling the Hillsborough case, is preparing a report on how it was dealt with, and we want that report to inform how we take this work forward.

Domestic Abuse Victims in Family Law Courts

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I want to start on a positive note in a debate that has so far been incredibly moving—even to those who are the most battle hardened and battle weary, like myself. The positive is that, this morning, the Government released information about the protection of women’s refuges from some of the changes going ahead to housing benefit legislation, and I pay credit to the Government for finally listening on that issue.

On these matters, we must work together in the House, and the stories that we hear today have got to go some way to getting change in this area. This is now our next fight, and I think it is a fight the public are going to get pretty involved with because I believe “The Archers” is about to enter the family courts, if what Rob Titchener said at the end of the episode on Friday is anything to go by. That has done a huge amount to raise awareness of the issue, and the family courts really need some of that.

I pay huge credit to my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and for Hove (Peter Kyle) and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing the debate. The testimony about Claire’s story from my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge was incredibly moving.

We have heard heartfelt and heart-breaking accounts of what is happening to victims of domestic violence in the family courts, and this debate is incredibly important for a number of reasons. The first is to send out a rallying cry to all the victims in this country and their children that, down here, in this bubble, we can hear them. The family courts in this country—for those who have never had anything to do with them, and for most of the people who have—are incredibly secretive. They are wrapped up in confidentiality, with children being called P1, P2 or X4. For that reason, the family courts get no media attention, and it is difficult to report on what goes on there. So, today, here in this place, is our chance to flood that darkness with some much-needed light to see what our institutions are really doing for the people in the UK.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is still much, much work to be done to ensure that the police get the cases to court? My constituent Louise suffered the most terrible abuse but has never had that day in court. That is not just a personal tragedy for her but a national scandal for us all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jess Phillips]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Actually, in this place, we have some reasons to be really proud of the efforts that have been made by successive Governments, year in, year out. The laws in this country are relatively good when it comes to domestic violence. Where we fail, time and again, is in how we implement those laws. We do not need to look much further than very many reports assessing how the police handle cases of domestic violence to see that we need to do more. Sometimes, in this place, we make up laws that open an enormous door into an empty room. That is a problem for victims.

I want to say something to the victims who may be watching this. Lots of them have been in touch with me to say that they want their stories to be told and heard. The most important message, which I am sure that everybody in this place wants to say and which victims of domestic and sexual violence rarely hear, is, “We believe you.” If every single one of us could tell everybody to stand up and say those three words—“We believe you”—we could change things for victims of domestic violence, who are frequently disbelieved by every agency they are put in front of.

The second reason this debate is so important is to educate ourselves as legislators. My hon. and very dear Friend the Member for Hove and I have chatted about this subject many times over the past six months. On many occasions, he has bounded up to me and said that he has been stunned by a case that he has, as though it is the worst case in the whole world. I am sure that he will give voice to some examples of those very shocking stories. He is always so shocked, horrified and angry about every case. For me, these cases have become more expected. My years of working with victims of violence have in many ways numbed me to some of them—although I am only human.

[Mrs Moon]

My hon. Friend talks about her years of working with victims of domestic violence. I, too, worked in that field, and one of the things that I found most frightening was that courts tend to think of domestic violence only in terms of bruises or injury. “The Archers” has been brilliant at showing the impact of coercive and abusive behaviour, but there is an incredible naivety in believing that coercive and abusive behaviour to mothers would not also happen to children. If legal aid were available, it would be huge help to those women in protecting themselves.

[Jess Phillips]

I could not agree more. I will come on to the legal aid issues in a minute.

The Government have tried, through the law, to address coercive control, but we are not far enough down the line with that legislation to see whether it can deal with something so complex. To me, it is actually not that complex. We are always making the excuse that it is difficult to understand, but I do not find it difficult, so I am not sure why I am constantly cutting everybody some slack on this. We should be able to understand the constant gaslighting that goes on. “The Archers” has definitely achieved something. In the case of Henry, the small boy in “The Archers”, there is no doubt that that child has been coerced and controlled. It is harrowing; I feel chills even thinking about it.

