Debate on the Address

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

It is my pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell)—I think.

It is an honour to have been re-elected as the Member of Parliament for Enfield North, and I am most grateful to everyone who has placed their trust in me. I am looking forward to continuing my work with constituents on the issues that are important to them, the first and foremost of which is the state of our public services in Enfield and the effects of the huge cuts to our police, health services and schools we have seen under a Conservative Government.

For all of us, feeling safe in our homes, on our streets and in our neighbourhoods is one of the most important things in life. The terrorist incidents we have witnessed in recent months in London and Manchester have highlighted how fragile that sense of safety can be. My thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been injured, or who have lost friends and loved ones in these awful events. I pay tribute to the incredible bravery shown by all of our emergency services. The whole of our community in Enfield has felt these events deeply, just as we have been deeply concerned by the rise in violent crime, particularly knife crime, after the recent spate of 12 stabbings in our borough, which has resulted in three murders since 1 April. All of us owe a great debt of gratitude to the police officers who have responded so speedily and professionally to these incidents. Sadly, however, these tragic events have become increasingly, and shockingly, common in our community, and this was an ever-present issue on the doorstep. Over the past seven years, under a Conservative Government, violent crime in Enfield has rocketed by some 70%. We have a duty to minimise this risk to ordinary law-abiding citizens, which is why we need police patrolling our streets.

[Meg Hillier]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that giving our young people the right to roam on the streets in which they live is such an important issue, that they should not live in fear and that their voices need to be heard in this debate as well?

[Joan Ryan]

I agree absolutely, which is why we need police in our community, building community relationships. For those, mostly teenagers and young men, who are stabbing each other—or being stabbed—we have a duty to protect them from themselves. We have failed somewhere along the line. The Government cannot wash their hands of responsibility for any increase in crime, given that they have made such swingeing cuts to our safer neighbourhoods teams. It is no coincidence that the 70% rise in violent crime in Enfield has come at exactly the same time as 188 police officers and police community support officers have been removed from our streets. Nor is it a coincidence that violent crime has increased so sharply at exactly the same time as it became harder for our police to carry out “stop and search” of youths suspected of carrying knives. Since 2012, stop and search in London has fallen by 70%, and last year we saw a 24% rise in the number of knife crime offences across the capital. Parents from all sections of the community in Enfield are crying out for a new, workable, responsible stop and search policy, because teenagers are being stabbed to death every few weeks. I know there was a problem with stop and search, but I think that could be sorted. Despite the best efforts of our police service in Enfield, it is nigh on impossible for them to maintain a highly visible police presence on our streets when we now have only about 550 police officers attempting to protect a population of 330,000 people.

[Meg Hillier]

One area of police funding that we on the Public Accounts Committee examined as long ago as 2015 was the impact on police services of cuts in other public services, whereby the police became the responder of first and last resort, for example, on mental health. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an additional pressure, which is clearly causing pressures in her borough, too?

[Joan Ryan]

Absolutely. Various studies show that upwards of 70% of police call-outs involve some kind of mental health issue, which many police do not feel able to deal with. Enfield is a growing borough. It is London’s fifth largest borough and over the next decade is set to become the fourth biggest, so spreading resources this thinly is unfair, both to the public and to the police. There has been no way of getting the Prime Minister, either now or when she was Home Secretary, to face up to the effect of her law and order policies on people’s lives. When the current Home Secretary came to Enfield North during the election campaign, after a young man was stabbed to death, she said nothing about the loss of almost 200 uniformed police officers and PCSOs locally, and 20,000 police officers nationally, over the past seven years. I notice nothing in the Gracious Speech that indicates any plan to increase police numbers. The Home Secretary called for longer prison sentences for carrying a knife, which many people would support, but that is completely ineffective if we have not got the police on the streets in the first place. If we cannot catch them, we cannot sentence them.

The policy response has to be about prevention, education and more visible policing. Working with the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, I am pleased that Enfield will have 21 more local, ward-based officers in place by the end of this year to help fight crime. Unfortunately, the Government are taking entirely the opposite approach. The Met has already seen £600 million stripped from its central Government grant since 2010; another £400 million cut is planned by 2020; and as much as £700 million on top of that could be cut due to changes in the police funding formula—we have yet to hear the details. At a time when the Met Commissioner is saying that the police are “very stretched”, cuts on this scale would spell disaster. They will put the safety of our communities at risk. I urge the Government to provide the Mayor of London and the Met police with the resources they need to ensure proper levels of policing in Enfield and throughout the capital.

Let me turn to the issue of local health services in Enfield. I recall standing in this place in 2015 for that year’s Gracious Speech, when I spoke about the

“shocking decline in acute care and primary care provision”—[Official Report, 2 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 504.]

under this Government. Chase Farm hospital has lost its accident and emergency and maternity unit, and seen its in-patient beds reduced in number from 500 to 48. The closure of those facilities heaped huge pressure on local GP practices and the A&E department at the North Middlesex hospital. Last year, the North Mid was tipped into crisis, partly as a result of those pressures, and the A&E department was saved from partial closure only by a public outcry, the launch of a community campaign and the concerted lobbying of health Ministers by myself and other north London MPs. However, just yesterday we learned of a leaked NHS report which, according to the Royal College of Surgeons, threatens “devastating” cuts to local health services in north London. Those would impact on the quality of care provided to patients and, potentially, close further A&E and maternity units, affecting residents throughout Enfield, Camden, Islington, Haringey and Barnet. During the general election, I pledged to do all I can to protect our NHS from these cuts—I reaffirm that pledge today—and to work with residents and fellow MPs in Enfield and across North London to oppose these proposed cuts with all means at our disposal.

