Dangerous Driving

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you presiding, Mrs Moon. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I pay tribute to the petitioners. I thank Brake and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety for their briefings, and I thank the Petitions Committee for facilitating the debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for her excellent introductory speech, and I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher).

Apart from the specifics in the briefings, which I will come to, my concern is that government generally, this Government in particular and society do not attach enough seriousness to road deaths—let alone those caused by dangerous driving, which cause even more pain. If there were 1,500 deaths a year in aviation or on trains, there would be a demand for a public inquiry, and with the number of road deaths stagnating in recent years, we need to address this issue much more seriously. The Government’s refusal in 2010 to set a target for casualty reductions, abandoning a 30-year consensus of all Governments since the Thatcher Administration, is indicative of the coalition and now this Conservative Government’s relaxed approach. We had seen a gradual reduction in road deaths over the decades, but since 2010 that has stalled.

Our general attitude to road deaths is far too complacent, and it sends all the wrong signals. It creates a climate of “roads deaths happen”. When they are committed as part of another crime, they are not condemned as heavily as they ought to be. It is almost as if these deaths—murders—are obscured by all the deaths happening on our roads. Road crashes are the cause of more deaths among young people than anything else. The Government proposed a Green Paper for graduated licences for new—mostly young—drivers to impress upon them how serious a step it is to get behind the wheel of a vehicle. The Green Paper disappeared.

We do not create the appropriate attitude in our new drivers: that, as many colleagues have said, they are in charge of a lethal weapon and, if they use it to cause harm or death to others, there are serious consequences. Just as we do not approach this issue appropriately from an educational or training point of view, nor do we do so from a legal one. We need to approach driving much more seriously.

I am not generally in favour of mandatory sentences because the bench and judges should have discretion, but if my family—my child or my grandchild—were the victim of one of the atrocious crimes we have heard about, I would want the full extent of the law used against the criminals who perpetrated that crime. I would want the penalty under the law to be appropriate, as so many colleagues have said. The law is lacking, to say the least, and the Government know that. They have promised change for years. The question to the Minister, who is held in high regard across the House as a man of integrity, is: when will it happen?

I turn to the briefings, and the one by Brake in particular. Brake says:

“Deaths and serious injuries on our roads cause terrible suffering every day. This suffering is often compounded by a flawed legal framework which lets serious offenders get away with pitiful penalties and allows dangerous drivers back on our roads. We are calling on the Government to finally implement the tougher sentences for killer drivers it announced in…2017”.

Two of its demands are: to bring forward legislation that implements maximum sentences; and to simplify and improve legal definitions of unsafe driving behaviour, and specifically the use of “dangerous” and “careless”. Brake continues:

“It cannot be right that the average prison sentence for a driver who has killed someone through dangerous or illegal driving is four years. When we consider that the minimum sentence for domestic burglary with no additional charges of bodily harm is three years.”

It is a very powerful point. Brake also echoes a point made by my hon. Friends:

“In 2014, the then Secretary of State for Justice…promised a full review of all road traffic offences, yet this promise remains unfulfilled.”

Why is that?

Brake also mentions the 2016 consultation:

“Brake does not, however, agree with the Government’s contentions in their response that ‘There is a risk that juries may be less willing to convict…Juries would be able to receive clear direction that a range of penalties would be available in sentencing, with precedent shown, negating this as an issue.”

Brake discussed the important issue of careless and dangerous driving, and called for the legal definition of unsafe driving to be simplified and improved. It wrote:

“The maximum sentence for causing death by careless driving is only five years, compared to 14 for causing death by dangerous driving.”

Brake discussed the contrast between the two sentences and found that

“since it was introduced in 2008…in the first few years after the new charge was introduced, the number of ‘death by dangerous driving’ convictions dropped off as the number of deaths by careless driving convictions increased. In 2007…there were 233 death by dangerous driving convictions, this then fell to 114 in 2011, when there were 235 death by careless driving convictions.”

The question is whether one rate of conviction is coming down while the other is going up, resulting in lower penalties for people found guilty of a less serious offence. Brake thinks there is a relationship between the two rates of conviction, so perhaps the Minister could comment on that.

Brake has also stated:

“Additionally, the use of the term ‘careless’ in cases where driving has resulted in death and serious injury undermines and trivialises the gravitas of the offence and its impact on victims and their families.”

The Minister knows that language is critical, and that “careless” just does not convey the seriousness of the crime. I agree.

The issue of dangerous driving is hugely important to the safety and wellbeing of all our constituents. The Government have been making the right noises and the right promises. So many deaths are caused by human actions: speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, the use of drink and drugs, or using a mobile phone—all deliberate human actions. Such actions are perhaps not criminal or serious enough for people to be charged with the most serious offence, but road deaths are caused by human beings who make decisions and do not care about the rest of us. Those people need to be brought to book.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Not for the first time in Westminster Hall, I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has said. Clearly, we must bring forward changes to the sentencing guidelines. I have listened to some incredible contributions. I wonder whether he is aware of the Don’t Motor On Meds campaign, which has not been mentioned during the debate. It focuses on the role that prescription medication can have in dangerous driving—it can often create unwittingly lethal drivers. Yes, the Government could change the sentencing guidelines, but the pharmaceutical industry could act quickly—now—to label medication much more clearly as “not safe to drive with”. Many of the charities are very good at doing that, but many of the pharmaceutical companies bury it in the small print. We are all about prevention, as well as the right punishment when tragic events happen.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The hon. Gentleman makes an appropriate point. Individual drivers have personal responsibility: when they get medication, they need to ensure that it does not impair their judgment and that they are not a risk to others on the road. Pharmaceutical companies have a role in that, because they should be printing large warning labels on medication to say: “Do you know this means you are not fit to drive?” GPs have a responsibility to report to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency drivers who are not fit to drive—be it for eyesight, mental health issues or other problems that individuals have—and individuals also have responsibility. Right across the piece, we all need to recognise that there are problems.

I have recently been looking at the issue of more frequent testing for the over-70s, because there have been some publicised cases of older drivers driving up motorways the wrong way and causing death. The evidence from other countries suggests that if mandatory testing is introduced for all over-70s or over-75s and they pass, they think they can go back to driving like they did when they were 45 or 50. It actually has a counter-effect, and it is therefore not always easy to identify simple solutions. There are no simple solutions to this.

We are driving vehicles that can kill people and the responsibility lies with us, as well as with other people and other family members to ensure that we are safe when we get behind the wheel. That is not what we are talking about today; we are talking about criminals who deliberately do things that they ought not to be doing and who cause death and destruction, and grief and bereavement, to decent families across the country. I do not point the finger at the Conservative Government, because dangerous driving has affected all parties and Governments. As a Parliament, we need to ensure that we have the right penalty to fit the crime. If we do not, people outside will feel that they are not being well represented and will be forced to take action themselves.

I believe that we need to approach driving differently—educationally and culturally. Great progress has been made on improving the practical and theoretical driving tests in recent years, but there is more to be done. We must remember that we have among the safest roads in the world—we are usually in the top three countries for safe roads, but we are still killing 1,500 people a year. Dangerous, criminal drivers are hidden among all that, and they should be taken out and identified so that they act as a deterrent to other people who commit the same crimes.

As hon. Members have said, the punishment does not always match the crime at the moment. The petitioners are waiting to hear what the Government intend to do. Like other hon. Members, I have high regard for the Minister; I look forward to his response, which I hope will give us all some reassurance.

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[Robert Buckland]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s contribution in her speech and intervention. I ask the question “How?” simply because it can very often be an issue for all of us, so ignoring it and trying to pretend that it is not an issue would perhaps be an easy way out for me as the responsible Minister.

I want to get on with this, and I know that all hon. Members present, as well as those with an interest who cannot be with us today, want to get on with it. I accept that we owe that not just to the families of those who have already been bereaved, but to future potential victims. I say that—I hope with sufficient force—because I have seen from my case experience as Solicitor General the problem with the current maximum.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher), who quite rightly mentioned the appalling case in her constituency. I became very familiar with that case because I dealt with the unduly lenient sentence reference myself; I felt that there was such a strong public interest to be served that I appeared before the Court of Appeal as Solicitor General and presented the case myself. I am glad that in that case Sir Brian Leveson, the then president of the Queen’s bench division—he has just retired, but during his long and distinguished career he took a keen interest in these cases—rightly increased the sentence to 10 and a half years.

I argued on behalf of the Crown in that case that there was justification, in cases of causing death where there were multiple fatalities, to depart from practice and to impose consecutive sentences. I felt that would be an acknowledgement of how, in cases of such seriousness, that was the only sufficient way for the court to reflect the gravity of the offending. The Court of Appeal did not accept my submissions. Therefore we are back in the position where, without an increase in the maximum sentence, the totality of the offending cannot be adequately reflected when, for example, there is more than one fatality, the driving conduct was particularly aggravated or there is aggravation because of previous convictions.

Therein, perhaps, lies some of the answer to the concerns expressed by families: that the total criminality is often not reflected by the level of the sentence. Sentencing precedent and guidelines allow that to be done when the principle of totality of sentencing is applied. Even though a charge is recorded on a particular offence that might not have merited a separate penalty, the offending should and must be taken into account when assessing the totality of the sentence. That might include having no insurance. Driving offences of that nature should be reflected in the overall sentence passed on the lead offence, which would often be the most serious matter.

I want to deal with each, in turn, of the excellent contributions that we have heard today.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I wanted to intervene before the Minister moves away from his general points. I pay due regard to his expertise as a former Solicitor General, to his explanations about complicated interpretation and definitions, and to what he said about the Court of Appeal not accepting what the Government were trying to do. However, given that he accepts that there would be unanimous support for Government legislation on this issue, can he give an indication of how long it will be before the Government come forward with proposals for legislative scrutiny?

[Robert Buckland]

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a date. That is a matter of bitter regret to me, but today’s debate will be used as an important platform to indicate the degree of concern, impatience and anger that people now feel about the delay. It certainly reinforces me in my determination to get the matter sorted out. As I have already mentioned, my ministerial and professional experience has led me to the firm conclusion that to deal with the full criminality of the gravest crimes under the definition in question, judges need that space—the ability to use their discretion.

Before I deal with individual speeches, it would be right for me to dwell for a moment on the important submissions that hon. Members have made to me, the accounts that family members have given me of their experience of the system, and my concern on hearing about aspects of the use of the victim personal statement. It would be invidious for me to intrude on proceedings where I have not read all the evidence, or seen the transcript, but I would be concerned if the reason for the editing of a victim personal statement was that somehow it would upset an offender. That seems a wholly irrelevant and inadequate explanation to give to anyone, legally qualified or not.

Surely what should drive proceedings is relevance. Having read hundreds of victim personal statements, lawyers and court practitioners are well able to distinguish when an opinion given in the statement might take matters no further; but a real sense of the effect on a victim comes through a well written and well prepared VPS. Since the introduction of the system, police officers have become better and better at drawing out from a victim or their family the sense of loss and bereavement—the whole effect of the crime on their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Those documents are important and must form a key part of the decision making in sentencing.

I was heartened to hear some families’ praise for the way individual judges dealt with each case with sensitivity, care and precision. We are fortunate that almost universally we are well served by our judiciary, who find such cases particularly difficult. I have spoken to many of them, and they feel at the end of a case a sense of inadequacy about what cannot be undone, and what cannot be restored to the families and loved ones of those who have died.

I thank the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston, who made a significant contribution to the debate, not just for her speech, but for her persistence in working with my predecessor, and with me, to ensure that her constituents’ point of view and cause are heard. Her contribution today was particularly important in that respect, and I thank her for it. She asked several questions—in particular about manslaughter. She is absolutely right to talk about the existence of that offence, which has long been part of our criminal law and remains an available option for prosecutors in certain circumstances. Those circumstances would involve cases of the highest gravity. Case law is clear that manslaughter would be charged where the facts disclosed a very high risk of death to another person—a type of offending at the very high end of culpability.

That is why the offence of causing death by dangerous driving has been a very important addition to the criminal law. It has made the test somewhat more straightforward, as opposed to that used in manslaughter. I can therefore see huge merit in marrying up the sentence level—a maximum of life imprisonment—with the advantages provided by using the test for causing death by dangerous driving. Those sorts of offences should not become some sort of legal minefield or maze. They are difficult enough for everybody involved without adding those extra complications. That is why, although the offence of manslaughter is, of course, available and is used, we must understand that it is hedged around with particular tests that mean that it is not always the most straightforward case to prosecute.