Going back to my lovely hon. Friend the Member for Hove, on one occasion he ran up to me and said, “Jess, I just don’t understand why people are still walking around in the street. How can they carry on with their lives when this is happening? Why are they not screaming out about the awful family court system?” Today, in this place, we have a chance to help colleagues, and, most importantly, Government Members, to see what we—all of us as a country—are sanctioning in our court system. Here, in this place, we have the power and agency to change this, for every victim in the country and especially for all the victims whose children have died. We must use our agency to do what they would do in a heartbeat if they were any near as privileged as every single one of us.

On our agency to change this, I turn to the report of the all-party parliamentary group on domestic violence, in conjunction with the report from Women’s Aid cited in the motion. I ask the Minister to give us some assurances about what we are going to do about this. I love warm words—I say them myself—but I want hard actions. The right hon. Member for Basingstoke and I had attempted to begin this conversation with the previous Justice Secretary. However, politics is a fickle game, and so it now falls to a fresh Justice Secretary to make her mark on the job.

It is important to state that we could be considered to be breaking the law on these issues in the UK. As a member—for now—of the European Union, we signed up to specific directives on protecting victims. One directive explicitly states that we must uphold the protection of victims within our court system and contact with offenders must be avoided. For example, all new court buildings that are built—chance would be a fine thing at the moment—must have separate waiting areas. Every day in the UK, we are breaching that law. We will hear today about victims who are not just in the same waiting area but are allowed to be cross-examined, even bullied, by the very people who have abused them for years. In the criminal courts, this would be considered a severe breach of human rights. It would also completely fly in the face of the “achieving best evidence” standards, and most likely the evidence would be thrown out.

For years, people in this place, before they came here, campaigned to have children taken into video rooms. We got partitions and separate waiting rooms: those things have all happened. A quarter of the women surveyed by Women’s Aid were found to have been directly cross-examined in the family courts by their abuser. This is increasing as a direct result of the cessation of legal aid and the rising number of citizens acting as litigants in person. When, a number of months ago, I asked the Justice Department for figures on the number of litigants in person in the civil and family courts, I was told that it does not monitor that information. Might I gently suggest to Ministers—I am in a good mood because they have done something good today—that that is simply not good enough. We have to look at the trends in what is happening in our courts.

There is a pervasive myth that family courts are unfairly biased towards mothers. I think we will hear today all sorts of examples of why that is not the case. It does not matter how many times people scale buildings dressed as Spider-Man—women are still badly treated in our family courts system. This is especially pertinent with regard to those with a history of domestic violence. The domestic violence APPG inquiry found that there is no evidence to suggest that women are favoured. On average, only 1% of applicants to family courts have access refused: only 1% are told that they can no longer see their children. Seventy per cent. of all cases in front of the family courts are victims of domestic violence. So, in 1% of 70% of all cases, people are told that they cannot see their children. In three quarters of cases where courts have ordered contact with an abusive parent, children suffer further abuse. Some children have even been ordered to have contact with a parent who has committed offences against the children themselves. As we have heard, children have even been killed as a result of residency arrangements.

I want to stress that an abusive partner can force a victim into the family court, or in fact any civil court in the UK, as many times as they like. This is not a judgment that they get handed down, their case falls, and then they do not get another bite at the cherry—they can go to court as many times as they like. They can chase a woman around the country making the same claim against her, and nothing will stop that. There is no doubt that in many cases violent perpetrators use the family court system not to get their children back but to continue stalking and continue a reign of terror.

The domestic violence APPG has seven recommendations that would dramatically improve the lives of women. They fall almost exclusively in line with the report from Women’s Aid. We want to see victims and children protected and respected in our courts—at the very least to the same level that we have in our criminal courts. I have a copy of the recommendations that I can hand over to Ministers today. I really hope that they will listen to what they are hearing and act, as some of their colleagues have today, to do the right thing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

10. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision for people with mental health issues in the criminal justice system.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

14. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision for people with mental health issues in the criminal justice system.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and Family Justice (Caroline Dinenage)]

Mental health is taken extremely seriously across the criminal justice system. Mental health services are commissioned by NHS England and by local health boards in Wales, and they are based on locally assessed need. We are working with health partners to improve services in custody and in the community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we are spending £1.6 billion, so this is one of the most generous legal aid systems in the world. However, he is absolutely right that vulnerable people should be supported at every point in the criminal justice system. That is why the judiciary are trained to be able to assist those people, and the changes to the court system will support that.

