Ebola Outbreak: DRC

Debate between John Howell and Rory Stewart

Monday 20th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

There are three issues. First, I absolutely agree that we need to work very closely with everyone, including all Members of this House, to combat the very dangerous lies about vaccines. Vaccines are absolutely vital. They have transformed life expectancy around the world. We cannot allow conspiracy theories about vaccines to lead to unnecessary deaths.

Secondly, in eastern DRC, there are two types of vaccines available: one developed by Merck, and one developed by Johnson & Johnson. The trials of the Merck vaccine were very successful in Guinea. We are beginning to roll out the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. There is an issue with how long it takes to make these vaccines; because they still have to be biologically incubated through an egg, it can take between six and 12 months to create the vaccines. Pushing towards 350,000 over the next six months will therefore require enormous drive and effort.

Finally, on burial practices, we must ensure that we are anthropologically sensitive. Family members want to be able to see their loved ones before they bury them, so we have to bring them in wearing hazmat suits and ensure that they see the chlorine spraying of the body. In certain cases, in addition to wrapping the body, we need a clear site so that they can see the face, so that some of the rumours that have been going around about organ harvesting can be dealt with directly. In eastern DRC, this is about reassuring not only the family, but the broader community.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

One of the big problems is that that part of the world is characterised by a large number of refugees, due to the inherent instability of the region. How will my right hon. Friend tackle Ebola among refugees to ensure that it does not spread to other countries?

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The ongoing conflict in eastern DRC, which has been going on for decades, involves Congolese citizens moving in large numbers into neighbouring countries, and some of the insurgent groups, such as the Allied Democratic Forces, are citizens of other countries—a lot of people originally born in Uganda and Rwanda are now fighting in eastern DRC. That means we need to deal with the situation in two ways. We need to think about those people returning to their host countries, but we also need to think about vaccinating within the camps for refugees and internally displaced people. Our aim will be to try to do a complete vaccination of those camps and communities.

Privatised Probation System

Debate between John Howell and Rory Stewart

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

These questions of accountability are quite difficult for me to answer. Normally, I answer by offering to resign; I am not about to do that again, but I would say that these things are related. On the question the right hon. Gentleman raised about the caseload shift, as the NAO pointed out, a 2% case load shift was predicted, but a 48% case load shift happened, directly impacting the second issue of the income coming to the companies. That prediction is a question we are really trying to look into and understand. This is to do with the fact that more violent and sexual offences were committed than previously, and the Crown courts managed to make different decisions in terms of sentence length and not giving accredited programmes. The question is, how do we predict that type of social change? Could we have predicted it; was it predicted; and how do we act on it?

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the task of rehabilitation can be helped enormously by looking at the experience in Denmark and Germany, where prisoners are encouraged at an early stage to cook for themselves and undertake work that provides valuable training?

[Rory Stewart]

Yes, we can learn a great deal from Germany and Denmark, and indeed in some of our most successful prisons, as prisoners develop in their sentence—as they develop more skills—they are given opportunities to cook for themselves and look after themselves, and of course through the use of release on temporary licence, we can get prisoners into work while they are still in prison. This means, when they leave, they are more likely to have a job. One of the key things about reducing reoffending is making sure there is not a cliff edge at the prison door, but that for at least 10 weeks before people leave a lot of preparation goes into setting up the life they will have outside prison.

Justice

Debate between John Howell and Rory Stewart

Monday 3rd December 2018 Ministerial Corrections

[John Howell]

Earlier this afternoon, the Minister will have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) give an example of how he was approached—hassled, in fact—by a claims management company. I, too, have been in that situation for a fictitious accident and I still get calls about that. Is dealing with this not one of the real ways that we will be able to prevent our being the whiplash capital?

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which has been made by the shadow Front-Bench team and others: dealing with claims management companies is going to be a central part of this. Consultation has taken place on this, and measures have been taken against claims management companies. A significant issue remains, which we are consulting on and trying to resolve—to be honest with the House, it is the fact that many of these calls come from foreign jurisdictions, so the challenge is trying to work out the best way to deal with that.

[Official Report, 23 October 2018, Vol. 648, c. 228.]

Letter of correction from the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, (Rory Stewart).

An error has been identified in a response I gave during the Third Reading debate on the Civil Liability Bill [Lords].

The correct response should have been:

[John Howell]

Earlier this afternoon, the Minister will have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) give an example of how he was approached—hassled, in fact—by a claims management company. I, too, have been in that situation for a fictitious accident and I still get calls about that. Is dealing with this not one of the real ways that we will be able to prevent our being the whiplash capital?

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which has been made by the shadow Front-Bench team and others: dealing with claims management companies is going to be a central part of this. Consultation has taken place on this, and measures have been taken against claims management companies. A significant issue remains, which we are trying to resolve—to be honest with the House, it is the fact that many of these calls come from foreign jurisdictions, so the challenge is trying to work out the best way to deal with that.