I was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) about a particularly harrowing case involving his constituents, to whom I pay tribute and who, as we heard from him, have been through unimaginable pain. He asked about the terribly distressing circumstances involving the death of a child yet to be born. He asked me to consider what can be done to reflect the loss of such a child in traumatic circumstances. He rightly anticipated the argument that I would put to him, that there is a danger in changing the law relating to the position of unborn children. Consequences for the autonomy of mothers and the ability to take otherwise lawful action must be considered carefully before attempting to change the law.

However, that is a matter that I would be happy to discuss further with my hon. Friend; it seems to me that the real issue is how to take into account the full harm and the full sense of the impact upon a family in those circumstances. We come back to the matter of harm; paragraph 3 of the current sentencing guidelines, which are now some 11 years old, says of causing death by driving:

“Because the principal harm done by these offences…is an element of the offence, the factor that primarily determines the starting point for sentence is the culpability of the offender.”

That gives us a clear indication of where the law starts from on these matters.

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[Robert Buckland]

My hon. Friend makes an important point; I am perhaps illustrating in my response the struggle, the tension and the difficulty that exist here in fully reflecting the harm and the loss caused as a result of that particular course of driving. That is why I am firm in my conclusion and the Government’s conclusion that to deal with those very serious offences, which come to the top in terms of not only culpability, but harm, judges need more headroom.

I have already thanked the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) for her important contribution. She quite rightly talked about a case involving her constituent and his family. I thank her for drawing to our attention a powerful example of how the current law is not providing the degree of justice that so many families look to the system to provide. I look forward to working with her on this issue in the months ahead.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) made an important and interesting contribution to the debate, talking about the position on road safety. He rightly reminded us that there is no room for complacency on this issue and that, while this country is among the safest in the world when it comes to road traffic incidents, there are still far too many incidents that are simply avoidable.

It is important to note that, although the hon. Gentleman says they have plateaued, road deaths have continued to fall over the past 12 years—the reduction in fatalities was some 39% in the years since 2007—but I accept that that is almost always as a result of other initiatives that have been taken, rather than better driver awareness. We have safer infrastructure measures; we have new vehicle technologies; we have better hazard perception testing; we have better trauma care, where lives are often saved that would not have been some years ago; and, yes, we have a sense of shifting social attitudes, which I am glad of—we all welcome it.

Hon. Members have referred to the fact that when it comes to drink-driving, what would have been acceptable a generation ago is no longer acceptable at all within society. That is all welcome, but we still experienced more than 26,000 deaths or serious injuries on our roads in 2017, of which 48 were young children. Too many of those incidents involved criminal behaviour, whether dangerous or careless driving, or failing to stop at the scene, and every avoidable death is one too many.

It is hard to see how the criminal justice system can ever adequately compensate for the loss and grief felt by families in these dreadful circumstances. Since 2012, however, we have seen a greater proportion of drivers who have caused fatalities through careless or dangerous driving being sentenced to immediate custody; it increased from 53% in 2012 to 60% last year. We have also seen an increase in the average length of custodial sentence for those offences.

Clearly, the courts are in some measure reflecting societal attitudes and the change in attitude that we have seen toward those serious driving offences. That is reflected by the number of people who signed the petition that prompted today’s important debate and the fact that, as we have heard, the consultation that took place was one of the most significant undertaken in recent years, because the number of responses was considerable.

As a result, not only was this proposal put forward, but two other key proposals were accepted. The first was to increase the maximum penalty for causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drink or drugs from 14 years to life imprisonment, and the other was to provide a stronger response to offences of careless driving resulting in serious injury. We propose to deal with that by introducing a new offence of causing serious injury by careless driving. It will sit alongside the existing offence of causing serious injury by dangerous driving, which was introduced in 2012.

I confess to a sense of frustration at the incremental nature of the way we deal with driving offences. If I were able to wave the proverbial magic wand, I would like to see a thoroughgoing codification of the law to make it readily and easily understandable, but I recognise that I cannot do that and that time is not on our side. Therefore, the incremental approach is the best way forward if we are to achieve real change for society, and for the families and victims who have been affected.

I was talking about the contribution of the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse, and I was particularly interested in his discussion of Brake’s helpful and important work in this field. I have probably partially answered his question about a review. Tempting though it is to use that as a cloak for inaction, that would not be good enough. I bear in mind what he says about the sentencing gap caused by the gradation between careless and dangerous driving. I do not have an easy answer about that.

Returning to what the hon. Member for Warrington North said, I do not advocate introducing an offence of reckless driving—a subjective test offence, which might better reflect the gradation in individual driving standards, but which could make the test more difficult in terms of actually proving an offence. This is a vexed question that needs to be debated properly, and I thank the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse for raising it. I do not want it to be used as a reason for further delay.

The hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) made an important and powerful contribution on the case of Jacqueline Wileman, which she has put to me before in the Chamber. I am grateful to her for having brought Jacqueline’s family to meet me some weeks ago. What they said to me was powerful, informed, measured and dignified, and I pay tribute to her constituents for playing their part in adding to the swell of pressure rightly being brought to bear today. I thank her again for campaigning in this area.

That was an important case because the prosecutors used the principle of joint enterprise to bring to book those who were not actually driving but who were part of the course of conduct in that heavy goods vehicle. That sensible use of the law will hopefully send a wider message to prosecutors that, just because an individual might not be at the wheel, it does not mean that he or she is not responsible for what happens in the vehicle and the consequences of those unlawful and criminal acts. I am grateful to the hon. Lady.

The hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) made a distinctive contribution in which he rightly talked about the number of people disqualified from driving. He asked about discretionary disqualification. It was certainly always my understanding, from practice, that to achieve an exemption under a discretionary disqualification, one had to show exceptional hardship above and beyond the ordinary inconveniences of not being able to drive. If that test is not being applied stringently, that is a matter of concern to me. It was intended not to be some cheap get-out clause, but to reflect those exceptional cases where there might be real hardship—usually not to the driver, but to people who might depend upon that person.

The hon. Gentleman made a general point about impunity and rightly prayed in aid the important work of local voluntary groups in speed watch schemes. I am a qualified speed watch operator, and I have joined many local groups in my constituency to patrol roads of particular concern, with some good effect, I am glad to say, where the behaviour of drivers has changed, with greater forethought given to the quality or otherwise of their driving, particularly in residential areas.

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about consequences and how to better use the information obtained from devices in speed watch schemes to improve conduct and enforcement. That information is usable, and I am happy to talk further on that with him, and perhaps with some of our local police and crime commissioners, to see how we can achieve further crime reduction in our neighbouring police constabulary areas. I readily take up that invitation for us to work together.

The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) rightly drew the House’s attention to the work of the Scottish Government on reducing road casualties and on dealing further with the offence of driving while over the alcohol limit. I am glad to say that, on the south side of the border, work continues within Government to pursue the strategy set out in the 2015 road safety statement, which drew together a number of important safety measures. That statement resulted in a number of successful bids to the safer roads fund from right across the country; increased penalties for drivers who use handheld mobile phones while driving; and—I think rightly—learner drivers being allowed to go on our motorways, thereby obtaining vital experience before qualifying, rather than leaving it until after qualifying, which I always thought was an odd way to train new drivers.

That road safety statement is refreshed and improved upon periodically; this work is ongoing. As always in the sphere of criminal law, before and after devolution, much we have learned from the Scottish criminal justice system has been used here. While I cannot make any commitments relating to drink-driving legislation on behalf of my colleagues from the Department for Transport, we watch with great interest the effect of those changes on behaviour within the population. I note the figures that the hon. Gentleman cited on the reduction of drink-driving incidents, which I found extremely informative.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The Minister mentions the road safety statement, which was welcome and made a difference. It is refreshed occasionally, but that is now overdue by at least six months. The Department for Transport was supposed to produce it, and the reshuffle has delayed it even further. Perhaps he can have a quiet word with his colleague at Transport to find out when it will arrive.

[Robert Buckland]

My colleague will hear that. I am told that the statement is due later this year, so they had better crack on with it.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

It was due at Easter. It is now summer.

Assisted Dying

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point, because it allows me to point out that the Netherlands law is a completely different law, and I would vote against it if anyone proposed it in the House of Commons. It is a law to enable people to commit suicide more or less whenever they want. That may work for the Dutch—I have nothing but respect for the Dutch people—but I could not vote for it, and I do not believe that it would get more than 100 votes in this House.

What we are proposing is something that has existed in the state of Oregon in the United States for 20 years, and it has never crept anywhere near being the kind of law that the hon. Gentleman is talking about. Yes, of course, there will be much more lax and liberal laws of assisted suicide in other jurisdictions. That is of no relevance at all to the question of whether, in the final six months of a terminal illness, a narrow assisted dying law, with legal and medical safeguards, can operate safely in the United Kingdom, as it does in Canada and in the state of Oregon. I am entirely confident that it can.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nick Boles]

I must wind up, because Madam Deputy Speaker has pointed out that there are many, many Members who wish to speak.

I am keen to hear from as many Members as possible during this debate. I will listen to all contributions with sincere respect, because this is a very difficult issue and one on which I myself have changed my mind since 2015. Before I sit down, I would just like to say a word on the role of religious faith in the debate about assisted dying.

I admire people who are blessed with religious belief. My own father was, and I envied him. Faith groups play a very positive role in our society and I salute them for it, but this country is a democracy, not a theocracy. When we make our laws, we must focus on men and women, not on God. Parliament was right to legislate to allow abortion for women in the early months of a pregnancy, despite the opposition of Church leaders. Parliament was right to legislate to extend the institution of marriage to gay people although most organised religions still consider homosexuality a sin. When Parliament next debates the reform of our laws on assisted dying, I hope that it is not religious doctrine, but humanity—our humanity as Members of Parliament and the humanity of all those suffering from terminal illnesses—that wins the day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate; I thank the Backbench Business Committee for the time, and congratulate the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing it. I am also pleased to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine).

My starting point is the last debate on this matter on 11 September 2015—Second Reading of the Assisted Dying (No. 2) Bill, which was sponsored by the former Member for Wolverhampton South West, Rob Marris, and was moved in the other place by the noble Lord Falconer. I do not often quote myself, but I am going to do so in this case. In fact, I think this is the first time that I have ever quoted me. I said on that occasion:

“There are three key issues here…it is about having the right to choose; secondly, it is about the need to protect the vulnerable against…pressure…thirdly, it is about treating every citizen with the same degree of respect and dignity…On the right to choose, this—I should declare an interest—is personal.”—[Official Report, 11 September 2015; Vol. 599, c. 666.]

As many colleagues know, before coming to this place I was a firefighter in the London fire brigade for 23 years, during which time I worked with asbestos. Its heat-resistant properties meant that the fire service used it for all manner of things. For example, we had asbestos gloves and hoods.

I do not know how many people have seen the terminal stages of those with asbestosis or mesothelioma. It is not pretty. It is not as bad as some of the deaths we have heard about—my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) spoke about his dad and we have heard about people with motor neurone disease—but it is not pretty. If that is what lies in store for me, I want the right to choose. I want the right to choose for myself and for everyone faced with that kind of situation, and I challenge colleagues who would deny me or anybody else the right to a dignified end.

Like most people, I want to die in my own home with my own family, and in as much comfort and as little pain as possible. Earlier, I tried to intervene on the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford regarding the references he made to Oregon. One statistic I have not heard quoted in the debate so far is that one third of patients who request assisted dying and meet the eligibility criteria in Oregon do not take the life-ending medication; rather, they want it as an insurance policy. Many actually die of their underlying condition—in some cases outliving their prognosis and not taking the medication because they want to live for as long as they can without suffering.

If I was to be denied the right to choose, I could afford to jet off to Switzerland—this point has been raised by several times Conservative Members—because I have the money, the savings and the pension. However, how many of my constituents in Poplar and Limehouse could afford to do that? Not many, and even if they could afford it, the uncertainty of whether their family members would be investigated by the police for having helped is a nightmare for somebody hoping to die peacefully.