[Jess Phillips]

An increased number of survivors of domestic abuse are forced to represent themselves in the family courts as litigants in person. The 2015 Women’s Aid survey found that 25% of women had been directly questioned by the perpetrator in court. Being cross-examined by the perpetrator, who may have beaten and raped them, is undoubtedly causing mental distress. What is the Minister doing to improve access to legal aid for victims of domestic abuse, as the current system is clearly not working?

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise this issue. The Government are absolutely committed to supporting all vulnerable and intimidated witnesses—especially those who have been subjected to domestic abuse—as well as to helping them give the best possible evidence and to seeing offenders brought to justice. That is why we have put in place measures that give witnesses the ability to give evidence using things such as a screen in the courtroom or a live videolink from a separate room or a location away from the court building. The hon. Lady will also know that, following the Court of Appeal judgment, we are taking immediate action to change our arrangements, and we are more than doubling the original time limit for evidence in domestic violence cases, from two to five years, and introducing a provision on the assessment of evidence of financial abuse.

International Women’s Day 2016

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) for securing the debate. Members will not be surprised by what I rise to speak about.

In 2015, a woman was murdered in the UK every three days—women murdered by men who they should have been able to trust. Commonly, women are murdered by their partners, husbands or boyfriends, but also in some cases by their fathers, sons or brothers. We wish to give voice to honour the women who died.

Today, I stand to honour every victim in the fight to end violence against women. Here are the names of the women who have died since International Women’s Day last year: Lucy Ayris, aged 25; Alison Wilson, 36; Janet Muller, 21; Sarah Pollock, 41; Jill Goldsmith, 49; Zaneta Balazova, 23; Cecilia Powell, 95; Marian Smith, 74; Violet Price, 80; Karen Buckley, 24; Susan Davenport, 63; Sandra Thomas, 57; Sarah Fox, 27; Bernadette Fox, 57; Aileen Bell, 60; Frances Cleary-Senior, 49; Tracey Woodford, 47; Mariola Cudworth, 36; Anna Rosenberg, 43; Wendy Milligan, 46; Gloria Perring, 76; Mahala Rhodes, 42; Marta Ligman, 23; Emma Crowhurst, 36; Joanna Doman, 55; Shigi Rethishkumar, 35; Neha Rethishkumar, 13; Niya Rethishkumar, 13; Grace Kissell, 33; Jan Jordon, 48; Ramute Butkiene, 42; Anne Dunkley, 67; Phyllis Hayes, 65; Nazia Akhtar, 31; Nadia Khan, 24; Jennifer Edwards, 45; Stacey Henderson, 35; Rita Stephens, 67; Jennifer Williams, 25; Amy Smith, 17; Anita Kapoor, 34; Linda Norcup, 46; Lisa Anthony, 47; Ava Anthony, 14; Lorraine Barwell, 54; Laura Davies, 21; Tracey Baker, 42; Florisse Corette, 81; Jill Moon, 62; Isobel “Becky” Parker, 23; Gillian Phillips, 54; Amal Abdi, 21; Jenny Foote, 38; Miriam Nyazema, 35; Denisa Silman, 25; Jennifer Dornan, 30; Jan Bennett, 67; Laura Holden, 36; Elife Bequ, 34; Katelyn Parker, 24; Elizabeth Nnyanzi, 31; Wendy Mann, 26; Lauren Masters, 20; Sam Ho, 39; Natalia Strelchenko, 38; Julie Collier, 55; Karen Reid, 53; Petra Atkinson, 42; Anne-Marie Cropper, 47; Nicola Cross, 37; Shelley Saxton-Cooper, 45; Sarrah Garba, 27; Jourdain John-Baptiste, 22; Maxine Showers, 42; Helen Lancaster, 54; Malgorzata Marczak, 29; Usha Patel, 44; Leighanne Cameron, 29; Imelda Molina, 49; Kerry Reeves, 26; Christine Tunnicliffe-Massey, 57; Bianca Shepherd, 58; Barbara Barniecka, 43; Kayleigh Haywood, 15; Susan Mitchelson, 45; Kelly Pearce, 36; Jean Robertson, 85; Wendy Goodman, 48; Josephine Williamson, 83; Sian Roberts, 36; Hilda Mary Oakland, 71; Ravinder Jutla, 43; Jackie Abbott, 54; Lija Aroustamova, 52; Mumtaz Member, 56; Sian Blake, 43; Kathleen Griffin, 57; Mambero Ghebreflafie, 22; Daria Pionko, 21; Katie Locke, 23; Rita King, 81; Marjorie Elphick, 83; Katy Rourke, 25; Katrina O’Hara, 44; Georgina Symonds, 25; Lisa Lyttle, 49; Andrea Lewis, 51; India Chipchase, 20; Guida Rufino, 38; Elidona Demiraj, 25; Geraldine Newman, 51; Caroline Andrews, 52; Sheila Jefferson, 73; Leanne Wall, 36; Jessica McGraa, 37; Maria Byrne, 35; Lisa Reynolds, 31; Natasha Bradbury, 28; Julie Hill, 51; and Rose Hill, 75.