Civil Liability Bill [Lords]

Debate between John Howell and Rory Stewart

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Howell]

Earlier this afternoon, the Minister will have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) give an example of how he was approached—hassled, in fact—by a claims management company. I, too, have been in that situation for a fictitious accident and I still get calls about that. Is dealing with this not one of the real ways that we will be able to prevent our being the whiplash capital?

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which has been made by the shadow Front-Bench team and others: dealing with claims management companies is going to be a central part of this. Consultation has taken place on this, and measures have been taken against claims management companies. A significant issue remains, which we are consulting on and trying to resolve—to be honest with the House, it is the fact that many of these calls come from foreign jurisdictions, so the challenge is trying to work out the best way to deal with that.[Official Report, 3 December 2018, Vol. 650, c. 7MC.] On my way into the Second Reading debate, I received exactly that kind of call, encouraging me to make a whiplash claim for a car accident that I had suffered. For a moment, I wondered whether somebody had not put somebody else up to calling me in this fashion and whether this was not some kind of fuss. Sure enough, however, this is continuing to happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rory Stewart]

I am tempted to reflect on the question from my hon. Friend the Chair of the Justice Committee. There is a central issue and challenge at the heart of the Bill. Dealing with this perfect storm of problems—unprovable conditions, high payments, recoverable costs and the actions of the insurance industry—is not easily done through primary legislation, so I pay tribute to right hon. and hon. Members on both sides for their focus on not just the primary legislation but elements of secondary legislation and some of the requirements around it.

The only way this reform will work—the only way to prevent excessive whiplash claims—is by being very nimble in anticipating exactly how claims management companies will operate and predicting how this phenomenon could change in the future. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, that means putting in place an absolute insistence that someone must have a medical examination. At the moment, many of these claims are settled without anybody having any medical examination at all. There must be a medical examination, and it must be conducted by a qualified GP, who is currently allocated through the portal in a random fashion so that people are not in a position to be able to conspire in any way as a result of the kind of doctor whom they are given. An approved GP with the right kind of training, or a medical specialist of another sort, will then give a prognosis that will allow them to proceed in a much more straightforward way.

That brings us to the second aspect, which, again, is not primarily a question of primary legislation. I refer to the design of the online portal. It is important to ensure that, as cases move to the small claims court, people have a straightforward, intuitive way of logging claims. One of the things that we will be doing over the next year is testing and retesting the portal in as many ways as we can to ensure that it actually works.

[John Howell]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. He is being most generous.

I have been a great champion of the online work that is being done in the judiciary. I have spoken to Lord Briggs, and in my time in the courts, sitting with judges, I have championed it there. Does my hon. Friend agree that a very important element of the online system is the dramatic improvement in access to justice for people who are making claims? I know that a great deal of testing is involved, but does he also agree that the delay in its introduction is regrettable because it deprives people of that access to justice?

HMP Birmingham

Debate between John Howell and Rory Stewart

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

How will the Minister ensure that the new governor has both the powers and the support to carry out the reform of the prison?

[Rory Stewart]

Again, this is a good challenge. It comes down to reasserting, in every way, both here in the House and through the management chain, that the governor is in charge, that we will give them the resources to get behind them and that we will support them in what they are doing. It is absolutely right to say that only with a properly empowered governor are we going to achieve that change.

Prison Officers: Working Conditions

Debate between John Howell and Rory Stewart

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson). It is important for the Houses of Parliament to focus on prisons and in particular on the service of prison officers. As my hon. Friend pointed out in his substantial and eloquent speech—he is extremely well informed, with three prisons in his constituency—and indeed as my hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Jack) and for Henley (John Howell), and the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) pointed out in their interventions, we have a very strong debt of obligation towards our prison officers. Prison officers are very unusual uniformed public servants. They generally operate outside the public eye, and prisons are not places that the public generally visit. That is why I wish to come on to that good idea of a parliamentary scheme suggested by hon. Members.

The job of prison officers is very unusual. On the one hand, it has some of the features of the job of the police, in so far as they are dealing with criminals and therefore with a lot of violence and trauma but, on the other, a particular set of skills is also required. Unlike a police officer, a prison officer may often see the same individual hour after hour, day after day, week after week and even year after year, having to provide a moral exemplar for such individuals on their journey towards ceasing reoffending. Prison officers are helping to educate and support them, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey pointed out, in everything from healthcare through to employment.

The challenge presented by my hon. Friend is what we can do practically to help prison officers in their daily work—and, my goodness, they face a challenging situation.