The right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) quoted Lord Sumption. The fuller quote says:

“I think the law should continue to criminalise assisted suicide, and I think that the law should be broken from time to time…It has always been the case that it’s been criminal, but it’s also been the case that courageous friends and families have helped people to die…I don’t believe there’s a moral obligation to obey the law. Ultimately it’s for each person to decide.”

Coming from somebody who is a judge in the Supreme Court, that is absolutely breathtaking. The courts have challenged Parliament to address this issue and to clarify the law.

What we have is confusion. The clarification of the guidance by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) when he was the Director of Public Prosecutions, while done with integrity and courage, does not eliminate the risk of prosecution, or certainly investigation and caution. Different constabularies, different doctors and different standards mean that we have not just a two-tier system but a multi-tiered system, and it does not protect the vulnerable. The Bill proposed by the former Member for Wolverhampton South West had 15 safeguards written into it. The law is not as strong today as it would have been had my hon. Friend’s excellent Bill been passed. We need better safeguards, and the 2015 Bill would have provided them.

I want to conclude by thanking the families of the bereaved and campaigners such as Dignity in Dying for the progress that we are making on this issue—because progress is being made. Public opinion is changing. The Lords is almost there and the Commons is slowly coming in behind. I think that eventually we will provide the people of Britain with the right to choose their own end.

Road Safety and the Legal Framework

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you presiding over the debate, Mr Betts. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on securing this important debate. I also thank the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, Cycling UK and Brake for their briefings.

Today’s debate concerns the legal framework. First, the police need to catch those who break road safety laws, and to do that they need to be there. I would be grateful if the Minister advised us on what discussions he has had with Ministers in the Home Office about the loss of road traffic officers in recent years. Secondly, sentences need to be handed down. Thirdly, there need to be clear legal definitions and fair punishment.

As we have heard, Cycling UK, along with road crash victims’ charities Brake and RoadPeace, are calling for the Government to review road traffic offences and penalties to ensure that the law delivers just and safe outcomes for all road users. I was concerned to learn that the number of driving bans imposed by English and Welsh courts has declined by 60% in 11 years, from 155,000 in 2005 to just 62,000 in 2016. Will the Minister clarify what is happening?

In June 2017, more than 10,000 drivers in Britain were still allowed to drive despite having more than 12 points on their licence, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth mentioned. Will the Minister tell us whether that troubles him? Moreover, last year, police forces in England and Wales carried out the lowest number of breath tests since records began in 2002, according to Home Office figures. Is that indicative of a policy change from the Government, or does it also reflect a reduction in police traffic officer numbers?

The prevalence of uninsured drivers, which PACTS links to dangerous driving, road casualties and wider criminality, is also worrying. Will the Minister advise on whether that troubles him? What discussions have taken place with the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs Council to address those matters?

Along with PACTS, I support the establishment of a new offence of causing death or serious injury by dangerous and careless cycling. However, we would like the Government to commission a broader review covering a wider range of dangerous road behaviour, rather than focusing just on cyclists. Cycling UK has issued suggestions on what such a review, akin to what was promised in 2014, could examine. It advises that the review should clarify the definitions of “dangerous” and “careless”, review the accompanying maximum sentences, remove the ability of convicted drivers to avoid driving bans routinely, increase the £1,000 maximum penalty for car-dooring, and ensure that any revisions to cycling offences and penalties reflect key differences between driving and cycling.

Clearly we need a full review. As a cyclist myself, I see other cyclists ignoring the rules of the road. Some cyclists need a judicial shock, but other road users need one even more. The numbers killed and seriously injured on our roads have stagnated in recent years. The Ministry of Justice has an important role to play in protecting the vulnerable and reducing those figures. I look forward to hearing how the Minister intends to assist with that project.

First-tier Tribunals and Freeholders

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am delighted to be here this evening. There have been several obstacles to the debate taking place, but we are here none the less, and I am pleased to see the Minister in the Chamber.

I secured the debate to highlight some of the things that seem to have gone terribly wrong with the property tribunal procedures. We know that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is committed to reforming the law in respect of leasehold tenure, but the Ministry of Justice needs to do more in respect of first-tier tribunals. I am grateful to Martin Boyd of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership for his extensive assistance with this speech, and I am glad to see other colleagues who take an interest in these matters in the Chamber.

The property tribunal, or first-tier tribunal, is described as “quite informal” by the Government-funded Leasehold Advisory Service, which states:

“Tribunal hearings are quite informal. You can state your own case or have a friend or professional to speak for you. The Tribunal normally sits as a panel of three consisting of one legally trained member, one surveyor and one lay person to provide a balanced perspective. The Tribunal panel have control over the hearing and will decide in which order things are dealt with…You may require the services of a solicitor.”

That might be a correct statement in respect of some smaller cases involving smaller landlords, but in almost all large cases, or in cases involving large landlords, the tribunal process can be not only horribly complex, but formal and expensive.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

This is an important issue. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Law Society must do all that it can to encourage firms to provide pro bono legal advice so that help is available for tenants if they are in a tribunal facing a big-firm opponent that is lawyered up?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the advice available to individuals who seek redress in law and where they might seek it. As I will go on to explain, the playing field is not at all level in these tribunals. I hope that the Minister will comment on that later.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I was under the impression that first-tier tribunals were meant to be informal. We do not really want lawyers there; we want tribunals to look at the case and to give a decent, sensible, honest judgment.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. He is quite correct that these tribunals are supposed to be an informal means of dispute resolution, although it is thought appropriate for people to have some legal advice if they need it. However, we now regularly see highly specialist barristers and even QCs appearing for landlords before what are often part-time solicitor judges in what are meant to be our lowest form of court. Cases often go on for days, with landlords’ counsel ponderously reviewing the most basic elements of a lease and the simplest issues of law. In some cases, tribunals seem to allow counsel to pontificate on the rights supposedly provided to leaseholders, which can be either uneconomic or impossible to apply. It may be true to say that the tribunal procedure rules are less formal than the civil procedure rules in the main courts, but this often seems to work to the benefit of well-represented landlords rather than leaseholders. Landlords are often able to ignore tribunal procedure rules with impunity.

There is a total costs imbalance at the tribunal. What was meant to be a low-cost forum has now become a costs regime that benefits only one side, and that side is the landlord. It is a one-sided arms race. In almost all cases, the landlord now arrives at the tribunal knowing full well that they will probably have a right to their costs under the terms of the lease. The tribunal has some powers to limit costs, but those powers are often ineffectual and may not be applied, even if the leaseholders win. Conversely, the leaseholder arrives at the tribunal knowing that they have no right to recover their costs under almost all circumstances.

Let us take a hypothetical situation in which a landlord overcharges 1,000 leaseholders £250 each. If the individual leaseholders want to dispute those charges, a single letter from their solicitor will probably cost them more than they could ever recover, but the landlord can afford to invest a substantial amount of the £250,000 that they may have overcharged to defend their position.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is raising an important point in his very important speech. Does he agree that this disparity of resources and funds is particularly iniquitous when the landlord is a charity and is using the funds not to give the leasehold to their tenants? That is the case with the St Mary Magdalene and Holy Jesus Trust in Newcastle.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. It is very dispiriting to see charities and other institutions that one imagines would be on the side of morality and fairness being caught up with offshore tax evaders and individuals who are unscrupulously taking money from leaseholders hand over fist and not actually looking after the building. Some institutions and individual organisations that are freeholders and landlords aid and abet developers to make this an unlevel playing field, and that is most dispiriting.

Let me go back to the point that I was making. If leaseholders want to take joint action, and that is if they can actually find each other—in multiple developments, there are investors who own the properties and people who sublet the properties, so it is not always easy to find them—someone will have to take on the burden of the work, knowing that they will never be paid for their time and effort. Almost inevitably, the leaseholders will recover only part of the £250,000, given that the test of reasonableness for costs at the tribunal has no concept of “good value”, let alone “best value”. Even if the leaseholders win, and the tribunal limits the landlord from passing on costs, it may not happen. With many developments, leaseholders have found that it is heads the landlord wins, and tails the leaseholders lose.

Under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, a badly managed development can apply to the first-tier tribunal for the appointment of a manager independent of the landlord who has mismanaged the site. This is known as a section 24 appointment. Removing a landlord’s management can be difficult. It can take more than one attempt, and each time costs are awarded against the leaseholders. Those costs can run to several hundreds of thousands of pounds—more like Supreme Court costs than those of first-tier tribunals. Freeholders can try to obstruct the court-appointed manager from doing his or her job. Some have been known to try to block residents from forming their own association to represent them. I have residents who have successfully resorted to the tribunal system to force the freeholder to recognise them. In one instance, the landlord appointed a Queen’s Counsel to fight their case, and they compared residents’ associations to 1970s militant trade unions—in this instance, the leaseholders were City professionals. Incidentally, as a 1970s trade union member myself, I feel a bit insulted that that was said as some kind of disparaging comment. Despite losing, the freeholder and landlord sought costs for a half-day hearing totalling £74,560, which the leaseholders had to pay. It is surreal.

Landlords in the social sector have also started to use highly expensive counsel. The Government could and should do something to stop this practice when the process should be about the facts of the case, rather than convoluted arguments about the law. I give as an example a social landlord in my constituency who also happened to be trying to stop a residents’ association from being recognised. The landlord went so far as to take a group of residents to the tribunal in three separate cases. The landlord presented a bundle of documents only on the day of the hearing in the second case, which was put down to “an internal reorganisation”, but also registered errors of fact from the original hearing. Only after a third hearing in the upper tribunal was the matter finally settled, with the residents gaining their formal recognition. Even though the leaseholders won in the second hearing, the landlord still sought to obtain not just a costs award, but a wasted costs order against the leaseholders. The net outcome of the case is that the social landlord will have less to spend on their buildings, their tenants and their residents, having spent large amounts on third-party lawyers.

That brings me to the main issue that I want to raise today: section 24 appointments. When the tribunal appoints a section 24 manager, that manager acts as an officer of the court. He or she is required to act impartially in the best interests of the building. In theory, they are meant to report to, and to be supported by, the tribunal that appointed them. The reality seems to be that, once appointed, the tribunal has little interest in supporting its manager, who may face challenges from the landlord. In one case in my constituency, the court-appointed manager sought advice from the tribunal. The tribunal has repeatedly declined to support its manager.

The purpose of a section 24 appointment is to replace the landlord’s failed management, and then effectively to set out the business plan for the management of the site. The tribunal has wide powers in drafting this order, which can go wider, giving the manager powers beyond those provided for in the lease. The first-tier tribunal has powers to move problem cases to the upper tribunal, but that does not seem to happen, and certainly not in the experience of a number of my constituents. Furthermore, there appear to be many in the legal profession who are only too happy to take advantage of a system that charges leaseholders costs whether they win or lose. That cannot be right and sounds like very unprofessional conduct. There are millionaires with fortunes to protect, and cash cows such as developments in my constituency that keep them rich.

My constituency has the second highest number of leasehold properties in the country. Some are owned by well-off City professionals who know their rights and will fight for them, no matter the intimidation and the pressure laid against them. Some of these leaseholders are young individuals, couples and families starting out who are compromised by service charge hikes, and unfair and expensive refurbishment costs post-Grenfell. They will defend their homes, but the law is against them. And some of these leaseholders are pensioners who exercised their right to buy, or subsequent buyers of right-to-buy flats and houses who are also at the mercy of a landlord who might be a housing association—a registered provider. The one thing that these people all have in common is that they will find that the first-tier tribunal disputes resolution procedure, which is supposed to be simple, inexpensive and informal, is no such thing.

The Government have recognised that leaseholders need better regulation and that their homes are undervalued and under-protected. Housing, Communities and Local Government Ministers have pronounced in recent months that they are looking at all aspects of tenure, including: spiralling ground rents; hikes in service charges; inflated refurbishment costs; overpriced insurance; outrageous event fees; forfeiture; difficulty securing lease extensions; non-recognition of residents associations; selling of houses as leasehold; and bullying and harassment. If that list was not bad enough, post-Grenfell there are the fire protection costs for the removal and replacement of defective cladding, interim arrangement costs and the rest. The first-tier tribunal is supposed to offer a simple, informal and inexpensive way forward—they wish! I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say to explain or defend the procedure as it stands because, in the experience of my constituents, it stinks.

