Council Tax (Benefit Claimants)

Debate between John Hemming and Steve McCabe

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[John Hemming]

The argument is about whether it is best to compare people on the basis of the percentage cut in spending power or the total cut. If another council is spending only £40 and it has the whole amount cut, that is going to cause it a lot more problems. There is no doubt that it is the percentage that matters, and Birmingham’s percentage in this particular spending round is relatively good. It has to be accepted that all the figures are better than the average. Unquestionably, Birmingham has done relatively well. If the Labour party goes round whinging, no one will give them any credibility whatever. I am happy to take further interventions.

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

The hon. Gentleman’s words may come back to haunt him. Most people in Birmingham expect their MPs to stand up for them. If I have understood the hon. Gentleman’s position, he is trying to suggest that Birmingham council is deliberately over-charging the poor. In doing that, he is managing completely to ignore the fact that it his Government who are cutting council tax support.

The hon. Gentleman seems to be advocating that Birmingham should accept the transitional grant. I have just read the Institute for Fiscal Studies report. Will he tell me whether he accepts that this is a one-off, one-year grant that is designed to persuade councils not to cut council tax support by as much as the Government are cutting council tax funding? Despite his maverick use of figures, does not it ultimately mean that further services will be cut to make up the shortfall? If that is his position, why does not he tell people?

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a limit to what I am prepared to permit.

[John Hemming]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. On the first one, which is fighting for the city, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and I campaigned considerably, including in this Chamber, for an increase in fire funding, because the proposals from the Government were unfair. The Government indeed changed those proposals, and it is now accepted that the new proposals on fire funding are completely fair. However, when the city does relatively well out of the funding settlement, I will have no credibility at all if I go around whinging about it, which is what Sir Albert Bore does whatever happens. On the first point, of course I will fight for the city, but when we get a reasonably good deal I will say just that, because it is foolish to complain about things when we are actually doing quite well.

I accept that I have gone through a lot of figures. I can give hon. Members the spreadsheets if they want to see them. If the Government grant is £2.1 million, it is true that £1.3 million is needed from the general fund. However, if houses are built and people move into the city, there is more council tax. The estimated figure for next year is £1.4 million more. The Government grant leaves a shortfall of £1.3 million. If we then use the £1.4 million of extra council tax to prevent ourselves from having to pay the poor, we are far better off.

[Steve McCabe]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that any additional council tax revenue that is generated by new growth should all go towards the council tax support scheme, and that there should be nothing to deal with any of the other cuts being inflicted on Birmingham?

[John Hemming]

I have highlighted areas in which there are reserves within the council. I have particularly identified the over-budgeting for inflation. I quoted the figures from the council’s background papers, and I am happy to share the spreadsheets with all Birmingham Members if there interested. The issue is about choices. It is clear that the administration in Birmingham has decided that its choice is to try to charge poor people council tax. My view is that it has a lot of alternatives. To say, “We must do it,” is complete nonsense.

I accept, as the hon. Gentleman said, that the grant is a one-off scheme at the moment, but in my speech I said—I did not say it all that quickly—that we should extend it into further years. I hope that the Minister is listening. I repeat that I want to see the Government extend the grant to further years, because it is important that we try to protect the poorest people in society. The argument of the administration in Birmingham is that we need work incentives. We already have things such as the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill, but the administration is pushing it too far.

[Steve McCabe]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s point about work incentives. Does he accept that the change in council tax support will fall on those who are of working age? They are the people who will be hit.

[John Hemming]

I accept that. That is why the Labour party administration in Birmingham argued that it wanted to do this—to encourage people to work. I want to encourage people to work, but let us recognise that the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill is coming in. If we ladle things on top of people, it gets very difficult. They are householders, so they are having to manage being in a household. The courts will not enforce the whole tax bill, and the council has ignored that, but the point is serious. It is a political choice made by the authority. The grant that I want to be continued costs only £100 million. I say “only”—£100 million is quite a bit of money, but it is not difficult to find from the national budget.

