Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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The Attorney-General
If I may say so, I always keep the funding arrangements under review, and I am always happy to discuss them with my colleagues in the Treasury. The nature of the SFO’s work load is very flexible, and I therefore think it almost inevitable that if it is to do its work effectively, there will be occasions when it will need extra funding, or will require funding in excess of what it needs. This is an interesting balance which we need to look at. That said, I am mindful of the fact that there may be other ways in which the funding can be delivered and I discuss that frequently with the director of the Serious Fraud Office.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
9. What discussions he has had with the Crown Prosecution Service on prosecuting crimes of violence against subcultures as hate crimes.
The Solicitor-General (Oliver Heald)
I pay tribute to the work the hon. Lady has done in this area. The CPS prosecutes violent offences robustly, including cases where victims have been attacked on the basis of subculture. Targeting particular groups is treated as an aggravating feature in such cases.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the Minister for that response. As he is aware, I have been working with the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. She was killed seven years ago and her mother has been tirelessly campaigning for police forces to record such crimes as hate crimes. Might it be part of the sentencing guidelines given to courts that they can sentence specifically in relation to hate crimes?
The Solicitor-General
At present statutory provisions cover cases motivated by hostility or prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity, but none the less it is possible for a judge to sentence on the basis that the crime was motivated by hate of a different kind, as Judge Russell did in the case the hon. Lady mentioned, and to treat that as an aggravating feature. I think the hon. Lady is arranging a meeting at the House of Commons tomorrow at which the Sophie Lancaster Foundation will be having a listening event.
Tributes to Tony Benn
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I too rise to speak as one of Tony Benn’s successors as a Member of Parliament, in my case for the constituency of Bristol East, which he represented from 1950 to 1983, with a brief interregnum when we had the bother about the hereditary peerage and he had to fight two by-elections. He probably holds a record in that he was elected on a by-election when Sir Stafford Cripps retired in 1950 because of ill health, and then fought two by-elections, at one of which he was disqualified. The people of Bristol, South-East, as it was then, knew perfectly well that he was not entitled to be elected to Parliament, but voted for him nevertheless. Two years later, when he managed after a bitter battle to get the law changed and the Peerage Act 1963 introduced, he then fought another by-election, and he also fought the Chesterfield by-election, which, as I said, must be something of a record.
I am also here to speak on behalf of Madam Deputy Speaker, who, I think, first met Tony Benn at the age of 21—when she was 21, not when he was 21; she does not go back that far—and worked for him as an assistant and eventually joined him as a colleague as the MP for Bristol South from 1987.
Tony Benn was a man of the establishment. He came from a privileged—dare I say “posh”?—background. He was privately educated, he read PPE at Oxford, he was president of the Oxford Union, and apart from two years serving in the forces during the second world war, the only other job he held was at another bastion of the British establishment, the BBC. His father was an MP and both his grandfathers were MPs.
Despite that background as a man of the establishment, Tony was also a man of the people. That came out strongly in what my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) said. Describing it as the common touch makes it sounds quite patronising, but there was nothing condescending about it. So many people have stopped me in the street in recent days—the same has happened to Madam Deputy Speaker—to offer their personal accounts of his kindness and friendliness. The leader of Bristol council’s Labour group told me about a time he came over to her house. Her two young children had just been given bicycles for their birthdays, and he insisted on riding them up and down the hallway on their tiny bikes. It is little things like that we remember.
Madam Deputy Speaker and others have talked about the contraption he rode around in at election times, a chair strapped to the top of an old Austin Cambridge. He would be driven around the streets, precariously perched on top of the car with a thermos flask in one hand—he was never without his tea—and a megaphone in the other. It is amazing how many people remember him doing that. It is not something I care to replicate—I do not think that I would last very long up there. There is also a brilliant picture of him from 1957, up a ladder decorating the constituency office in just a little pair of shorts. The office needs decorating again, but I do not think that I will be going up a ladder.