The Ministry is on record saying that it will review leasehold tenure and all its failings, and will be bringing forward legislative and regulatory proposals in due course. This has been echoed by the former Secretary of State, the present Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, and those comments are very welcome. Governments have been trying to fix leasehold for 30 years, but both Labour and Conservative Administrations have failed. I will be grateful for some reassurance from the Minister that her Department is signed up to the Government’s reforms and will improve the legal protection available to leaseholders through the first-tier tribunal system and section 24 powers. Indeed, I would be grateful if officers of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform met the Minister, at some point in the weeks and months ahead—at her convenience—to discuss these issues. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 27th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

As always, my hon. Friend raises a very good point. I hope later to deal with part of that issue, because there are persistent offenders who assault police officers time and time again. Even when they are found to have done it time and time again, the sentences that are imposed can be derisory. If there is more robust sentencing, it is blindingly obvious that the more criminals there are behind bars, the fewer criminals there are out on the streets committing crimes. That would certainly apply here. The more of these characters we can send to prison, the less chance there will be of police officers being assaulted. My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point.

New clause 1 mirrors the Bill with 12-month sentencing powers in magistrates courts and Crown courts. Of course, magistrates do not yet have 12-month sentencing powers for one offence. In reality, they would be left with just the six months they have now. I hope that one day that will change so that magistrates can sentence people to up to 12 months for all the offences we are talking about today.

I say to the Minister that we have promised magistrates for many years that we will increase their sentencing powers to 12 months. The law has been passed; it just has not been brought into effect. The Government have promised magistrates those extra powers for many years, and the Select Committee on Justice has reported on that and said that it should be done straight away. It would certainly help in relation to this Bill. I hope the Minister will reflect on the fact that we need to give magistrates those additional sentencing powers, not least because it is much cheaper to prosecute offences in the magistrates court than to take them to the Crown court.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I seek a small clarification. When the hon. Gentleman says that “we” have promised magistrates an extension of their sentencing powers for some time, does he mean we the Conservative party, we the Conservative Government, we the coalition Government or we collectively as a Parliament?

[Philip Davies]

All of the above. Labour introduced this power in legislation, but did not enforce it. The Conservative party has promised it in manifestos and still has not delivered. The previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, promised it to the Magistrates Association personally and still did not deliver it. I hope that at some point somebody, whichever side of the House they are on, keeps the promise they have made to magistrates, because both parties are guilty of promising something and not delivering it.

New clause 2 would—

--- Later in debate ---

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

I am pleased to be able to make a contribution to this debate on dealing with assaults on emergency workers. Hon. Members might be pleased to know that I stand here not as a lawyer. I have been listening to the lawyers with great interest, because they put such a different perspective on things that I perhaps do not see, and I hope that I have learned a bit from them today. I wholeheartedly congratulate the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on stewarding the Bill to this stage. I should also like to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on the work she has done on protecting police officers, even before the Bill was introduced. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on his diligence and his commitment to this important Bill. He has taken a great deal of time to look into the details and to table a range of new clauses. I welcome the spirit of his new clauses 1 and 2 in particular, and his focus on police officers, but all Members will recognise the wide range of emergency workers whom we have a duty to protect through legislation to ensure that appropriate sentencing is applied for everyone. That is where I have some issues with the new clauses, in that I think they might be segmenting out certain emergency workers.

I have also listened to the arguments for the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Rhondda, and to the arguments put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who demonstrated great insight into the Bill as it stands and the possible impact of the new clauses. I will take those views into account, along with the responses of the Minister, when considering what will really work in practice. What we want from the Bill is legislation that really works. We have a duty to our emergency workers to ensure that we have a really practical Bill that will lead to fantastic results. I will expand on my arguments about the new clauses in due course.

I am delighted to stand with emergency workers in Erewash and across the whole United Kingdom as we unite in the Chamber today in condemning those who attack our brave emergency workers, many of whom are regularly prepared to put their own lives at risk so that we can go about our daily lives in a safe and peaceful manner. I pay particular tribute to the emergency workers in my constituency, including the great team of police officers whom I meet on a regular basis. Just last Friday, I visited one of my acute hospitals, the Royal Derby Hospital, where I met people in A&E and saw all the different aspects of their work. I met the ambulance people who work in conjunction with them, and I also went to the pathology department, but one of the great delights of my visit was to stand on the helipad on top of the hospital and look out all around Derbyshire. That was an amazing experience. We must also take account of emergency workers who go out in helicopters as we must ensure that we protect everybody.

I also have Ilkeston Community Hospital in my constituency. Tomorrow it is organising a bed-push to raise funds through its league of friends. That bed-push will be on the high street, but the high street is on a hill, so once again our emergency workers are going above and beyond. There will be teams from the fire service, the ambulance service, Rotary, the Co-op and Tesco, as well as a team from the hospital itself. Nurses will be giving up their free time to help to raise extra funds. All our emergency workers, whether on or off duty, are very committed, and we have a duty to protect them in whatever way we can.

With the support of the Government—in particular the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), and the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice—and the support of the whole House, I am certain that following today’s debate and the Bill’s safe passage through the other place, we will have achieved a practical piece of legislation that will afford our emergency workers the legal protection they so rightly deserve. However, while I commend the scope and principle of the Bill, once it receives Royal Assent, as I fully expect that it will, we should not view this simply as “job done”. Instead, the Bill should become a catalyst for wider public debate—perhaps leading to further legislation—about how we best protect all those in public-facing roles who provide vital services to society.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley for standing up for police officers through the tabling of his new clauses, but we need to consider emergency workers, and indeed all public-facing workers, as a whole. Many of the offences under the Bill are already criminal offences in existing law, as the lawyers among us have explained. This Bill differs by giving specific protections to emergency workers. I know that the hon. Member for Rhondda explored this earlier, but I must ask how I am supposed to console other public service workers in my constituency, such as the train conductor, the social worker, the teacher or even my own caseworker, whose contributions to society are just as vital but will not be afforded the same status or protection that emergency workers will receive under the Bill. That is something that we need to look at, and this is why I have some concerns about the new clauses.

I have spoken to countless people who carry out such public roles, and I am sure that all other Members have also done so in their time, both as MPs and during their previous careers. We know that they face many challenges from people who engage in unacceptable and abusive behaviour. All too often they find themselves in potentially dangerous situations, but they will be without the protection that the Bill gives to the emergency workers that it specifies. I think that we need to ensure that the Bill covers all those who have put themselves forward as public servants. The House should acknowledge that, and examine the issue more closely to establish whether further action, including further legislation, is required. A failure to do so would leave us open to the accusation that we have prioritised the safety and the protection of one group of public workers over another.

This long-overdue piece of legislation will serve to protect our protectors. When emergency personnel have been attacked, we as politicians have been all too quick to respond with kind words and the promise of action, but no one has ever been comforted—or, for that matter, convicted—by rhetoric alone. Today we can finally deliver on that promise of action by passing practical measures that will make a real difference to our fantastic emergency workers on the ground, while also signalling the extent of our respect, support and admiration for the vital work that they all do.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I rise to speak very briefly in support of the efforts of my hon. Friends the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Halifax (Holly Lynch) in introducing the Bill and piloting it through Committee. It is clear from all the evidence that has been presented by many Members on both sides of the House over the past two and a half hours or so that it has the overwhelming support of the whole House, although Ministers may question some of the nuances and some of the amendments.

As Members will know, I spent 23 years in the London fire brigade. There are several former firefighters in the House: the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), and me. The fire service has not featured much in the statistics that we have heard this morning, but that is because it is a much smaller service than the others, so there are fewer incidences of assaults. It has, to an extent, a different culture. None the less, firefighters have been victims of assault on a number of occasions.

More than 20 years ago in Shadwell, which is in my constituency, malicious youths were setting fires or issuing malicious false alarms to get the fire crews to turn out, then took great delight in attacking them. As a result, the local fire station introduced an intervention scheme whereby young people, including some troublemakers, attended a five-day intensive course to enhance their skills and confidence. The young people were referred to the scheme by the police, the local authority referral service and others. Over the past 20 years we have seen fire and police cadets adding to the great work done by the sea, air and Army cadets. It is important that the service has that interventionist arm to prevent kids from going down the wrong road and getting into trouble. However, the purpose of the Bill is to deal with circumstances in which people cross that line.

Spitting is one of the problems. East London has been a tuberculosis hotspot for many years, and at one point during the past 20 years it was the ninth highest TB hotspot in the world—a stunning statistic. Airborne diseases can be transmitted in that way, and aerial transmission of TB is a considerable risk. In Tower Hamlets and Newham, “No Spitting” signs have been introduced in recent years. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda referred to London councils that have reintroduced penalty charges to act as a deterrent. He also mentioned Masuaku, a member of the football team that I support, who incurred a six-match ban—not a six-month ban—for spitting. That demonstrates how seriously the football authorities take it, because such a ban is one of the heaviest punishments that can be meted out against professional footballers. The behaviour was completely unacceptable, and was deprecated by all concerned.

The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda that we do not want to send signals; we want action. I think he was being a little churlish, because he knows how important signalling is and how important signalling our intention is. However, he is right that it has to be backed up by action.

Joint Enterprise

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I take it from his words and from the emotion behind them that the door to the Justice Committee is now open and that at some future stage it will consider this matter, because I think that is one of the loci from which we can seek to bring an end to this horrendous, disproportionate nightmare, which is a stain on British jurisprudence. In this appalling situation, 40 seconds can lead to 12 years in prison, and somebody who just happens to be within a group of people can find themselves facing the best part of their young life locked away for something they could not stop, even if they wanted to.

It is often said that the House is at its worst when we all agree unanimously, but I think that this is the exception to that rule. Tribute has already been paid to JENGbA, Charlotte Henry, Gloria Morrison and all the other campaigners. I would like to think that even without JENGbA’s informed and passionate prodding, people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) would have brought the matter forward, because this is a stain on the British legal system. The Prime Minister has referred to burning injustice. Well, this injustice is burning so strongly and brightly that the smoke is almost choking us, and we cannot see the sense and sanity of the law for the obfuscation that has come from this ridiculous piece of law.

This law was originally introduced to deal with duelling. I appreciate that duelling used to be a pastime of Members of this House, but how can a provision on aiding, assisting or encouraging—or even for parasitic accessory liability—a couple of people duelling in Hyde Park a couple hundred years ago somehow lead to my constituent Alex Henry, a man with a four-year-old child whom he has hardly seen, facing 12 years in prison for what happened in 40 seconds when he was with a group of young men? How on earth can we move from that piece of medieval law to the present situation in which people are suffering?

I suggest that the reason something happened in this area of jurisprudence in the 1990s comes down to one word. It has already been mentioned by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield, who I must forgive for destroying my stereotype of stern, unbending Conservatism, because he has shown himself to be humane, decent and informed on this, for which I pay him full tribute. The word he used was “gang”. In the 1990s, there was an assumption that groups of young people—and young black people—were a threat and that they were somehow out to destroy society: they were corrosive, their music was unbearable, their accents incomprehensible, their clothes unforgivable and their activities incomprehensible to most people. I like to think that those in the senior echelons of the law are well versed in street culture, but on this occasion I think they saw gangs as a threat. They somehow transposed groups to gangs. This piece of draconian, lead-like law was brought in to crush a threat that did not actually exist. Yes, of course there is street crime and violence, but it is not confined to one group of people. Young people such as Kenneth Alexander and dear Alex Henry, who were simply out with friends, now face the life that is ahead of them because of how the law works.

There are few tasks more melancholy that visiting a constituent in prison, and one of the frustrations is the inability to do much more than sympathise and show that they are not forgotten. I think that JENGbA’s work is so crucial because it shows that these people have not been forgotten. Would it be inconvenient for the judicial system to review thousands of cases? Damn right it will be inconvenient, but I will take a bit of inconvenience over 12 years in prison for hundreds of people, seeing their lives frittered away, living in the place where sunlight comes with stripes. As far as I am concerned, they have the right to call upon the judicial system and, if necessary, to be inconvenient.