I want to thank Karen Ingala Smith and the Counting Dead Women project. She does not allow these women to be forgotten; she shouts their names so we can do better. I want to note that as I read each and every woman’s story, the variety of the women struck me. These were not all poor women. They were women of every age. They were teachers, dinner ladies, doctors, dancers and daughters. Their perpetrators were not feckless drunks, but respected fathers, City bankers and eminent lawyers. Violence against women has no one face. We must do better. These women are gone. Here, in this place, we must not let them die in vain. We owe them that much. We owe them much more than what they got. [Applause.]

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I want to structure my speech around the motion, which starts by expressing solidarity with International Women’s Day, as I have done today by dressing in the suffragette colours—just one symbol of that solidarity. Underneath, I am wearing a Fawcett Society feminist T-shirt.

The second part of the motion

“notes with concern that, despite women making up 51 per cent of society as a whole, more progress needs to be made in electing women to Parliament”.

Like you, Mr Speaker, I was a member of the Speaker’s Conference on representation in this place. We have made progress. I am proud of the Labour party, which still provides more than half the women in this place, for taking the decision, which was not an easy one within the party, to use women-only shortlists. I was originally called a “quota woman”, but everyone has forgotten that now because they realise that I am quite an effective Member of Parliament.

We need to go further. I welcome the new Conservative women to the House. In some ways, I am glad that they were beneficiaries of the collapse of the Liberal party which, in my view, has done less than any other party on this issue. Let us remind ourselves why it is so important to have women here. At the moment, democracy fails if people cannot hear their voices in Parliament. Do women make a difference? Absolutely, they do.

I remember asking the Clerk of the Defence Committee at the turn of the century what difference having women on that Committee for the first time had made. I was not sure what the answer would be but, “Of course it has made an enormous difference, Fiona,” was what this rather stuffy Clerk said. I said, “What?” He said, “Well, we just used to talk about how big the bombs were, but now we talk about the families of the people who fight.” I just know that what would make me brave is knowing that my family is safe.

Women bring something additional to Parliament. One thing we achieved under a previous Prime Minister was the first ever stealth tax cut, when he could not bring himself to mention during his Budget that the level of VAT on sanitary protection had gone down. I am disappointed when we get patted on the head on some of these issues, in that the most recent san pro tax cut turned into a way of making this a kind of voluntary tax—“Guess what? We’ll give it to the Eve appeal.” I am glad that the Eve appeal is getting the money—I am a survivor of ovarian cancer myself—but if san pro is being taxed, the money should go into strategic support from the Government.

[Jess Phillips]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government should look at some of their big strategic wins on women’s issues, such as human trafficking legislation and the Modern Slavery Act 2015? Should they not focus the money on something like that?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend anticipates where my speech is going next.