I want to mention some of the key things for which he is remembered in Bristol. He supported the Bristol bus boycott in 1963, which was inspired by the civil rights movement in America. There was a colour bar on black workers being employed by the bus company. He was very supportive of Paul Stephenson and others who led the boycott. Eventually, two years later, it led to the passing of the Race Relations Act 1965. People still remember his role in that. He said, “I will not use the buses. I may even have to get on a bike.” He is also remembered for Concorde, of course, the 45th anniversary of which is coming up. A permanent memorial to it will be placed in Filton, just outside Bristol. A civic memorial service will also be held for Tony Benn soon.
In the tributes that followed his death, he was quoted by Madam Deputy Speaker as having advised her, “People will attack you because they want to deflect you. You ignore the attacks and get on with understanding the people. You were put there by the people and they can take it away, so stay close to them.” I think that sums him up. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, he never lost sight of the fact that he was one man with many employers. In that regard, too, he was a man of the people.
My last memory of Tony Benn—I did not know him very well, because our times did not overlap—was when I had the somewhat dubious honour of being invited to be on the Left Field stage at Glastonbury last year. I say that it was a dubious honour because the three of us on the stage were Billy Bragg, who of course is an absolute idol of the Glastonbury audience and a national treasure, Tony Benn, and if anyone could command more adoration at Glastonbury than Billy Bragg it was him, and me, feeling something of a spare part. It took so long for the session to get going because he of course received a standing ovation as he was led up to the stage. So many people wanted to shake his hand and show how much they admired him and respected his views.
He was obviously in frail health and I do not think that he could hear the questions he was being asked all that clearly, but he spoke about the power of politics to effect social change. Those in the audience were probably quite hung over, having been up all night listening to music and doing various other things, but it was clear that he totally inspired them, because despite his physical frailty and advanced age, he was still saying, “You can do something. You can achieve something, just by getting out there and keeping at it.” I think that is his lasting legacy, because he believed in politics. There is so much cynicism about politics these days. He was a rare creature, as he was able to persuade people not to be cynical about politics and to believe that politics can actually change things.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Hurd
I thank my hon. Friend for that important question. There is a huge opportunity to harness best practice across local government, and that is why we have partnered with the Local Government Association and other sector partners to establish a local digital alliance. We are collaborating with and supporting local government to design and deliver local public services online. That will allow them to offer value for money and to maximise the opportunities presented by digital tools.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
7. What recent progress the Government have made on implementing the big society.
The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Nick Hurd)
I hope that the hon. Lady will join me in celebrating the fact that volunteering has risen since 2010 after years of decline, and that almost 2,000 young people in Bristol and the immediate surrounding area will have the opportunity to take part in the National Citizen Service this year.
Kerry McCarthy
I am sure that the Government are embarrassed by the fact that food banks have now become by far the most visible sign of the big society in action and have now, de facto, become part of the welfare system. Jobcentres are being told to signpost them, rather than refer people to them, in order to mask their connection with benefit sanctions and delays. Is this a sign of the success of the big society: food banks feeding the starving because of the failures of the welfare system’s safety net?
Mr Hurd
Food banks are an impressive civil society response to a need that, as the hon. Lady knows, emerged before the last general election. We have supported a number of them through our social action fund. I hope that she agrees that they are not a long-term solution to the complex issue of food poverty. There are no simple answers, despite what Opposition Members claim, but a large part of the solution is a recovering economy and the long-overdue reform of the welfare system, and that is what we are delivering.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I may have misheard the question. We are clear as a Government, across the coalition, that what we are delivering is a reduction by a third in the levels of net immigration. I very much want to see this happen more quickly, with the reintroduction of the exit checks that have been removed in the past and, generally, a firm but fair approach towards immigration that says that those people who want to come here and play by the rules, pay their taxes and make a contribution to this country are welcome to do so.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
T12. Last January I asked the Deputy Prime Minister if he was ashamed of the shocking rise in food banks under this Government. He has had a year to come up with a decent answer, because I did not get one back then. Does he agree that it is a scandal that more than half a million people are now using food banks and, more importantly, what does he intend to do about it?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Lady might have prefaced her question with the observation that food banks increased tenfold in the years in which Labour was in office, but—as with so much else—amnesia settles on the Opposition Benches and they entirely forget their responsibility for the problems we have and many of the errors that we are correcting in government. We should pay tribute to people who work in food banks and make sure that they help the most vulnerable in society, rather than constantly seeking to make opportunistic political points to their cost.