When Alex’s sister first contacted me about this case, I could scarcely believe it. I had known the family. He had lived a couple of streets away from me—later he became an economic migrant and moved down to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), but I still think of him as a Hanwell man. I wrote to the then Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). This is what he wrote in reply, in June 2014:

“In my view, the law on joint enterprise serves a useful purpose for bringing people to justice when they have been involved in the commission of an offence. I do not share the view that the law penalises innocent bystanders and no longer serves a valid purpose. We have no plans to review or amend the law at the moment.”

I am sorry, but this law does not serve a useful purpose: it penalises the wrong people, it brings the law into disrepute, it punishes wholly disproportionately, it destroys families, it wrecks individual lives and, above all, it disengages a whole group of people from the legal process, because when they see a system go so wrong, how can they possibly have any confidence in it? I have no argument today with the right hon. Member for Ashford, but I think that he was wrong. I think that his letter was based on a brief that probably came from somebody wearing a wig. As far as I am concerned, this law has to be changed.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend generously gives the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) the benefit of the doubt, but clearly he was reading from a brief and he has been proven wrong, because the Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the courts were wrong.

[Stephen Pound]

Absolutely. The Supreme Court ruled that the law had been interpreted incorrectly, but that is only half of it. Interpreting the law incorrectly is one thing, but righting the wrong is what has to happen now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am grateful to speak in this important debate, and it is always a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). I congratulate those who secured this debate, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating it some time.

When my constituent Ms Gillian Hyatt first came to see me in 2012 about her sons in prison, I thought it a straightforward case of a mum doing her best for her children despite the fact that they had offended. I commend her for pressing me to look beyond a concerned mother and to examine the JENGbA campaign. I attended JENGbA’s briefing in Parliament only a few months ago, as did most of my colleagues here today. I was shocked by consistent reports of case after case of mostly young men—including, as we have heard, a disproportionate number from the black, Asian and minority ethnic communities—who had been not only convicted but handed the severest of sentences. I commend JENGbA for its campaign, and for its briefing for today’s debate.

Like other Members, I have not heard anyone say that all those locked up are innocent. Called “inside campaigners”, some may well be, but the message I hear most strongly is that although some may be innocent, many are guilty of lesser offences. Some of those offences are much less serious, and therefore the tariffs handed down by the judges seem questionable at least. The numbers are huge, but efforts to assess how many people are involved have proved difficult. The Ministry of Justice has not produced statistics for those found guilty through joint enterprise, and one has to ask why.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 2005 and 2013, between 1,800 and 4,500 people were prosecuted for murder with joint enterprise used as part of the charge. However, I am getting ahead of myself, because the fundamental flaw in using joint enterprise to prosecute for murder was exposed, as we have heard in speech after speech, by the Supreme Court in 2016. The Court held that in 1984 the law had taken “a wrong turn”—I think every speaker has mentioned that, and it must be one of the weakest euphemisms ever heard—in the case of Regina v. Chan Wing-Siu, and it overturned the verdict of Regina v. Jogee.

Jogee was retried and found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter, and his mandatory life sentence was replaced by an appropriate sentence for manslaughter. The Supreme Court also ruled that cases prior to Jogee could only go back to the Court of Appeal if people could prove that their conviction was a “substantial injustice.” Despite the hundreds of cases at least—I repeat that the Ministry of Justice cannot, or will not, say exactly how many there are—the Court of Appeal has denied every joint enterprise appeal. Incidentally, the youngest person to receive a life sentence was just 12 years old when charged.

The common law doctrine of joint enterprise covers two types of offence. The first is “assisting and encouraging”, also known as “aiding and abetting”, and I have nothing to say about that. The other is “parasitic accessory liability”, which I find quite troubling. Even the title sounds as if the accused must be guilty of something, or has some form of vicious disease. PAL is controversial, as the secondary offender would not need to intend the crime, but merely have been able to foresee it.

Traditionally, for someone to be convicted of murder, it had to be proved that the killer intended to kill, or at least to seriously injure someone. PAL was therefore quite a shift, and led to hundreds, if not thousands, of convictions over 30 years since 1985. The Supreme Court decision in 2016 on Regina v. Jogee must, at least statistically, call some of those convictions into question. That decision, however, applies to out-of-time appeals only if it can be proved that a “substantial injustice” has occurred—that was tested in Regina v. Johnson in 2016—and proved categorically that a change in the law “would” have made a difference. The Criminal Appeal Act 1968 allows the court to quash a conviction where the misapplication of law “might”, rather than “would”, have made a difference. Since the Jogee decision, none of the 800 men, women and children currently supported by JENGbA have successfully appealed against their conviction—not one.

My constituents Asher and Lewis Johnson were both sentenced to 16 and a half years for a murder committed by another man. I will not go into great detail, but suffice it to say that they maintain they had no knowledge of the guilty party’s intention. Asher was a youth worker who had never been in trouble before. It might be that there is more to the case, but for them to be found guilty by association seems worthy of fresh examination, especially given the Supreme Court ruling that the law had taken a “wrong turn.” It certainly had for the Johnson brothers. They want a fresh hearing with the evidence presented in light of the Jogee ruling, but that has been denied. I cannot know all the facts, and like all colleagues here I do all I can to support the police in their difficult job, but something here just does not feel right.

In conclusion, JENGbA is calling for the abolition of parasitic accessory liability charging—as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central explained in her excellent speech, CPS guidance on that is still very confusing. It also calls for the abolition of child life sentences, and for the Ministry of Justice to collect data on all joint enterprise secondary party convictions. It argues that this is a

“common law, used against common people, that makes no common sense.”

I believe it has a very strong case.

Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 20th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

Those are shocking figures. There is a real sense of anger, certainly among the police officers with whom I spoke and other emergency workers, when they have suffered an attack and see those responsible walking away from court with no punishment at all. That is a factor in people deciding to quit these really important occupations in our society.

Another female officer in my police force area shared an incident with me. She was punched in the face, causing her lip to bleed. The suspect was known to be infected with hepatitis C and had a cut on their hand as well. That immediately put the officer in significant danger, as there was a possibility that her own blood could be contaminated. The officer was, of course, required to have blood tests and was prescribed antibiotics to try to prevent an infection. After two weeks’ leave, the officer returned to duty. However, she will not receive her blood test results for another eight weeks and feels that her life has in effect been put on hold. It was particularly galling for this female officer to hear that the suspect, who was convicted, received a prison sentence of only five weeks, which means that they will be out of prison weeks before the officer gets her blood test results.

The fact is that far too many of our police and emergency workers believe that their experiences of assault are not treated seriously enough by the judiciary and that laughable sentences are given to their attackers. Therefore, I welcome the tougher approach that the Bill provides.

Of course, it is not just the police who face assaults. Even more incomprehensible, in some ways, is the sheer frequency of attacks on paramedics, firefighters, nurses and prison officers—people who put their own lives and safety at risk for others—when they are trying to perform their duties.

In addition to the figures shared by the hon. Member for Rhondda, figures that I saw earlier this year indicated that attacks on firefighters had trebled across Wales. South Wales fire and rescue service reported 31 incidents between April 2016 and March 2017, up from just 12 in the previous year. It said that its crews had been subjected to verbal assault and physical abuse, including having bricks thrown at them.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for citing the figures from Wales. The Scottish fire and rescue service also collates the figures, but the House of Commons Library briefing for this debate has no national figures because they are not officially collected. Does he agree that that omission from public data should be addressed?

[Stephen Crabb]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The devolved Administrations have their own systems for collecting data, but that should not be a barrier to ensuring a proper UK-wide picture of what is going on across the whole country.

If we are serious about taking a zero-tolerance approach to mindless attacks on frontline workers, let us ensure that we have a framework of law that reflects that, not only for the police but for firefighters, paramedics, nurses and prison officers. There have been calls for the scope of the Bill to be widened to include workers in other health and care settings. As I have said, that is a matter for discussion in Committee. The important priority today is to ensure that this Bill passes its Second Reading with the strongest possible support from across the House.

Before I finish, I wish to address one more aspect, which is the proposed powers to take blood samples and non-intimate samples such as saliva. When I began my research, I confess that I did not appreciate the significance of this issue in the context of assaults on emergency workers. One of the officers I met last week described an assault when she went to assist a woman at a domestic incident. The woman turned aggressively on the police officer and attacked her, causing several injuries including significant bleeding when she dug her long fingernails into her hand. The attacker then shouted at the officer that she was carrying a blood disease. For the past five months, that officer has been living with stress and anxiety over what she may or may not have been infected with. No samples have been taken from the attacker to check whether or not she was lying, so the officer has faced the long process of being tested herself. She told me how she has been afraid of just how much physical contact she should give her own children, for fear of passing something on. The right to take samples from suspects will rapidly accelerate the process of determining a potential contraction and will give a confident assurance to those emergency workers affected that we are here to help them through the situation.

There is plenty of detail to be worked out in the Bill, but this morning gives us the opportunity to show our strongest possible support for its Second Reading. It is a chance to signal the extent of our respect and support for our emergency workers. This is not just about signalling, however. I am sceptical of proposed legislation that is just declaratory or that contains just rhetoric; the important point about this Bill is that it is practical and useful, and its measures will make a real difference to the working lives of some of the most important people in our society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

My contribution to this important debate will be brief.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), as others have, on introducing this Bill and on his work to raise awareness of it. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) on her work in last year’s ten-minute rule Bill and her wider “Protect the Protectors” campaign.

We all know that our emergency service workers put themselves in harm's way every single day. They have no idea what they will face when they turn up for work. They take whatever comes, and they deal with it professionally in the true sense of public service. Our emergency service workers work hard to keep our communities safe and to look after people when they are ill or in danger. Those hugely important tasks are the bedrock of any society, and they do it on our behalf. They therefore deserve our full support and whatever protection we can provide.

Last year I took part in the police service parliamentary scheme, which gave me a small glimpse of the commitment and dedication of police officers, and of the pressure and difficult circumstances they have to deal with on a daily basis. On the scheme I spent some time with special constables. My dad was a special constable with South Wales police when I was young. He was seriously attacked in that role, and it is important that we remember the role of special constables and remember that they are an essential part of the police family. We must also remember that, ultimately, they are volunteers.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

The police service parliamentary scheme is run by Sir Neil Thorne, and I was on the pilot scheme back in 1998. There is also now a fire service parliamentary scheme. I am sure that, like me, my hon. Friend would commend the schemes to all colleagues so that they can get a better understanding of how the police and fire services work. I am grateful that he has mentioned the police service parliamentary scheme, which will raise awareness of it among colleagues.

[Gerald Jones]

The police service, fire service and armed forces parliamentary schemes give parliamentarians a small but important glimpse of those services at the grassroots and of the daily pressures they deal with on our behalf.

Attacking a police officer is already an offence but, as things currently stand, the legislation is not effective and sentences are not fit for purpose. No specific protection exists for workers in the health service. We know from the Police Federation of England and Wales that the rate of attacks on police officers is unacceptably high—one every 15 seconds according to the latest estimates.

A third of my constituency is within the Gwent police force area, and its records show that 103 police officers have been assaulted since 2015, an average of one a week, 24 of which were assaults on detention staff in custody suites. The larger part of my constituency lies in the South Wales police area, and there, on average, nine officers are assaulted in any given week. Assaults often mean that officers are absent from their duties, which means that police resources are further depleted at a time when police numbers are significantly down owing to cuts.

The actual figures might be much higher, as there is evidence to suggest that officers report only the most serious cases, while the rest go unreported. That is replicated across our emergency services, as we have heard this morning.

We also know from figures released by South Wales fire and rescue service in June that there has been a 158% increase in the number of attacks against its crews in the past 12 months. Fire crews have been subjected to verbal and physical abuse and have had objects such as bricks and fireworks thrown at them as they respond to incidents, which is clearly unacceptable. Figures released in December 2016 show that NHS staff in Wales have been physically attacked more than 18,000 times over the last five years.

The evidence is there. Society supports our emergency services and the Bill, as highlighted by the survey of my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda. Parliament must act and send the strongest possible message that attacks on people working on behalf of the public will not be tolerated. One of the most effective ways to do that is to create a new aggravated offence of assaulting an emergency service worker and to make it an offence for a person who has spat at or bitten an officer not to supply an appropriate sample.