The next part of the motion refers to equal pay. We have made some progress on that, but I am glad that the Women and Equalities Committee is looking at the fact that older women are being left behind when it comes to equal pay. They are being left behind in many other ways, too, so we need to try to sort that out.

The final part of the motion

“calls for greater action against FGM and other practices that are harmful to women.”

Women and the Economy

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I have worked in the care sector all my life, and I am frustrated with the lack of campaigning for better wages, as that would mean that women would not need to rely on tax credits.

Key decisions in the spending review will benefit men and women alike. The increase in free childcare will help mums and dads, and the introduction of a national living wage will help men and women on low incomes. The funding that we discussed in the previous debate on mental health services will also benefit men and women.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Maria Caulfield]

I will not because many other Members still want to speak. I am thankful that women still outlive men, and therefore the increase in the basic state pension will benefit women more than men—long may that continue. On women-only issues in the spending review, it cannot be denied that the investment of £1 billion to provide 15 to 30 hours of free childcare a week will benefit women. The introduction of tax-free childcare by 2017—that is up to £2,000 of childcare support per child per year for working families—will benefit women. Female employment is at a record high, and the gender pay gap has fallen to 9.4%—the lowest level since records began. We should be celebrating that, not criticising Members for achieving it.

The tampon tax has been much debated today. I am pleased that while the Chancellor negotiates with EU member states for the ability to zero-rate sanitary products, as he has pledged to do, the £5 million generated by the tax will be ring-fenced for women. The national living wage will benefit women—as we have heard, women in the care sector are disproportionately affected by low incomes—while 60% of the 660,000 individuals taken out of tax by the increase in the personal tax allowance will be women. I also welcome the £1.1 million investment from the superfast broadband roll-out programme that is helping to deliver the Swift project. I have been to sessions in my constituency where women just starting out in business are benefiting from that investment.

I could go on, but I will not, which will please Labour Members. If they want to be political, I am quite happy to be as well. I will not take any lectures from the Labour party, whose leader suggested that violence against women on the railways can be resolved with women-only carriages; from a party whose leader condones the segregation of women at public meetings; from a party whose leader was shamed into appointing women to the shadow Cabinet, and even then was selective in the positions he handed out; and from a party that uses all-women shortlists to force women into Parliament.

Talk is cheap. Labour Members should be supporting women, but this has been a wasted opportunity. The effective Opposition, the SNP, have really shamed Labour Members by raising important issues that we could have debated properly today. Talk is cheap, and the actions of Labour Members speak louder than words.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

The motion asks the Government to conduct an urgent cumulative assessment of the impact of their policies on women since 2010 and to take the necessary remedial steps to mitigate any disproportionate burden on women. Nowhere can this be seen as strongly as in the impact of state pension age equalisation on women born in the 1950s. In 1995, the then Conservative Government set out a timetable to equalise the pension age for men and women at 65 so that, from April 2020, women born in April 1955 or later would get their pension at 65.

In May 2010, the coalition agreement stated that a review of the default retirement age would take place

“to set the date at which the state pension age starts to rise to 66, although it will not be sooner than 2016 for men and 2020 for women”.

This pledge was broken when the coalition Government decided to accelerate the planned changes—a move that particularly hit women born in the 1950s. The changes brought about by the Pensions Act 2011 affect the lives of millions of women. It is not the niche issue that the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies) talked about. Women born in the 1950s are unfairly bearing the burden and the personal cost of the increase in the state pension age, and I feel unashamedly political about standing up for them.

Speaking to “Channel 4 News” in May 2011 about the unfair consequences of the legislation, the director general of Saga said:

“We accept that the pension age will have to rise but it is the timing and the broken promise that we feel is unfair.”

She said that women

“may have made careful plans for retirement, only to have the Government pull the rug from under their feet.”

Ironically, she is now the Conservative Minister for Pensions. Earlier this year, she told me:

“I tried hard in 2011 but there is nothing more I can do I’m afraid. It is not in my power.”

