Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

When the Chancellor came to Bristol in May, he refused to confirm whether electrification of the Great Western line into the city centre would go ahead. Will the Transport Secretary confirm whether it has been deferred, as we were told last year, or has it really been ditched?

[Chris Grayling]

As I said earlier, we are focused on delivering service improvements right now. The electrification process is continuing—there is no secret about the fact that this project has not gone as well as expected—but the key thing for the hon. Lady’s constituents is that, from this autumn, there will be brand-new trains, more capacity, a better service and six trains an hour from Bristol to London. This is really good news for her constituents.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and, indeed, to all my south-west colleagues, who are vociferous champions of the need to make sure that we have the best possible transport links to the constituencies that they represent. I will be very happy to discuss with him the needs of his constituents in Cornwall and, in particular, the potential for improving links to Okehampton.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The National Audit Office’s verdict on the Great Western Railway electrification fiasco was absolutely damning. It described it as

“a case study in how not to manage a major programme.”

It is estimated that passenger growth on the line will be 81% over the five-year period leading up to 2018-19. Anyone who uses the line will know how overcrowded it is. What reassurances can the Secretary of State give that there will be an improvement in our area?

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Lady will not be surprised to learn that I am not happy about the way in which the modernisation and electrification programme has been managed. The NAO report also said that, since 2015, my Department has had a much firmer grip on the programme. I am still not satisfied with the progress that is being made. New trains will, of course, be rolled out across the network sooner rather than later. I am committed to making sure that the project is delivered and that the improvements it brings will happen for passengers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

May I start by sending, on behalf of the whole House, the condolences of this Parliament to the people of Pakistan after this morning’s terrible terrorist attack?

I would like to inform the House about the continuing work that we are doing to help victims of rape and sexual violence. I can announce that we have established a fund which, for the very first time, has been created specifically to help male victims of sexual crimes. We have dedicated more than £1 million to provide services to support those male victims, including funding for face-to-face centres as well as creating a national website and online support service. Approximately 75,000 men are victims of sexual assault or attempted assault each year, while 9,000 men are victims of rape or attempted rape, yet fewer than 3,000 offences of male rape or sexual assault were recorded in 2013-14. We want to change this. We hope to encourage male victims to break the silence on a topic still seen as taboo by giving them access to crucial information and emotional support, either in person or online if they find that way more accessible. This Government will continue to put supporting victims of serious and sexual crime at the forefront of their plans.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I spent this morning at Kids Company helping to wrap some of the 20,000 Christmas presents that it will be giving out to children this year. I was told that 80% of the kids who go to Kids Company are involved in some way in criminal activity, but very few of those who spend time there go on to continue that activity. Will the Minister acknowledge that that sort of intervention is far more successful than putting kids in youth custody centres, and so we should be supporting it?

[Chris Grayling]

I think we would all pay tribute to the work done by Kids Company. I have been to see its work as well. Like many similar charities around the country, it makes an enormous difference to the support provided for people in the most difficult circumstances. The work that it is doing combines with the work done in our troubled families programme and with the work done in our schools to try to help those who start school behind to catch up before they go on to secondary school. Those are all important parts of the jigsaw puzzle of dealing with the real need to use early intervention to keep people out of the criminal justice system where we can possibly do so.

Prison Overcrowding

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We have to bear it in mind that nearly 60% of the 50,000 people who are released on to the streets after short sentences each year reoffend. If we can bring that level of reoffending down so that it is closer to the level for those who go to prison for longer periods, it will significantly increase our success in reducing reoffending and, as my Liberal Democrat colleagues have said, bring down the prison population.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Last year’s inspection of Bristol prison found that the prison was dirty; that prisoners could not get clean clothes, clean bedding or cleaning materials; that it was easy to get drugs; and that about half the prisoners spent all day locked in their cells. How does the Secretary of State think such conditions help the rehabilitative process?

[Chris Grayling]

We are working as hard as we can to increase the number of hours that are worked in prisons, and the number is rising steadily. We have a very energetic team that is looking for new business opportunities. Of course, in a prison that is dirty, the most readily available work force to clean it are the prisoners themselves. In many prisons that I have been around, they are doing a first-rate job of that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Let us be absolutely clear: in relation to the inquiry to which my hon. Friend refers, what has happened in those cases appears to have been untoward to say the least. If the taxpayer has ended up paying a large amount of money for a case brought on a false premise, I will want to take the strongest possible action, including looking at taking financial measures against the firms involved.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

8. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of recent changes to criminal legal aid on law firms and access to justice.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

Recent changes have been made to criminal legal aid because of the imperative to make savings across the Department. We are committed to ensuring the sustainability of the changes that we are making, and to reviewing them a year after implementation of the respective new arrangements.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I recently met solicitors from a couple of small firms based in Bristol that deliver criminal legal aid work, and they told me that not only the 17% cut in fees over two years, but in particular the changes to the duty solicitor contract, will put them out of business. May I urge the Secretary of State to look at the smaller firms who will not be likely to win such contracts, and at the impact that will have on the representation of people who live in places such as Bristol?