I fully support the Bill and urge others to do likewise. There seems to be a sense of unity across the House on this issue, which is entirely appropriate and very welcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to make this brief contribution and pleased to follow the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), who made a positive contribution and added her own story to some of the moving and horrific stories that we have heard and which have been experienced by emergency service workers across the country.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on choosing this subject for his private Member’s Bill. He correctly and generously added his acknowledgement of the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) has done in getting the Bill to where it is today. Curiously, and ironically, one of the most significant legislative achievements of parliamentarians is to win the private Members’ ballot. Clearly, that requires consummate skill, and perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda can share how he did it with the rest of us, who have been struggling for 20 years and been unable to achieve it.

[Chris Bryant]

I had always wanted No. 18, as it was my number at primary school, and the first year I got that number, I won.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Well, there we are—that is the secret. I was going to poke some fun at my hon. Friend and say that his constituents must be proud of him, but of course having heard that he canvassed his constituents I am sure that they are actually very proud to see him introducing the Bill today.

I should declare that which a number of colleagues know: I was a member of London fire brigade for 23 years before being elected to this place. During my 13 years as an operational firefighter, the great anomaly was that on 364 days of the year there were always those, young and old, who wanted to come into the station to see the fire engines, but on 5 November we were not always that popular. In my day, there were many fewer organised bonfires and firework displays, and sometimes they needed fire attention and dousing for public protection. In the approach to fireworks season, whether Diwali, which is on now, or Guy Fawkes night, I hope we have a safe period for all celebrating. We have heard too often of fireworks being used as weapons against police, fire and ambulance workers.

I am grateful to the House of Commons Library, the Fire Brigades Union and London fire brigade for their briefings on this debate. The House of Commons Library briefing says, “Prime Minister Nick Hurd”—[Interruption.] Sorry, I meant to say Policing Minister, although some of us see the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) as a future Prime Minister—and the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) has also been mentioned as a prospective future Prime Minister. The House of Commons Library briefing cites the Policing Minister as saying that

“the Government supports the spirit and principle of the Bill, but that ‘there will be detail to work through’.”

Of course that is great news for the whole House, where we have heard positive speeches from Members on both sides indicating that the Bill will pass Second Reading. The briefing goes on to list the number of assaults and attacks, saying that the Home Office estimated that there were 24,000 assaults on police officers in 2016-17 and that the latest bulletin from the Ministry of Justice on safety in prisons in England and Wales says that there were more than 7,000 assaults on prison staff.

On the subject of NHS staff, NHS Protect—which my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda mentioned as being under threat—states that, according to the figures it has collected, more than 70,000 staff were affected in 2015-16.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I was in Moorfields hospital the other day, having had an eye haemorrhage, and as I sat there during the afternoon, three instances came up on the screen of someone being assaulted in one of the cubicles. I think that numbers such as those are grossly under-reported. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend quotes from personal experience, and we have heard anecdotes in other contributions in the Chamber this morning that officers and hospital staff are reluctant to report incidents other than the most serious. Clearly, there seem to be barriers preventing all the assaults that appear to be taking place from being put on record. My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and I am sure that the Minister will want to comment on it. I am also grateful to her because she gives me the opportunity to mention West Ham. Just as an aside, we need three points against Brighton this evening.

In an intervention on the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), I mentioned that there were no data on attacks against firefighters. Dr Paul Hampton from the Fire Brigades Union has written to me:

“You probably know that data on attacks on firefighters is not published by the Home Office for England (figures are published in Scotland by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service).”

The right hon. Gentleman indicated that there are figures for Wales, and other hon. Members have made that same point. Dr Hampton continues:

“So I think you can make the points about the lack of central government monitoring and under-reporting in the debate.”

That supports the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), and I would be grateful if the Minister commented in his winding-up speech on the absence of data on firefighter assaults in England.

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, made this point:

“It is never acceptable for anyone to go to work and have to put up with verbal abuse or physical assault. Yet that is what fire crews are now facing on a daily basis in some areas of the United Kingdom.”

That was written 10 years ago, and sadly it is still true today.

[Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the stark reality is that members of the public might think that it is par for the course that this sort of thing happens to people who do these jobs? Does he also agree that the Bill will use the full force of the law to show that we unanimously disagree that the people who protect us should have to go through that?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which has also been made by a number of colleagues, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda. The emergency services face enough difficulties and threats to their wellbeing because of the nature of the job they do, and they are therefore entitled to whatever additional protection we can give them. I fully agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya) on that point.

I want to conclude on a more positive note by making a comment on prevention rather than on dealing with perpetrators after an assault. Ms Helen Newton from the London fire brigade has supplied me with a note about one of its successful initiatives, called LIFE:

“The Local Intervention Fire Education (LIFE) course is a week-long youth intervention programme. It is a programme targeted at young people aged 14-17 who: are at risk of or involved in anti-social behaviour, gangs or other criminal activity; have poor attendance at their educational provision or have been excluded; display challenging behaviour; or are NEET (not in education, employment or training). Starting in Tower Hamlets in 2002”—

it was actually in Shadwell, in my constituency—

“the LIFE project was an innovative approach to engaging with the local community in response to repeated call-out to an estate for youth-related deliberate fire setting and the firefighters being attacked during their response. Running the LIFE courses with firefighters and the local young people helped break down the barriers, develop a respect for the emergency services and educate them about the valuable job they do for their community. Over the course of a week, the young people work alongside the London Fire Brigade to develop skills they can transfer to improve their relationships at home and support their education and future careers. It is a disciplined programme, packed with challenging practical activities which include climbing ladders, working with the breathing apparatus, hoses and casualty rescue techniques. These are interspersed with classroom sessions which teach the young people about social responsibility by learning how their behaviours impact their community, families and themselves. Working alongside the Brigade’s firefighters, they are role modelled positive behaviours and learn to respect uniformed authority figures.

Young people on LIFE may have encountered negative experiences with authority figures such as the police and their teachers, and they view the Fire Brigade in the same light. A positive and supportive rapport is developed with each young person, who then in return develops a respect for the officer they work with and the job they do for the community. Every young person has their progress evaluated by an operational trainer, enabling them to improve their key skills and build a bond of trust. These evaluations form part of a detailed portfolio containing certificates earned through the week, demonstrating a commitment to developing skills such as punctuality, conduct, politeness and effort. The portfolio is presented at a passing-out ceremony at which candidates demonstrate the skills that they have learnt during the week. They are given an individual appraisal by their trainer, and the opportunity to speak about their experiences on the course. Referral agencies, parents and partners attend the pass-out to be presented with their AQA accreditation and portfolio of achievement.”

I have attended many of these pass-out parades. They are hugely impressive events for the trainers, the youngsters and their families, as well as those who sponsor the courses: the police, the City of London, Tower Hamlets pupil referral and others.

I naturally support the Bill, as everyone who has spoken this morning does. I welcome the Government’s support, which is absolutely key for any private Member’s Bill to get on to the statute book. I also hope that the Government will continue to resource initiatives to prevent young people in particular from attacking our emergency service workers.

Finally, I again congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda and for Halifax. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda for choosing this subject for his Bill. Emergency workers across the country have reason to be grateful to him and his colleagues.

Policing and Crime Bill

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I understand exactly where my hon. Friend is coming from, especially on the point about audit. However, at the moment, we do not feel that there is a need to use external specialists in that way; if we find out later that there is, the inspector could ask the Home Secretary for those specific measures. The fire service has enough expertise to ensure that the regime works. It will be completely different from the current regime.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way to another former Fire Minister. There used to be an honourable tradition that Fire Ministers were West Ham United supporters, but sadly that was broken by the right hon. Gentleman.

We have gone from the fire services inspectorate to the National Audit Office and then to nothing, and we are now going back to the fire services inspectorate. Has the Minister taken into account, for example, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service, which could give external advice to the new inspectorate, very much along the lines suggested by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill)? Will the new chief inspector also be the national adviser for fire? I would be grateful if the Minister explained a little of the background.

[Mike Penning]

I am conscious that I am in the hands of experts who were Ministers long before I was, but as an ex-firefighter, I was really quite surprised to see how the inspections took place when I came into the role. They did not take place as envisaged by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) when he introduced the relevant legislation. There was a genuine feeling that we had to address the costs and how the inspections were done. To be perfectly honest, the system has not worked. We cannot continue with the situation where one fire and rescue force inspects another and they tell each other what they can and cannot inspect.

This proposal is separate, which is why we have put the new inspector alongside Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary. They will tell us exactly what expertise they require. As ex-firefighters, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) and I can assume what they will need to look at, but I accept that some fire and rescues services will need to draw on financial expertise from other areas.

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[Mr Jones]

I should not be the only one taking credit for that. The hon. Gentleman should do so as well, as should many other people in the House. To give credit to the Government, they have taken this issue seriously and both the Ministers who served on the Committee are committed to ensuring that we get the best outcomes for people in mental health crisis in the criminal justice system.

We should soon have a situation in which police cells will not be the first resort, as they have been in the past. I am not criticising the police for taking people to the cells; they were often the only places available. However, we need to monitor closely what happens to people when they are detained under sections 135 and 136 of the Act. I would not want keeping people at home to become the de facto position. That might be helpful for the statistics on keeping people out of police cells, but people’s homes might not be the best possible place for individuals in crisis. The hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis made the point that they do not necessarily have to be placed in a health facility. The hon. Member for Broxbourne has said on numerous occasions that this country needs a network of places of safety for individuals in mental health crisis. Those places could be run by health authorities, by charities or by others, but we need such a network because neither a police cell nor, in some cases, a hospital is the best place for certain people in crisis.

I am glad that the proposed changes to the Bill are being taken seriously by the Government. I pay tribute to the way in which both Ministers have addressed these matters in Committee. Even though some of the proposals are not going to be put in the Bill, I believe that the Ministers, working with colleagues in the Department of Health, will be able to achieve a situation in which people in mental health crisis do not end up in the criminal justice system. That should be our aim.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I shall not be referring to the mental health provisions in the Bill, but I commend colleagues who have already spoken about that and who have been personally responsible for taking this issue so far and for encouraging the Government to listen to the arguments that they have been putting forward for years. I also commend the Government for their response to the debates that took place in Committee and, more generally, for their attitude towards mental health. I also want to commend the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), for the way in which he spoke to his new clauses almost as part of the campaign on Hillsborough. He spoke passionately and powerfully and I hope that the Government will respond positively to his requests for the new clauses to be accepted, if only in principle. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the debate.

I want to speak briefly to new clause 48 and new schedule 1, which propose the re-creation of a national fire service inspectorate in England. My friend the Minister is, like me, a former firefighter. When I ask him to do things in our exchanges on fire brigade matters, he sometimes throws back at me the fact that I did not do them when I was Fire Minister and asks why should he do them now. I want to ask him why he is recreating the fire service inspectorate when we did away with it and put other arrangements in place. I will be interested to hear his explanation. I welcome the fact, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and others have done, that the Government recognise there is a vacuum and that something has to be created to fill the gap. Whether that is an inspectorate as set out in the new clause or whether that wording changes when the Bill goes to the House of Lords, the fact that the Government are moving in this direction is welcome.

In Westminster Hall last week, we discussed with the Minister the increasing number of calls related to flooding that the fire service now deals with, the transition towards dealing with more medical emergency calls and the arrangements with the national health service for the fire service to do more social care visits alongside fire safety visits. These changes all demonstrate the fact that the fire service is moving into different territory, and that different skills are being developed which require different resources as well as the staff to carry them out.

As I mentioned in Westminster Hall, criticisms are being levelled at the fire service, parts of which are being blamed for the reductions in the service. The fire and rescue service has been a victim of its own success in recent decades, having cut the number of calls and fires and reduced the number of deaths and serious injuries. That has resulted in the loss of fire stations, fire appliances and firefighters. The Minister will remember that I stated in that debate that there are nearly 7,000 fewer firefighters in the UK now than there were in 2010. That fact has raised a number of eyebrows, and questions are being asked about attendance times being met and resources being available. People are now asking whether the service is still equipped to do the job that it needs to do.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has great experience in the fire and rescue service in a number of capacities. The operational issues that he is rightly raising are important, but will he acknowledge the Public Accounts Committee’s finding that in the wake of the abolition of the Audit Commission, the governance, scrutiny and oversight of many fire and rescue services and the cosy relationship between the authorities and those services were unsatisfactory in terms of providing value for the taxpayer’s pound?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Absolutely. I agree with the hon. Gentleman. That point was also raised by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, and I am sure that the Minister will also put forward an argument for putting in place a means of making those measurements.