It was a real struggle to get the information that I have used in this speech from the Labour administration in Birmingham. In its report, its reason for not taking the Government grant was:

“The deferral of the scheme for 12 months may not truly promote positive work incentives or support people back into work.”

It seems to me, however, that it wishes to tax the poor in order to blame the Government and for party political gain.

Child Sexual Exploitation

Debate between John Hemming and Steve McCabe

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I echo what has been said about listening to victims; whoever they are criticising, they must be listened to.

It is unfortunate that the statue of a naked 13-year-old boy on the front of Broadcasting House was carved by someone who abused children. However, this is not about the BBC; it is the children who matter the most. The BBC does not matter, dead celebrities do not matter, mistaken identities do not matter in the same way; what really matters is that children should be expected to be safe in the control of the state. These children are the most vulnerable because they do not have the protection of their parents and depend entirely on the state.

Only 20% to 30% of the children subject to child sexual exploitation on the narrow definition of the term are in care. Obviously, that means that 70% to 80% of those children are living in the family home. The cost of supporting a family can be as little as £3,000 per annum, whereas secure care can cost as much as £200,000 or even £500,000 per year. I accept that we need a child protection system and that not all parents are “good enough”, but I make no apology for concentrating on the failings of the state. Penny Mellor, who has campaigned against state-tolerated abuse for many years, was imprisoned because of her campaign, and was present for the north Wales inquiry, has said:

“The state as a parent is abominable, proven in Rochdale and proven in North Wales. If we are going to remove children into the care of the state then it is about time we ensured that the state is a better parent than the one we removed them from. The who is not relevant, sexual abuse perpetrated by anyone is devastating.”

It is important to recognise that the state system is still harming children. Rochdale, Rotherham and Oxford are not the whole story. One problem is the lack of accountability. Individual practitioners are basically allowed to get on with things as they wish. There are good practitioners but also bad practitioners, and their bad practice is not picked up by the system. A good example of this is from New Zealand, where social workers encouraged a 14-year-old girl to have group sex with a number of St John Ambulance workers and “divorce” her parents, who wished to discourage this. St John Ambulance has still not finally dealt with this issue and some of the workers are scheduled to receive a Queen’s Award. Another example is from Birmingham, where a child was first sexually harassed in a foster placement and then got pregnant at the age of 15, while in the control of the state. Practitioners in Birmingham have argued in the past that children should be permitted to prostitute themselves while not being allowed to make toast for each other, for health and safety reasons.

As at 31 March 2011, 160 girls in care had had their first child before the age of 16 and 120 had had their first child at the age of 16. So what happens? We know that the girls at Duncroft school were punished for complaining about Jimmy Savile. If a child in the power of the local authority wishes to complain about their treatment, they have to complain to an employee of the local authority or someone funded by the local authority. Where is the independence in that? The lack of independence in the complaints system is why many cases of abuse are not picked up until the children subject to the abuse become adults—not necessarily at age 18 but when they get the required confidence aged 25, 30 or later. Very rarely, a Gillick-competent child in his or her mid-teens may make contact with one of the very rare solicitors who are willing to take on the local authority, but usually nothing happens at least until the children are adults.

One of the worst examples of a cover up comes from Jersey. Children in Jersey had the chief of police, Graham Power, and the health Minister, Stuart Syvret, to protect their interests. However, in 2008, as soon as action was taken to investigate historical abuse, the health Minister was sacked and the chief of police suspended. What hope did those children have? It is now roughly the fourth anniversary of the sacking of Jersey’s chief of police, Graham Power, and he has put out a statement to coincide with it. I will not read it all because time is limited, but this is part of what he says:

“I would however simply for the record, remind readers what has been established from a number of credible and independent sources and disclosures. Namely, that my suspension was based on falsified documents, fabricated evidence, misleading information provided to States Members and the public by Jersey Ministers, and the testimony of a number of senior individuals who have since been publicly discredited.