[Chris Grayling]

We looked at these issues carefully and took two steps that I hope will help on this front. The most important step was that we are allowing those small firms to bid as consortia so that they can share contracts as long as they cover for each other to ensure the duty work is provided. We also did detailed work with external consultants to ensure that we identified how big a contract needed to be to be sustainable, so that we have sustainable contract size and the option for small firms to bid in consortia. That is the best way of delivering changes that I know are painful but, of course, were in the hon. Lady’s party’s manifesto.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. For me, this issue is the next priority for my Department beyond the current reforms. I believe that we need to make better provision for people with mental health problems in our prisons. It is the next big piece of work that needs to be done, and I hope and expect that we will have the opportunity to put in place real change in the future that can make a difference for those people.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T7. Next Wednesday, I will host an event in Parliament on behalf of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. Sophie and her boyfriend were Goths who were set upon by a gang and brutally kicked and beaten, and Sophie died of her injuries. What guidance is the Minister giving courts about treating such crimes and sentencing them as hate crimes?

[Chris Grayling]

May I first say that we in this House all abhor such horrendous incidents, and our hearts always go out to the families of the victims. The hon. Lady will of course understand that sentencing guidelines are created by the Sentencing Council, and that we as politicians do not have the power, unless we choose to legislate, to instruct courts how to act in particular circumstances. The message I would always give to courts is that it is the will of the democratically elected Parliament that horrendous and brutal crimes should be dealt with firmly and appropriately.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

Although good work is being done to encourage initial reforms, decisions such as today’s in the European Court of Human Rights suggest that its focus is wrong. Through the work of our commission and discussions across the coalition, we will put considerable effort into ensuring that the human rights framework in this country is something that we can all have confidence in, as the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) said earlier.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T10. What assessment has the Department made since the riots last year of the initial lengths of the sentences that were imposed, the extent to which those sentences were reduced on appeal, and the extent to which proper pre-sentence reports were available at the initial hearings?

[Chris Grayling]

I have not yet had a chance to look at the detail of the sentencing packages after the riots, but it is clear that members of the judiciary responded in a robust way to a set of circumstances that was wholly and utterly unacceptable, and I praise them for it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The universal credit, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is pioneering and which will be launched next year, will make a huge difference. As for the skills agenda, one of the coalition’s other achievements is the big expansion of apprenticeships. That is making a real difference to the prospects of unemployed people, particularly young unemployed people, giving them a chance to build up skills that can lead to a lasting career.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The recent scandal involving the unpaid jubilee steward has exposed the fact that some companies out there, under the guise of offering training to Work programme participants, are exploiting them as cheap or unpaid labour. What checks does the Minister carry out on companies that use Work programme participants?

[Chris Grayling]

I must say that I think it is pretty poor when the eventuality of a bus arriving two hours early is turned into a scandal by the Labour party. In fact, as part of a training and development programme, a group of volunteers were participating in a national experience that would build skills which could take them into other employment. I think that the hon. Lady should welcome that and not criticise it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

16. What recent estimate he has made of the level of unemployment in Bristol.

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

The latest estimate for the level of International Labour Organisation unemployment in Bristol, produced by the Office for National Statistics, is 21,400.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Does the Minister know whether the Prime Minister, on his visit to Bristol today, will take the time to meet some of those affected by long-term unemployment, which is up by 72% in the past year and a staggering 15,000% among young people, or was the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) correct when she described the Prime Minister and the Chancellor on the “Daily Politics” show today as

“two arrogant posh boys who show no remorse, no contrition, and no passion to want to understand the lives of others”?

[Chris Grayling]

I cannot speak for the Prime Minister, but I can say that I have been to Bristol recently and spoken with unemployed people there. I can also tell the hon. Lady that the figures she quotes are nonsense. She and her Labour colleagues keep forgetting the fact that they used to hide large numbers of unemployed people on a training allowance, which masked the true picture of long-term unemployment. I can absolutely assure her that genuine long-term unemployment in her constituency is not up by 72%.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

We now actively encourage people to volunteer. I prefer to see people out of the house and doing things. They have an obligation to keep up their job search while they do so, but I shall happily discuss this specific case because it certainly is not our intention that people’s volunteering opportunities should be limited.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

One of my constituents recently had his adoption allowance cut because his child received disability living allowance. We managed to get that overturned but can the Minister make sure that guidelines are issued so that adoption allowance is not cut when DLA, which is intended to meet essential needs, is received?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The big difference is that we are adopting the payment-by-results approach. The organisations taking part in the programme can be paid only at certain points—first, when they agree an action plan with one of the individuals in a problem household; secondly when they deliver that action plan, which might mean the person completing a training course or something similar; and thirdly when that person gets into employment. The taxpayer does not pay the bill unless that happens, and that is a much better deal than ever happened under the previous Government.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

In Bristol, we had the pilots for family intervention projects that involved working with families who had a multitude of problems to tackle some of these issues. Does the Minister accept that this is not just about working through one Department such as his own? Other Departments such as the Department of Health and the Department for Education, as well as drugs funding, will need to be supported if we are to succeed in tackling these problems.