Well, it is. As Minister for Pensions, she must recognise the injustice in the state pension age changes, which she well understood as a campaigner in 2011, particularly now that the former Pensions Minister has admitted that the Government made a bad decision.

During Second Reading of the Pensions Bill in 2011, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions repeatedly referred to “transitional arrangements”, but he never put in place any fair transitional arrangements. The financial journalist Paul Lewis has looked into this and other issues, including the question of when the women were notified. He has said:

“Millions of women had their state pension age delayed—in some cases twice and by up to six years in total—without proper notice. The Government did not write to any woman affected by the rise in pension ages for nearly 14 years after the law was passed in 1995”.

The former Pensions Minister now admits it was not made clear to him that some people would have to wait an extra two years for their pension.

[Jess Phillips]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. My mother-in-law is in this category—she was not told. She left her job at what she expected to be a pensionable age, but has been left waiting a further three years before she can receive her pension. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government have put nothing in place to support those older women back into work?

[Barbara Keeley]

Indeed and I will come on to talk about their plight. It is amazing to me that the Pensions Minister realised what a bad decision he had made—he admitted that quite recently—but still more than 1.5 million women aged between 57 and 59 were not told until then that their state pension age would be rising. In the worst cases, women were told at 57 and a half that their pension age would rise from 60 to 66.

The Government have since said that anyone affected by a rising state pension age must have 10 years’ notice, while the Pensions Commission suggests 15 years’ notice. The journalist Paul Lewis concludes, however, that none of the 1950s-born women had even 10 years’ notice. Women who have planned for their retirement suddenly find, as my hon. Friend says, that they have to wait many more years—up to six years—before they can retire. They find themselves without a job, without a pension or pensioner benefits, and without money to live on.

Members have referred in the debate to the campaign group Women Against State Pension Inequality. They are not campaigning against equalisation, but they are opposed to the way the changes have been enacted and the lack of transitional protection for women born in the 1950s. My constituents have told me about how the changes are having a significant impact on their lives. Case after case that I have been told about shows how many women in their early 60s have health problems that stop them working, or that they need to give up work in order to care—we have talked a lot about care in this debate. I have a constituent forced to live off her savings after working and paying national insurance for 44 years; another is unemployed at age 61 and trying to live off £75 a week. I have spoken to women in their early 60s who have been forced on to the Work programme. They find this demeaning after 40 to 44 years of work. A WASPI campaigner called Marian contacted me. She told me she gave up work at age 62 to care for her mother and brother, both of whom have dementia. Her only source of income is a small private pension of £2,500. Her husband will now have to support her until she is 65.

The women I speak about today have worked hard and contributed to the system. Throughout their lives, this generation of women have been disadvantaged in the workplace in terms of pay because of their gender. Even now, women in their 60s earn 14% less than men. Now, they are once again being treated unfairly because of the way changes to the state pension have been enacted. Ministers must look at ways to provide adequate transitional protection. A number of Conservative Members have said that they support—I hope they do—the transitional protection that Ministers’ colleagues repeatedly mentioned in the debates on the Pensions Act in 2011.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Tenth sitting)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Vara]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. I am mindful of the fact that he was a council leader before entering Parliament, and he brings added value to the Committee, and indeed the House, as a result. I will address the issue he has referred to and the argument that there will be a reduction in housing, so if he will please bear with me for a while longer, I will tell him why I believe that these measures will not have the impact that Opposition Members seem to think they will.

The Government have taken the decision to reduce rent increases within the social sector, which is good news for tenants. Just as I did on Tuesday, I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who acknowledged on Second Reading that the 1% reduction was a good thing and that he supported it. He is a distinguished Member of Parliament, and I am sorry that the Opposition Front Bench team has been deprived of the benefits he brought to it. He is a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a former Department for Work and Pensions Minister, and commands respect on both sides of the House. Given his ministerial experience, he knows the real position, and he said that he felt the 1% reduction was necessary. To be fair to him, he said he had concerns about the housing stock; I will address those concerns shortly, as I said to the hon. Member for Bootle. However, he recognised that the 1% reduction is necessary.