[John Howell]

I am fascinated by the idea of providing opportunities for Members of Parliament to work in prisons. I happen to be the deputy chairman of the Industry and Parliament Trust. Will the Minister work with me to see whether the trust might develop a form of fellowship to take the idea forward?

[Rory Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes a very generous offer. We are incredibly interested in that, but the real thing that we need to make the idea work is Members of Parliament prepared to do it. If the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey and even my hon. Friend the Member for Henley are interested in being part of a parliamentary scheme, we really have got something to take to the head of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service: I can say not just that this is a theoretical idea, but that we have real, living Members of Parliament who are genuinely interested. We can set up a pilot scheme, learn from what happens in the armed forces and the police service parliamentary schemes, and look at the potential support suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley. That would be an incredibly useful thing.

For anyone listening to the debate who is not aware of such schemes, the amazing idea behind the armed forces and police parliamentary schemes is that Members of Parliament can see for themselves what people are going through on the frontline. In fact, legislation considered on Friday, partly on behalf of the police, was driven in part by the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), who had been on the police scheme and had been inspired by seeing the action of police officers. So the scheme has changed legislation here in Parliament.

To accelerate, what useful things can we do for prison officers, apart from paying tribute to them for their extraordinary service, intelligence, commitment, honour, loyalty, courage and resilience, and for the way in which they work with unsociable hours and difficult people? Concretely, there are three different types of thing. My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey touched on terms and conditions, but that I will not touch on today, because we are in confidential discussions with the public sector pay review body, looking at exactly the issues raised, such as those of how we move people from the pre-existing closed-term contracts to the new fair and sustainable contract, and the difference in salary compared with other employment opportunities.

To give one small example, of which my hon. Friend is probably aware, in the Isle of Sheppey we pay an increased amount to attract people away from competing professions, such as in transport or the police, to get them to work in the Prison Service. There is much more to be said about that, but I want to talk concretely about the equipment that we can bring in to try to make a prison officer’s life better. We talked about PAVA spray—pepper spray, in other words. My hon. Friend also talked about the introduction of rigid handcuffs and discussed other equipment being proposed, including suggestions for stab-proof vests, body-worn cameras, which we are rolling out across the estate, and CCTV. All that will increase the confidence of the prison officer in dealing with the prisoner.

We also need to be able to prosecute prisoners who assault prisoner officers. We were very proud, on Friday, to be able to double the maximum sentence for anybody who assaults a prison officer from six months to 12 months. But that requires the Crown Prosecution Service to bring those prosecutions. Too often, as my hon. Friend pointed out, there has been an attitude that, somehow, assaulting a prison officer is different from assaulting a police officer on the street.

Disabled Access (Train Stations)

Debate between John Howell and Rory Stewart

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to appear under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. It is an extraordinary testimony to the interest in disabled access that there is such a large turnout from all parties for this debate. I want to speak briefly to allow other hon. Members to intervene.

If we are looking for a distinctive British contribution to the world since the second world war, we could do a lot worse than looking at what has happened with disabled rights. Britain has genuinely been in the lead on disabled rights, and that has involved all parties. In 1970, Alf Morris introduced the first disability legislation in the world; he was the first Minister for the disabled. In 1995, the Conservative Government introduced the first disability discrimination legislation, and it was a Lib Dem and Conservative coalition that brought in the equalities legislation. That is something of which all parties should be proud.

The issue of disabled rights reflects two important moral insights: one is the contribution that disabled people make to our society, which we wish to celebrate, support and encourage, and another is the important issue of rights or equality—in other words, the fact that disabled people, along with all the other groups who have been focused on since the second world war, deserve equal dignity and respect.

I very much feel that fact personally. My younger sister is disabled, and over the past 20 years I have been struck by how generous and imaginative Governments have been in supporting her in education and transport, and now in providing her with mentoring in the workplace. Governments have done that in hospitals, and they have worked well in libraries and community halls. They need to do so, because there are 12 million disabled people in this country.

The great remaining challenge to Britain—the final frontier—is in transport. Sadly, transport has not quite reached the level that has been achieved in other public service provision. The rights for disabled people that were originally laid out in 1970 have not been fully realised in the field of transport, and that is becoming increasingly important. For example, the number of disabled people using trains has gone up by 55% or more in the past five years. About 77 million individual trips a year are now taken by disabled people.

Huge progress has been made in the constituencies of some hon. Members, and people have been in touch to congratulate the Government on the work already done on specific train stations. Nevertheless, it remains a challenge, particularly for smaller and more rural train stations. There are a number of reasons for that.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

That matter relates not just to regional stations. Goring station is in my constituency, which is a centre for disabled access, as it turns out. People travelling from that station have to go a huge distance beyond it or to fall short of it by a huge distance if they wish to cross platforms, because they have to do that at stations that have lifts to allow them to cross platforms and get a train going the other way.