Points of Order
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I trust that the appetite has been satisfied. Question Time is definitively over. In a moment we will move on to the next business, but I am happy to take other points of order.
Kerry McCarthy
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I spent this morning trying to keep up with the obfuscations and excuses emanating from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about the application to extend the badger cull in Somerset, and I understand that an application will soon be made to extend the cull in Gloucestershire. I know that we will have DEFRA questions tomorrow, but do you agree that we really need the Environment Secretary to come to the House and make a full statement so that we can have the opportunity to question him, because there are so many unanswered questions about why the Department has agreed to go down that path?
Mr Speaker
A variety of mechanisms are open to the hon. Lady and other Members to ensure that such rigorous and detailed scrutiny takes place. In the meantime, however, the hon. Lady can satisfy herself with the thought that tomorrow will indeed be the occasion for DEFRA questions; I confidently predict that she will be in her place. Thereafter, all sorts of things can happen. To judge by the experience of the House, they probably will.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I congratulate businesses in Crawley and my hon. Friend on helping to encourage this private sector-led recovery, which is seeing more people into work. We are also seeing the number of young people not in education, employment or training at its lowest for a decade. As I said, there is absolutely no complacency, when more work needs to be done to make sure that this recovery delivers for people who work hard and do the right thing.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Q9. In April last year, I asked the Prime Minister about the thousands of people visiting food banks, and his reply then suggested a shocking complacency. His reply to the Leader of the Opposition today suggests that he has learned nothing since. Will he answer the question: does he think that the half a million people visiting food banks today simply need to manage their finances better, or will he admit that they cannot afford to feed their families because of his Government?
The Prime Minister
We should work with and thank the food bank movement for the excellent work it does, and we should recognise that the use of food banks went up 10 times under Labour. One of the reasons it has increased under this Government is that we took away the block that the hon. Lady’s party put in place, which was preventing jobcentres from referring people to food banks. Labour did not do it because it was bad PR, but this Government are interested in doing the right thing rather than something that just looks good.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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The Attorney-General
I trust that it has. If we wish to preserve trial by jury, it is extremely important that judges’ directions to juries not to conduct research are properly observed. If they are not, trial by jury will not survive. I have brought a number of cases against jury members; they have been reported, and I hope that as a result of my bringing them, I shall have to bring far fewer in future.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
When the footballer Ched Evans was convicted of rape last year, his victim was named more than 6,000 times on Twitter. She has been forced to accept a new identity and relocation package. I understand that only a handful of people have ever been held to account for naming her, and that they have merely been ordered to pay compensation. Should we not send a much stronger signal to people who indulge in such behaviour?
The Attorney-General
The hon. Lady has raised two separate points The first relates to the way in which the CPS has gone about prosecuting these cases. It has obviously been selective. Cases have to be brought to its attention, and it seeks to deal with those cases, particularly cases involving those who have initiated such comments. I think that that must be the right way of going about things. As for the hon. Lady’s point about penalties, she must understand that they are not a matter for the CPS. If Parliament wishes to make the penalties more severe, that is a matter for legitimate debate in the House of Commons.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Solicitor-General
Yes, I agree. It is right to bear in mind the fact that all those in the legal profession, including the judges, are concerned about the issue too, because what has been happening has been wrong. I agree that the matter is urgent. I welcome “The Advocate’s Gateway”, which is a useful initiative to which all parties have signed up. It should make a major difference. Proper case management is the key.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
2. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the use of community resolution orders to reduce offending.