Rents paid by social housing tenants in England will reduce by 1% a year for four years from 2016. That means that by 2020 they will be paying roughly £12 per week less than they would have had to pay under the current policy of increases at a rate of the consumer prices index plus 1%. The policy will also help taxpayers, who are subsidising rents through the rising housing benefit bill. It is interesting that we have heard a lot of comments regarding housing associations, but no one seems to be acknowledging the financial benefit of £12 a week to the people living in those houses.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

To return to the Minister’s point about the benefit to the taxpayer, people living in lots of different types of supported accommodation, in social housing or in housing association housing are also in work and are taxpayers. I wonder how many times we will have to repeat that point to the Minister. They are not two distinct groups. Everybody pays tax, so will he please stop making out that one group of people is paying for another?

[Mr Vara]

The hon. Lady speaks of one group. The only conversations we hear are about the people she refers to; she does not talk about the people who are paying through their taxes for social housing but do not live in it. She speaks of a distinction she would rather I did not make—she would rather that we all spoke of just one group. She needs to recognise that there is another group. Perhaps she might reflect on those people occasionally.

[Jess Phillips]

Is the Minister telling me that the taxes of people who do not live in social housing are put in one pot and the taxes of people who do are put into another, and that those pots pay for different things? Am I confused, or is that money mixed?

[The Chair]

Order. This is a debate, and I am sure that the Minister will deal with the questions that have been raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Debbie Abrahams]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Those housing providers provide housing and support to a very vulnerable group, including people with mental health conditions. The measure will affect their opportunity and ability to live independently and well.

The impact on accommodation for homeless people with support needs demonstrates how damaging the change would be for supported housing as a whole. Over 90% of residential homelessness services rely on housing benefit as a key funding stream. One homeless organisation in the north-east of England has modelled the impact of the change on the 300 beds of supported accommodation that it provides, which accommodate 1,400 disadvantaged people a year. The impact of the 1% rent reduction, assuming that other costs increase by 2% or 3% a year, is that 50% of its accommodation projects will be financially unviable in 2016-17. It is absolutely imminent. That is key. The pace of the clause’s implementation means that we will be facing problems in the next few months and I hope the Minister responds appropriately. It gets worse, I am afraid: the organisation has mentioned 100% financial unviability by 2017-18. What will happen to that vulnerable group of people?

A second organisation, St Mungo’s Broadway, provides accommodation support to 3,800 people each year across London and the south-east of England. I have visited the project here and in the midlands. St Mungo’s estimates that the 1% annual rent reduction requirement will result in it losing £1.25 million in rental income by year 4—between £250,000 and £300,000 each year. Taking into account the rental income that the organisation anticipates over that period, the overall impact on its finances over the four-year period is a loss of £4 million. That loss of income will force some projects to close, resulting in the loss of accommodation for homeless and disadvantaged people.

Mr Owen, I expect that you have experienced an increase in rough sleeping in your constituency. I was shocked recently, in the last month or so, when I arrived back in Manchester from Parliament late one night. Every 50 metres there was somebody sleeping rough. The fact that the measures will affect organisations such as St Mungo’s is serious. I have mentioned the groups of people supported by those housing providers. The providers have estimated who will be affected in percentage terms. They expect that people with learning disabilities and physical health problems, people who have slept rough and people with a history of offending, and people with alcohol, drug and mental health problems who have been accessing their services for support needs, will be affected.

As has been mentioned, the measures will have an enormous impact on services working with other disadvantaged people. A large national provider of supported housing has estimated that the change will lead to the loss of 104 schemes, removing 1,969 support spaces for clients, including 228 spaces for people experiencing domestic violence. A small specialist learning disability provider will have its operating margins reduced to 0.2% and will be forced to cancel all proposed development of learning difficulty schemes. A large national organisation will be forced to reduce planned development of extra care by 400 units, including units specifically to help people home from hospital. Such organisations reduce the pressures that our beleaguered NHS is experiencing—the measures will have a direct impact on the NHS.

There is a precedent. The principle of treating supported housing separately from other social housing for welfare reform purposes was recognised in the previous Government’s proactive decision to keep housing costs for specified accommodation out of universal credit and the benefit cap calculations.