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely do that. Two points regarding the contracting of this support are crucial to what the hon. Lady says. The first is that referrals come from local authorities so that they know they are taking people from their problem family register and are not duplicating effort. Secondly, the contracting was based very much around the effectiveness of the firms in the bidding process at showing they could form the kind of partnerships that she rightly says are so important.

Back to Work Agenda

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Lord Grayling

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I appreciate the need to recognise that unemployed people are individuals with individual circumstances, to which the Minister has referred. My concern is that Jobcentre Plus does not always recognise that at a local level in respect, for example, of the new requirement that lone parents seek work when their youngest child is aged seven—the age is eight at the moment. I hear tales of people being told that they are regarded as not looking for work, because they say that they cannot work in the evenings because babysitters are unavailable, or because they turn down a job that starts at 9.30 am and they have to drop the kids off at school on the other side of town at 9 am. Will the Minister reassure me that such people will not be penalised?

[Chris Grayling]

I can absolutely give the hon. Lady that reassurance. She will know that there is a definition of reasonableness in deciding whether somebody should be required to take a job. We only expect lone parents with a child at primary school to take up a job that is consistent with school hours—it would be absurd to expect a lone parent to work a night shift, for example. I absolutely assure her that that is the case.

While we are on that point, I will pick up the point that the hon. Gentleman raised on targets. The truth is that we discovered that problem, were horrified about it and put a stop to it immediately. However, is he aware of the roots of the problem? The roots are in a set of benchmarks that were introduced by Jobcentre Plus regions to judge whether appropriate sanctions were being achieved in each area, why there were differences, and whether policy was being applied uniformly. In an organisation that is, in my view, too target and detail-focused, the consequence was that in some areas, that was interpreted as a need to apply the individual target of which the hon. Gentleman is now aware.

However, the hon. Gentleman might be unaware that the those benchmarks were introduced in 2006 under the previous Government. Jobcentre Plus is much too focused on targets and goals. Benchmarks are turned into individual targets for front-line staff, and the organisation’s culture does not appreciate the fact that we want front-line individuals to use discretion. We are going through a long change process after 13 years. Jobcentre Plus is used to taking diktats from the top, but this Government are saying, “We want you to use discretion in the front line and to take the right decisions in the interests of individual with whom you are dealing. We do not want you constantly to look back over your shoulder to ask what the centre is saying.” That is an important development, but it will take us time to feed through the whole organisation.

Ironically, given what the hon. Gentleman said about targets, that policy dates back to changes made by the Labour party when it was in power. Indeed, last April it changed the rules actively to encourage an increase in the number of sanctions—again, something that we inherited. It is easy to look at the current Government and say, “What are you doing?”, but actually it is a problem which we inherited, which has grown and which we are now trying to unpick.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the future jobs fund. I know that Labour Members are wedded to it, but in truth it cost four times as much per job outcome as the previous Government’s other scheme, the new deal for young people. At the end of the day, given that we have inherited the biggest budget deficit in Britain’s peacetime history, we have to take some hard decisions and look for value for money. The problem with the future jobs fund was that it was a six-month work placement in the public or voluntary sector with no clear pathway through to a long-term career. We took the view that it was much better to invest our money in apprenticeships, where the young person spends an extended period with a private sector employer gaining skills that will provide the foundations of a lifetime’s career and that will not simply lead to a shutter coming down at the end of six months.

We are pretty early on in our apprenticeships programme, but we are already having considerable success in getting employers to take up apprenticeships. I was delighted to go to Newcastle earlier in the week and see the front page of The Journal announcing a great success for the paper’s campaign to encourage small employers to provide apprenticeships for young people. That is the kind of partnership that I really like. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of local partnerships. I want local employer groups, papers and public sector organisations working together to encourage young people to take up apprenticeships and to encourage local employers to provide apprenticeships. He will know that we are focused on ensuring that we provide work experience places for young people, but above all we are trying to ensure that decisions are taken locally. In the context of what is being done in Rhyl, there is nothing in the Work programme that prevents that work from continuing. Excellence will flourish in the Work programme. The whole system is designed to give local communities, providers on the ground and local organisations the freedom to do what works for the individual, which is what is important.

In conclusion, I regard unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, as among the most important of this Government’s challenges. I am relishing the chance—