I had hoped to move on to a positive note on education, but, sadly, that cannot be the case. The third aspect of public services that came up so frequently on the doorstep during the election campaign was concern about the future of our children’s education. A good education is essential for unlocking young people’s potential and is a vital investment in our country’s future, at a time when we need to build the best skilled workforce possible. I am therefore dismayed, as are so many parents, headteachers, teachers and others in Enfield, that our primary and secondary schools are facing the largest real-terms cuts to their budgets in a generation.

Before the election, Enfield faced the prospect of a further £27 million cut to school funding by 2020 under a Conservative Government. The Conservative party’s panicked manifesto commitments on education, which have served only to make the scale of the impending cuts less transparent, will result in all schools in Enfield losing out in real terms. Schools are having to consider further reductions to their staffing levels, support services and curriculums, which could seriously compromise standards and affect every child’s ability to achieve their very best. However long this Parliament may last, I will be fighting for our children’s education and for a fair funding deal for Enfield’s schools.

To turn away from domestic issues for a moment, the top of the last page of the Gracious Speech states:

“My Government will work to find sustainable political solutions to conflicts across the Middle East.”

It is no secret in the House that I have a long-standing commitment to a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. I remind the Government, and particularly the Department for International Development, of the value of building peace at the grassroots by supporting co-existence projects that bring Israelis and Palestinians together—projects that build a constituency for peace and of which there are many good examples. There is undoubtedly an international consensus in support of a renewed focus on the importance of the civil society dimension to advancing a two-state solution.

I agree almost without exception with the remarks of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) on Brexit. Interestingly, the subject came up very little on the doorstep during the election campaign, but it is an underlying concern and anxiety for our constituents. As strapped for cash as public services are now, if the Government come back with no deal, a bad deal, or the worst possible deal, we could see our public services absolutely collapse through lack of funding. People in Enfield, and up and down the country, are aware that Brexit is a significant threat to their standard of living and to public services. We all have to try to work constructively, as far as we possibly can, to get the best deal, but the onus is on the Government to ensure that Opposition Members are able to work with them. If not, I fear for the outcome for my constituents. I seek reassurances from Ministers that my constituents will be given the resources they need so that they have the decent public services that mean so much to their way of life, safety, health, education and future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

It is probably fitting that I am following the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) as I have promised myself that in this Parliament I will become for remain what he has been for leave during his parliamentary career.

This is the first Queen’s Speech debate in which I have participated since 2010, the year I was elected. If I am honest, I have tended to find the speech itself and the political debate that follows somewhat formulaic. Now we cannot say that that is the case. Events in the past year have hit the British people with a speed and ferocity that is unprecedented in my lifetime: the murder of our beautiful colleague Jo Cox; the referendum; the terrorist attacks in Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park; and, of course, the horrific fire at Grenfell Tower just two weeks ago. When our country is in such an awful mess, this Queen’s Speech is exposed as dreadfully wanting. It is dominated by last year’s obsession, Brexit, and this reality is made all the worse by the Government’s commitment to the most complicated and disruptive type of Brexit imaginable. The questions raised with me by my constituents about jobs, policing, schools, hospitals, homes and elderly care barely feature.

The truth is, however, that it is not just the Queen’s Speech that is failing people, but our politics more generally. Take the general election that we have just had. The public witnessed an election being called because of the fallout from last year’s referendum, but they got a campaign that left them none the wiser about how Brexit would be dealt with. They saw a Prime Minister who ran away from the TV cameras and who, when she did appear, was shaky, nervous and wooden. They saw Conservative politicians who could not answer questions about police cuts and counter-terrorism when a suicide bomber had murdered young families at a pop concert. They saw a party that could provide no guarantees about the pound in their pocket or the funding of their public services, and they feared for the homes of elderly parents. It is no wonder that a lot of people in many different parts of the country voted for change.

The past two weeks have cemented public perceptions of a Government floundering, out of their depth and out of step with the reality of life in Britain in 2017. There is no answer as to why it has taken four years to implement recommendations on fire safety in high-rise blocks. There is no ability to quickly rehouse people whose homes have burned down because of London’s appalling and acute housing crisis, and there is no prospect of quick answers about responsibility for that horrific fire because such a long supply chain was involved. The opportunity to squeeze profit and evade accountability may yet prove dangerously significant.

[Joan Ryan]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is an abrogation of the Government’s responsibility if they do not give the assurances sought earlier today about proper resourcing and funding to enable local authorities to carry out safety checks and make changes that will ensure that residents know and feel that they are safe in their tower blocks or their low-rise accommodation?

[Heidi Alexander]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. The fact that some people will not sleep easily in their beds tonight is proof that the Government have failed.