[Jess Phillips]

Does my hon. Friend want to pay credit to Ministers for removing specified accommodation during the previous Government? It most certainly meant that, at the refuge where I worked at the time, we could maintain operations exactly as they were, and in fact develop some others. The Minister spoke earlier about listening. Perhaps we should pay credit to the Government for listening on that occasion.

Welfare Reform and Work Bill (Third sitting)

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Neil Coyle]

Well, I am asking it. Do you think it was design or accident?

David Orr: I am not prepared to opine on the thinking of others, but it will not aid simplicity in a very complex rental environment. It is just another level of complexity. The long-term implication is that there will be less housing of this kind if this measure goes through. I think that will be problematic.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Q 150 I am terrible at parliamentary protocol, but I feel that I have to declare now. If you look in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, you will see that I worked for Women’s Aid within the past six months; there it is, on the record.

I want to get some further answers on supported accommodation. It is my experience that, with the reduction of funding for Supporting People and other local authority supported housing schemes, housing benefit-plus, as we would call it in supported accommodation terms, has picked up the slack for keeping those places open. There are lots of refuges and lots of places like those you are describing for people with learning difficulties where funding for Supporting People was reduced. Organisations acted well to keep opening new beds for vulnerable people through housing benefit regulation. Will this have an effect on the supply of accommodation for, for example, victims of domestic violence, where there has already been a reduction due to the cuts in Supporting People? I ask you, Mr Graham.

Alastair Graham: I do think that the implication is that it will be more difficult to provide full supported housing and new supported housing for many types of vulnerable groups because—firstly, from a private investment point of view—it is difficult to lever in private investment on its own or in combination with capital grant, if you have to show a business model in which your rental income is reducing year on year for the next four years but there is profound uncertainty beyond year four.

As David mentioned earlier, we thought, in the sector, that we had some certainty on this for 10 years and it was much easier to have those conversations with private lenders on that basis. Any kind of new housing or new proposition that we want to make will be a lot more difficult if we have to have a business model that shows that reducing rental income.

[Jess Phillips]

Q 151 Will any excess charge that you charge the tenant—in almost all supported accommodation an excess is usually charged directly from the organisation to the tenant—have to increase, thus increasing the cost for vulnerable people?

Alastair Graham: We would need to look at all sources of income coming into the equation to see if we could still do something to make it possible to provide housing for vulnerable people. That is why we are in this business. We want to provide housing. We know that there is a huge, desperate need for this type of housing with the appropriate care and support. Unless there are the kind of exemptions that we have talked about, these reductions will just make it more difficult to provide this kind of housing.

[Jess Phillips]

Q 152 Finally, to clarify, do you think that this funding reduction could mean that, for example, victims of domestic violence will directly be charged more for their rent by third-party providers of this type of accommodation, because of a reduction in housing benefit?

Alastair Graham: I’m not sure, to be perfectly honest. I cannot say.

[Jess Phillips]

I do.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q 153 I would like to go back to the points about the financial robustness of housing associations and surpluses and so on. David, could you tell us a bit more about the geographical disparity in that? It is my understanding that, particularly in terms of assets, housing associations in London will be substantially better off than housing associations in, say, Teesside in my area. Could you say something more about what that geographical picture looks like, and the different geographical implications of this policy?

David Orr: Yes, of course, you are quite right that the basic financial strength of organisations varies hugely. If they are in an area where assets are very high value, their business has a greater degree of financial robustness underpinning it than an organisation in an area where the asset value is very low. It is more possible in some parts of the country to trade assets, and therefore maintain financial stability, than it is in others.

The impact goes back to one of the things I was saying earlier. This is a measure that sounds simple, single and straightforward, but it has a profoundly different impact for organisations in different parts of the country. In my introductory remarks I said that for some organisations, not because they are inefficient but because of accidents of history and geography, this decision could mean that they will collapse.

Having an efficiency challenge is one thing, but imposing a new measure that has the direct effect of making it impossible for good, well-run, well-managed, efficient organisations to survive is not helpful.