The events relating to Jimmy Saville and other revelations have heightened the general awareness of the issue of Historic Child Abuse, and the substantial difficulties which stand in the way of those who attempt to bring abusers to justice.”

This cover-up has been continued by the UK Border Agency, which assisted Jersey in avoiding scrutiny by banning a US journalist, Leah McGrath Goodman, from Jersey. She is now applying again for a visa, and I hope that the Minister will expedite it.

Teresa Cooper, who says that she was held down by six members of staff and injected with drugs while at Kendall House at the age of 14 and that she was also sexually assaulted in a drugged state, is continuing at the age of 45 to battle to get the evidence to find out why the Government did not act to stop that. We have a duty to provide her and other survivors with the records they ask for.

There have also been numerous police operations, including Operation Rose in Northumbria, Operation Care in Liverpool, Operation Aldgate and Operation Gullane in Yorkshire, Operation Goldfinch and Operation Flight in south Wales, and Operation Camassia in Birmingham. Frequently, such operations do not get to the bottom of the issues. A few, such as that in Kincora, managed to make the link between the abuse and people external to the institution. We need to empower the survivors by providing them with the information to argue their cases. Perhaps we can then also consider the question of who turned a blind eye.

It is often easier to see that there is a cover-up than to get to the truth. For example, if people listen to last Friday’s interview with Stuart Syvret on BBC Radio Jersey—it will be available on iPlayer for a few days—they will hear how the BBC is acting as a tool of the establishment by trying to prevent him from arguing his case. Mike Stein, in his excellent article in Child and Family Social Work in February 2006, explains how widespread this problem was, with a possible one in seven of children in care being subject to abuse. Australia has implemented an all-embracing inquiry, which is a good idea, although the details are complex. I believe, however, that the priority should be to empower the survivors.

We also need to act urgently to find out what is happening to children in the care system today. In the year to 31 March 2011—I do not have the later figures—according to the SSDA903 return, 430 children aged one to four, 350 children aged five to nine and 630 children aged 10 to 15 left care for “other reasons”. These are the children who have left care and we do not know what has happened to them. Have they been trafficked, have they been abducted or have they run away to live on the streets because they were unhappy in the control of the state?

The statistical system used in the USA is called AFCARS—the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System— and records when children run away, but our Government do not bother. Clearly, they do not care sufficiently to ask local authorities to tell them. When I asked the erstwhile Minister, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), to record such instances and change the statistical basis, his response was that to find out nationally how many children are trafficked from care, abducted or run away would lead to

“an unnecessary increase in reporting requirements.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 642W.]

We need to go further. We clearly cannot trust all local authorities to tell the whole truth about everything. We already have a system for auditing what happens to the money. We really ought to have a system for checking whether we are told the truth about what happens to the children, or do the Government only care about the money and not about the children?

The secrecy, lack of transparency and consequent failures in accountability clearly failed children in the past, but they are also failing children today. We need to protect the rights of children and adults to complain and bring in greater scrutiny of family court proceedings. It is the secrecy that arises from the family courts that allows the system to avoid scrutiny and local authorities to simply say, “We are acting in the best interests of the child,” when clearly they are not.

Finally, Parliament needs to be more willing to look at individual issues before they hit the top of the news agenda. There needs to be a threshold at which collective action occurs.

There is disagreement between two particular positions that have been debated today. I have a little time, so it is worth going into this in detail. There is an argument that all we need is a bit more information sharing, but the evidence from Rochdale is that that does not work and that people are not acting. We need to ensure that people are motivated. That is the problem with the independent reviewing officer—they are not independent. The independent reviewing officer is employed by the local authority. I want to address the Lancashire county council case.

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

I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying and do not want to take issue with it, but I would caution against suggesting that the evidence from Rochdale shows that information sharing does not work. The evidence from Rochdale so far shows that people failed to fulfil their responsibilities and that, had they done so and connected the threads of information and believed the victims, there would have been a much earlier and different outcome.