Mr Speaker
I must say that the initial answer was the shortest that I have ever heard, especially from a lawyer.
Kerry McCarthy
There is real concern that the orders are being used increasingly to resolve—or supposedly resolve—domestic violence incidents. In 2012, nearly 2,500 of the orders were issued rather than cases being put before the CPS for possible prosecution. Does the Minister share my concern that the orders may be being used as an easy disposal, rather than taking domestic violence seriously?
The Solicitor-General
The point to make is that the decisions are made by officers at the time. They are not orders, but decisions made when there has perhaps been an apology or some reparation. In cases of domestic violence, that would be inappropriate. The guidance is that the resolutions should not be used for such cases. Obviously, I will mention the matter to the Home Office, which is the place to direct the question.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I would certainly be more than happy to make sure that a meeting is arranged with the cities Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). I am delighted that there is growing demand for the principal city deals to be spread across the country. I see the early city deals, which we have already entered into with the eight largest cities in the country outside the south-east, as trailblazers for a wider programme of decentralisation across the country.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
T9. In the light of the current horsemeat scandal, what advice would the Deputy Prime Minister give to consumers and Liberal Democrat voters who think they are buying one thing but end up with something completely different?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Lady may ask that question, but millions of people in this country heard her party claim that they were going to end boom and bust and saw her shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), go on a prawn cocktail charm offensive to suck up to the banks which created the problem in the first place. Perhaps she should account for that.
The Solicitor-General
The Crown Prosecution Service is not the organisation that maintains the database of convictions, and that is unlikely to change. However, in the period 2009 to 2012, the number of defendants prosecuted for burglary offences increased by 6.4%, compared with the national fall in prosecutions of 8.9%, so he can be assured that burglary is being given proper attention.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
6. What recent discussions he has had with the Director of Public Prosecutions on increasing the Crown Prosecution Service’s conviction rate for female genital mutilation.
The Solicitor-General (Oliver Heald)
The Director of Public Prosecutions regularly briefs the Attorney-General and me on the issue of prosecuting for female genital mutilation and on the action plan that was developed following the Crown Prosecution Service round table on 28 September 2012.
Kerry McCarthy
I very much welcome the DPP’s action plan, which is a positive step forward. May I urge the Solicitor-General to look at the work being done in Bristol with young women from affected communities? They have been really brave in speaking out—they have even developed a two-part storyline for “Casualty”, which will be shown later this year. Does he agree that ensuring that such work is community-led as well as Crown Prosecution Service-led is an important way of dealing with the problem?
The Solicitor-General
I certainly agree with that. The inter-ministerial group on violence against women and girls, which is chaired by the Home Secretary, is taking a particular interest in those sorts of approaches, so I commend the hon. Lady on mentioning it in the House, and she is absolutely right. Finding the right evidence and having the support of the community—and, therefore, support for the victim—is vital.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is a carbon copy of the wording in the coalition agreement. My party has always taken this stance because I have always struggled to explain to people why someone who happens not to be married should pay more tax than someone who happens to be married. If such a measure were put before the House, it would be very difficult to explain to people why those who are not married should be stung with higher tax. That does not seem to me to be right.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
T2. When the Deputy Prime Minister entered the coalition, did he foresee that at the halfway stage there would be a sixfold increase in the number of people using food banks, there would be predictions that half a million more children would be living in absolute poverty by the end of the Parliament and that he would champion legislation described by the Child Poverty Action Group as “poverty-producing”, as he will later today? Is he not thoroughly ashamed of his record?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am proud that this coalition Government have come together to clear up the monumental mess left by the hon. Lady’s party. After all, it was her shadow Chancellor who went on the prawn cocktail charm offensive in the City of London to suck up to the banks, which created the problems in the first place. It was the Labour Government who presided over the shocking tax system in which a hedge fund manager paid less tax on their shares than their cleaner paid on their wages. It is this coalition Government who have ended that scandal.