Having said all that, I am curious about the lateness of the arrival of the new clauses. The Minister referred positively to the consensus in Committee and to the ability of both sides to help each other out to make progress on the Bill. I commend the shadow Fire Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), for arguing for a provision to assess the ability of the fire service to carry out its functions. To the Minister’s credit, he has now tabled the new clause and the new schedule to address that issue.

I mentioned in an intervention my curiosity about whether the Government had considered the United Kingdom Accreditation Service as a potential vehicle to carry out the function that is being proposed here. The Minister knows that I had 23 years in the fire service, 13 of which were spent as an operational firefighter, and I participated in drills in the fire station as set out by Her Majesty’s inspectorate. I have to question the value of those drills, because we would train for weeks to get them right but they still did not always go entirely right. I question the value of putting in that amount of rehearsal. I wonder whether all that practice actually made the whole exercise worthless.

We decided to abolish Her Majesty’s inspectorate because of the scepticism and cynicism surrounding it—the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst referred to an old boys’ network earlier—and I would have hoped that the Government would now be proposing something new. However, they seem to be proposing a re creation of what went before. Having moved it to the Department for Communities and Local Government and then back to the Home Office, there seems to be replication so that, along with Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons, we will now have Her Majesty’s inspectorate of fire services.

I look forward to hearing more from the Minister and to listening to the debates in the other place, where I suspect the Bill will get more scrutiny than it has in this place. Public confidence in the fire service is high and has always been high, but the fire service needs professional underpinning and validation not only for public confidence and value for money, but for the safety of firefighters who put themselves on the frontline to protect the public. I look forward to a more extensive debate when the Bill goes to the other place, and to some comments from the Minister when he sums up. This is a positive step forward, but we need to make sure that the fire service can demonstrate to its own satisfaction, to our satisfaction and to that of the public that it is equipped, resourced and able to do the job we all admire it for doing and want it to carry on doing in the future.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

May I first apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker? Although I was in the Chamber for the Minister’s opening speech, I had to chair a Delegated Legislation Committee—you were kind enough to put me on the Panel of Chairs—so I am sorry that I have not been present for the whole of this debate.

I want to speak to new clause 23, which was so ably introduced by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). I understand that it will not be pushed to a vote, that there will be a review in relation to PACE and that the Minister has listened carefully to all the arguments that have been made. If we are to have a review, there is an opportunity—I will use my brief remarks to talk about it—to have a debate in this country about face coverings generally. Many people in our country feel that it is quite un-British, and is not necessary for any reason, except in exceptional circumstances.

I do not want to suggest that we should take heavy-handed, universal action to prevent people from covering their face in this country, because that is also in a sense un-British. Fundamentally, as a nation, we actually believe in the freedom of people to live their lives in the way that, for whatever reason, they want, so long as they do not alarm or intimidate others. I know that other countries—for example, France and I believe Belgium, which are perfectly moderate, sensible, freedom-loving countries—have decided to ban face coverings in public, but we probably do not want to proceed in that way in this country.

If we are to have a review, I believe that this is an opportunity to have a debate. I certainly join my hon. Friends who have expressed concern about certain situations in which people feel intimidated, such as in the environs of a hunt, an animal research laboratory, or a demonstration outside Parliament. People are of course entitled to demonstrate—nobody is denying that—but it is very intimidating for the police and the public to see people engaged in demonstrations with any kind of face covering.

I understand that it is perfectly possible under present arrangements for the authorities to issue written instructions so that a police constable can require people to remove their face coverings and all the rest of it, but I would like us to go further. I suggest that the way to deal with this problem is to say—in a particular situation that might be threatening, intimidatory, violent or confrontational on both sides—there should certainly be a right for a police constable to require somebody to remove a face covering. It should be possible for a chief constable to have such a right, as well as to lay down general prohibitions against face coverings.

It should also be possible—there should be a public debate about this, because I know that there are different points of view—for the Home Secretary to issue a ban against face coverings in certain situations or in particularly sensitive geographical places, such as the central areas of the cities of London and Westminster, the central part of our capital city, which is sensitive for all sorts of reasons, or in hospitals, schools, law courts and doctors’ surgeries. I know not everybody in the House will agree, but many members of the public are concerned about this.

Fire Service: Flooding and Statutory Duties

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered flooding and statutory duties of the fire service.

It is a pleasure to see you presiding this morning, Mrs Gillan, and I am glad to see the Minister taking his place. It is only appropriate that two former firefighters are contributing to the debate.

Let me start with a couple of points on the general history of the fire and rescue service—[Interruption.]

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Order. Can I ask Members to have their conversations outside the Chamber and respect the Member who has moved the motion?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Thank you, Mrs Gillan.

As I was saying, I will start with a couple of points on the history of the fire and rescue service. The great fire of London was in 1666, which was the beginning of insurance fire brigades and voluntary pumps being deployed in London. The fire of 1834 destroyed most of the Palace of Westminster and led to the creation of a London county council and of a London fire brigade, which this year is enjoying its 150th anniversary, which I know the Minister is celebrating—happy birthday to the London fire brigade. Statutory duties have evolved over the centuries in which fire brigades themselves have been evolving.

I thank the House of Commons Library and Pat Strickland for briefing paper No. 07605, “Should Fire and Rescue Services have a statutory duty to deal with flooding?” Before I quote from that, I want to make reference not only to the increasing incidents of flooding, but to their severity and regularity. A role that the fire and rescue service used to tackle once in a blue moon is now a core activity for many brigades. A Fire Brigades Union document details the extent of the new demand, stating:

“Firefighters responded magnificently to the winter 2013-14 floods, the largest deployment by the fire and rescue services since Second World War. Across the UK over the entire three months…firefighters responded to nearly seven thousand incidents”,

and

“effected a large number of rescues…almost two thousand across the UK.”

A briefing note from the Greater Manchester fire and rescue service said that on Boxing day 2015 it deployed two thirds of its available resources on flood response.

I cannot imagine that the Minister will be in denial either that floods are on the rise or that the fire and rescue service is doing more of this type of work than ever before. There is certainly no room for him to deny that we have seen a significant reduction in the numbers of firefighters in the fire and rescue service since 2010.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is not just the fire services that are putting the information out there. The Met Office has said that we are in the middle of one of the most

“exceptional periods of winter rainfall in at least 248 years.”

Is it not very clear that we need a fully resourced fire service, backed up by a statutory duty?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which I will reinforce in a moment.

Lancaster University states:

“The London Fire Brigade is only able to respond to less than half of calls within its six minute target following the closure of 10 stations. The closures coupled with the loss of over 552 firefighters and 14 engines in central London were made in 2014 as part of Government cutbacks of £29m.”

Greater Manchester fire and rescue service has seen a 25% cut since 2010. Its briefing says that in 2009-10, it had 1,598 front-line firefighter posts. By 2019-20, it will have 1,026—a loss of 572 firefighter posts, a reduction of 35%.

The Fire Brigades Union’s 2015 floods report outlines the depth of the cuts. It says that 6,740 positions were lost between 2011 and 2015. The same report lists the number of flood incidents and rescues: in December 2015 alone, there were 2,589 incidents and 2,808 rescues. Flooding is on the increase, as my hon. Friend outlined. We only have to look to France and Germany last week, or at London and the flash floods yesterday.

In the general election campaign of 2010, the Prime Minister spoke at Carlisle fire station and promised to protect front-line public services, but between 2011 and 2015, Cumbria lost one in eight firefighters. Five fire stations were earmarked for closure in Cumbria before the flooding in December last year, and in February this year, the local council cited the floods as a key reason to keep the stations operational.

The question is whether a statutory duty is needed. The Commons Library briefing paper and the Fire Brigades Union briefing refer to the existing legislation. On the law in England and Wales, both documents say that part 2 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 sets out the statutory core functions of fire and rescue authorities. Those are statutory duties to provide for fire safety, firefighting, and rescuing people and protecting them from harm in the event of road traffic accidents. The Library briefing paper states:

“Section 9 gives the Secretary of State the power to give FRAs functions relating to other emergencies, including outside the FRA’s area. This is an order-making power. Primary legislation would not be necessary.”

The Fire Brigades Union has outlined its position:

“The FBU has serious concerns about the resources available to the fire and rescue service to ensure resilience against flooding…These include the number of firefighters, boats and equipment available… There are issues of staffing, technology and resilience in fire control rooms… The FBU believes a statutory duty on the fire and rescue service in England and Wales, along with investment in the service, provides the best guarantee of resilience to flooding going forward”.

It explained why it has that belief:

“A statutory duty would add significantly to fire and rescue service resilience when faced with flooding. Such a duty would…Underscore the need to resource fire and rescue services specifically for flooding…Assist with strategic planning, not only between fire and rescue services and local resilience forums”—

it should be “fora”—

“but also between different fire and rescue services across England…Ensure firefighters play a full part in the temporary construction of flood defences, as they do in Sweden…Help ensure fire and rescue services have sufficient, professionally trained firefighters available to tackle flood emergencies…Ensure sufficient boats of the right quality are available…Help ensure sufficiently trained and equipped boat teams are available …Ensure sufficient control staff are available to”

handle calls and to make

“resources available to communities during the clear up, ensuring premises are secure to hazardous substances testing and clear up”.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The fire service could also have a strategic role in flood prevention and the protection of homes; that was missing in the recent floods. I add that the cuts coming to the fire service will have a serious impact on its ability to respond to floods, as we saw in York in 2015.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. She saw exactly the nature of flooding in York when it affected her constituency in recent years.

The Minister may very well ask why, when I was Fire Minister in 2006—[Interruption.] He kindly forewarned me that he would remind me that I was the Fire Minister in 2006. It was generous of him, and I think the criticism is absolutely fair, but I will come on to why I think times have changed in just a minute. Department for Communities and Local Government figures underscoring the increase in the threat show that in 2007—a year after I was Fire Minister—there were 14,000 flooding calls, in 2011-12 there were 16,000, and in 2013-14 there were 18,000. I believe that demonstrates a pattern.

Even Age Concern—or Age UK, as it is now called—has weighed in. Suzanne Foster wrote to me:

“I wanted to send you a copy of a report published by Age UK on ‘Older people and power loss, floods and storms’”,

which she said could be found online and was attached to her email. The first recommendation was:

“Join up essential services better”.

The result of the inquiry into the 2007 floods was clear. On the Pitt review, the Commons Library briefing paper states:

“The issue of a statutory duty was raised in the 2008 report of the Pitt Review into the 2007 floods. The Review took the view that a statutory duty would be beneficial”.

The text of the review states:

“The Review believes that clarifying and communicating the role of each of these bodies would improve the response to flooding. However, we are concerned that the systems, structures and protocols developed to support national coordination of multi-agency flood rescue assets remain ad-hoc. We believe that the Fire and Rescue Service should take on a leading role in this area, based on a fully funded capability. This will be most effective if supported by a statutory duty”.

Following on from that examination and text, it made recommendation 39:

“The Government should urgently put in place a fully funded national capability for flood rescue, with Fire and Rescue Authorities playing a leading role, underpinned as necessary by a statutory duty.”

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

My constituency was affected by the floods on Boxing day, and we asked many questions following the floods about giving the fire service a statutory duty. The Government’s response seemed to be that the fire service would turn up anyway. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is some complacency on the Government’s part in refusing to make flood rescue a statutory duty?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I will come to that, but in defence of the Government, I would say not that they are complacent, but that they trust the fire service to turn up. What many of us are saying—we have done so in this Chamber and when discussing various Bills relating to police and crime commissioners, which I will come to—is that they should do more than just trust them. They should fund them and give them statutory responsibility for planning, continuity, mitigation and resilience. I will return to that in a moment. The case for a statutory duty on the fire and rescue service is not less than it was in 2008. In fact, the reverse is true, as the pressures are growing, with more and more flood calls, fewer staff, less equipment and more closed fire stations.

As a former firefighter and Fire Brigades Union member and official, the Minister knows that after the second world war, in the ‘50s and ’60s, the union argued to the Government and local government that fire personnel in stations could be used more productively on fire prevention than on cleaning fire stations, polishing the brass and washing out the toilets. I am not denigrating those jobs, which are very important. The disastrous fires of the late ’60s led to the Fire Precautions Act 1971, when the Government suddenly realised that they needed a skilled workforce of about 20,000 people to police and enforce the new safety rules. That is what has changed the British fire service in the last 100 years. Ultimately, safer buildings and fewer people smoking have led to there being many fewer fires, deaths and serious injuries. Perversely, that has led to the huge cuts of the past six years.

The fire and rescue service is the victim of its own success in reducing fires, saving lives and preventing injuries, but at the same time it is evolving into new roles—not just flood response, but medical and social care. The Government are transferring the control of fire and rescue service to police and crime commissioners. The Minister knows that I and many colleagues believe that fire and ambulance services are a better fit, and that link is happening almost despite the Government. Some county brigades in England are reporting that they are attending more medical calls than fire calls.

The London fire brigade and the London ambulance service have just begun a four-borough pilot of first responding and co-responding to specific emergency medical calls to save more lives in London. In the north-west, the fire and rescue service has joint working pilots on social care schemes. The service continues to evolve, as it has over time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) asked about a new statutory duty on flooding, but the Government’s answer has always been that the fire service has attended, so there is no need for one. Fire brigades were attending fires for centuries, but a statutory duty was felt necessary in that case, although it was in only 1938 that it arrived, under the Fire Brigades Act 1938. That Act required every county borough council to make provision for

“the extinction of fires and the protection of life and property in the case of fire.”

Why was a statutory duty needed? Because the situation, service and society were evolving, and something different was needed. There was a recognition that circumstances had changed. The fire service had been providing fire protection for centuries, but a statutory duty was introduced only in 1947. I have also mentioned the Fire Precautions Act 1971.

The fire service has been rescuing people from road traffic crashes for decades, but it was felt that a statutory duty was needed, and the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 was introduced. Along with charities umbrella-ed by Fire Aid, we are deploying that expertise across the world, because we are among the leaders in rescuing victims in road traffic crashes, and we are proud of that.

In contrast, the Library briefing outlines the law in Scotland, stating:

“There is a power in the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 to make orders giving the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service additional functions. A Scottish SI (the Fire (Additional Function) (Scotland) Order 2005/342), creates a duty to make provision for the purpose of… rescuing people trapped, or likely to become trapped, by water…protecting them from serious harm, in the event of serious flooding in its area.

This duty was conferred on the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service when this was created in April 2013.”

The briefing then refers to the law in Northern Ireland, stating:

“In Northern Ireland a very similar provision came into force in January 2012.”

The Library is saying that parts of the United Kingdom already have a statutory duty on flooding. Finally, as I have said, section 9 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 gives the Secretary of State power to give the fire and rescue authority functions relating to other emergencies. That is an order-making power, so primary legislation would not be necessary to create a statutory duty to deal with flooding. It works in Scotland; it works in Northern Ireland; so why not in England and Wales? I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Penning]

I may give way in a moment. Time will be difficult.

The fire service continues to evolve and not every fire service will come under police and crime commissioners. Around five PCCs are looking into this, but other PCCs and clinical commissioning groups are considering whether the ambulance service could be included. My views on this are pretty well known. I think the blue light emergency services must work much more closely together than now. I am chuffed that in London we have co-responding, but that is just the start. In Hampshire, there are qualified paramedics who are firemen. I apologise to the ladies, I mean firefighters. When I was in the job, there were only firemen.

It is important to see where the job is going. Yes, we are going to more flooding. We have always gone to flooding, I went to flooding and the London fire service went to a flood yesterday. None of the national resilience back-up was used yesterday. I asked the question before coming here today.

I am a former member of the Fire Brigades Union. I met the leadership and it put similar arguments to me. I will keep the matter under review. I will not comment too much on the numbers, not least because in other parts of the country we have seen firefighter numbers drop, but there has been a different way of delivering the service, including retained firefighters. London still has this policy, which I thought was an anomaly when I was in Essex—it will not allow retained firefighters on to its ground even if in their day job they are fully qualified firemen. I have never understood that and it is something that must be addressed as we evolve. I know that the union is trying to protect jobs, but in retrospect it is probably not doing that.

Lancashire has developed a completely different model. The union there wanted to protect jobs and to keep stations open. There was a risk of them closing so it went to the eight-eight day model, so that they were manned during the day with back-up crews during the evening. That is a completely different model. That is why local decision making is vital.

I am not denying that there are fewer firefighters, but there are dramatically fewer turn-outs. Fire prevention work started during our time in the job. I remember vividly arguing that firemen should go into homes to help to install smoke detectors. The situation has dramatically changed but there are still too many deaths and there is a lot more work to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

I do listen to the chiefs. They are firefighters as well, interestingly enough. I am sure that they would like to be classed as firefighters, not separate from firefighters—we may make a few enemies with some chief firefighters, but that is semantics. I do listen to the chiefs, and other chiefs in other parts of the country are not saying the same thing. What we need to do is ensure that we have the assets in the right place. To go back to the point about Lancashire, one of the crews said to me, “We did not have a flotation platform, so we were using salvage sheets and ladders,” which I trained with all those years ago; people would think we had moved on from there. I understand that that service is now looking at deploying that piece of kit. It does not take up a huge amount of space. It uses compressed air.

We have to look very carefully at this matter, and the brigadiers’ report on how the resilience worked during the flooding is crucial as well. We had a situation in which the Army could get in, because it was using what I still call 4-tonne trucks, but when we tried to follow them with fire appliances, many of them broke down and were severely damaged. That had a lot to do with the air intake and with positioning. People would think that in the 21st century we would have learned how to deal with those situations, but actually that is what we were learning. We also know that the cars of crews who came in and parked in one particular fire station were destroyed by flooding. We therefore need to look very carefully at the resilience that is there, and that is one reason why I am looking very carefully at the pumps.

The point I want to make is that we can change the title and say, “You should do this and you should do that,” but we have to ask whether the services are doing that first and whether that is the best utilisation of what we are asking them to do. There are some chiefs who take the view referred to, and the FBU has been running a very long campaign on this matter; it goes way back to when the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse was the Fire Minister. However, I am of the same opinion as the 2008 Minister: if necessary, we could do this, but at present—

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I am glad that the Minister has at least said that he will keep the situation under review. The best argument he has is that a statutory duty would force all 40-odd fire brigades in England and Wales to buy the equipment when some of them may well not need it—but then a number of us have been advocating fewer fire authorities for a considerable time. It would be much better to have regional structures and fewer chief fire officers and fewer fire and rescue authorities. That streamlining would be better. The key point here is that whether it is because of climate change or just weather patterns changing, floods are on the up; they are increasing exponentially. We need the equipment and resources to deal with that, and people think that a statutory duty is the only way to get the Government to focus on ensuring that those resources are available.

[Mike Penning]

I agree that the fire service is top-heavy in administration terms, which is why I am looking at PCCs who want to take over that administration and limit those costs, so that we have more money for the frontline; I am sure that we would all agree with that. Perhaps it is a question for another debate, on the number of fire and rescue services. That is a really emotive subject, because a local community relate, they tell me, to their fire service.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

Hesitation robbed me of another three seconds, but I am grateful to the Minister for this brief opportunity. I am grateful to my hon. Friends for turning up to support the debate. The Minister knows that there are Government Members who have a similar view. It is reassuring that he is prepared to keep this matter under review. Many of us, right across the country, are very worried about the level of cuts, because obviously if we have cuts and cuts and cuts, we get to a point at which the situation is too dangerous and then the Government start reinvesting. We are drawing attention to the fact that at the moment the cuts are in, if not beyond, that territory, and flooding is one of the additional pressures that the service is having to deal with. Because it is on the increase, we hope that the Minister will look at it seriously and ensure that the brigades affected get the resources that they need.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Emergency Services: Closer Working

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), who demonstrates that some local authorities are ahead of the game on this issue. It is also a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) on securing the debate and on the eloquent way in which he described the conundrums and dilemmas facing the Government.

I should declare an interest. I was a member of the London fire brigade for 23 years. It celebrates its 150th anniversary this year. I was a former Fire Minister. I am secretary to the fire and rescue service all-party group and am chair of Fire Aid. I am also a Member’s representative on the House’s Fire Safety Committee. If colleagues have not done their online fire training yet, go on to the intranet. Only 30 out of 650 Members have done the training for their own safety, let alone the safety of the staff and constituents who come in, and it takes only 10 minutes.

There are two key questions for me: governance and the question of operational issues. As has been mentioned, the Government recently changed control of the fire service back to the Home Office from the Department for Communities and Local Government. As the Minister has already said, it was there before. Government moves things around; I do not think that matters too much. We have had a national fire service and we have had local government controlling the fire service. In London we have had the London County Council, the Greater London Council, the Greater London Authority, the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, and now control is going to the Mayor. Do the public know? Do they care? I do not think it matters at all.

The key question, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and others, is about accountability. Having someone to go to to make a complaint or to congratulate and praise is the most important thing. Given the state of the fire service in recent years with the disputes and strikes, we have hardly had a model of a successful operation of the fire service. I do not think the integrity of the service will be affected by a transfer to police and crime commissioners, although my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) made a powerful point about the integrity of the fire service, which was accepted by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and which the Minister knows is out there in the public domain. I am not a big supporter of PCCs. Police and fire services would be better located with local government, along with some health matters, as many colleagues know, although I do recognise the points made about shared services.

More important for me is operational effectiveness. As the Minister knows, the fire service will always respond. A great recent example is its response to the floods. There is a suggestion that the fire service should have a statutory flood duty, allied to those of the Environment Agency and the water companies. The Government’s response so far has been that we do not need a statutory duty because the fire brigade will always turn up. Well, the fire brigade always turned up to fires before it became a statutory duty. The point is to make somebody responsible, and for it be somebody’s job to do the planning and argue the case to Government for the resources for a particular job. That is another question that is out there.

The fire service is a victim of its own success. The reduction in the number of fires, deaths and injuries has led to reductions in the number of fire engines, fire stations and firefighters. The service is being cut because it has been successful. The Minister knows all the reasons why that has been the case: better building construction, double glazing, central heating, and fewer candles and paraffin heaters. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall said, there has also been much better fire protection, with the fire service reaching out to communities. That is another important factor, which goes back to the Fire Precautions Act 1971.

[Ian Lavery]

We need to be clear about the suggestion that there are now fewer fire deaths. That is generally the case in some regions, but regions such as Merseyside have seen a huge increase in fire deaths, and the trajectory is likely to go up over the next couple of years.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. If we cut services when the service has been successful, at some point it hits rock bottom so it has to start bouncing back. The statistics demonstrate that we do not have enough police officers or firefighters, but they show that only after there has been a rise in crime or in the number of fire deaths.

The hon. Member for Bedford made a powerful point about the number of fire brigades. One reason why the last Labour Government’s botched attempt at regionalising the fire service failed was the intrinsic opposition of so many fire empires throughout the country. The Minister knows only too well who I am talking about.

This is a missed opportunity: it is not until question 15 of the consultation document that the ambulance service is even raised. That is despite the successful operation of combined fire and medical services in most states in the United States of America and the fact that most European Union states have combined fire and emergency medical services. That is despite the greater need for first-aid skills in firefighters; despite the arrival of idiot-proof defibrillators—I am not saying that they have to be idiot-proof for my fire colleagues to be able to operate them, but it makes it easier for us all; and despite the 2013 report from the Government’s fire adviser at the time, Sir Ken Knight, called “Facing the Future”, which looks mainly at the more developed area of co-working with ambulance services. That ought to be a key recommendation.

The fire brigade in London has been cut because of its success. We see the London ambulance service under pressure, with a rising number of calls. It is criticised for not making its call times and is under budget pressures. More lives could be saved in London through the more efficient use of the emergency services, particularly the ambulance and fire services—frankly, if the Minister wants to add the police to that list, that is not the most important issue to me. More savings could be made in London through co-location, the disposal of property assets and closer working. I have not seen any of the candidates for the mayoral election bring that up, but I have been feeding it out to them and am still hoping.

In conclusion, I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford again. He says that the Minister intends a higher level of collaboration. I look forward to hearing what both the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), and the Minister, with his excellent knowledge of the fire service, have to say. I am interested to hear whether the ambulance service and the fire service can be brought together.