Deaths in Custody (Legal Aid)

Debate between Liam Byrne and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

Let me deal with a point directly. The family did not choose to be in this position; the Coroners Act 1988 demands an inquest. We in this House are the people who insist on the position my constituents are now in, and we do so for a very good reason: we want to know what happened. Our predecessors in this Parliament felt so strongly about the unchecked actions of an arbitrary state that they deposed the monarch and fought a war to insist on the liberty of the individual and a measure of their protection—we want to know what happened.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

There were 5,998 deaths in police custody in the 11 years from 1 January 2000 to 31 December 2010. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there must be a method for families to access support in suspicious cases and that legal aid is an important part of that support for grieving families?

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Some will say, “We should not get too worked up about this. The inquest process is inquisitorial not adversarial. It is just a gentle canter around the facts.” But when we are dealing with death in custody, it is different. How can we tell? It is because the public servants represented at the inquests will not just have one lawyer; they will have teams of lawyers, paid for by the taxpayer, on their side. We have to ask ourselves: how can we allow such a profound inequality of arms in the inquest room? How can we pretend to ourselves that that is even remotely equal, fair or right? There is now growing evidence, not just in my home city of Birmingham, but across the country, that wrongful legal aid decisions are being made in cases such as this. Many in this House will have seen the tragic case confronting Alex Kelly’s family, which was highlighted in The Observer on Sunday, and INQUEST, an organisation I wish to praise to high heaven, has brought to me a number of other cases where bad decisions are being made in our name.

In the short time remaining to me, I want to put five questions to the Minister. I appreciate that he will not be able to answer all of them tonight, so I hope that he will follow up in writing and that the House will be able to return to this subject, perhaps in the light of the report by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) later in the year. First, will the Minister meet me to discuss the legal aid decision in my constituent’s case? The case clearly meets the threshold of having “wider public interest'” set out in section 2.4 of the Legal Services Commission’s funding code criteria, which refers to the “potential” of the proceedings

“to produce real benefits for individuals other than the client”.

Secondly, when will the Lord Chancellor bring into effect section 51 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, which will extend advocacy support to those who died in custody? No stand part debate was held on that measure and, to the best of my knowledge, the Minister was not in the House to vote on the Bill on Third Reading. I do not believe the Conservative party or the Liberal Democrats opposed this legislation when it was brought to the House, so will the Government give us a date for bringing in section 51 as soon as possible?

Thirdly, will the Minister confirm that it is ministerial policy, and not simply administrative discretion, to seek a contribution from the family in inquests where a death in state custody has occurred? Fourthly, will the Minister tonight agree to a review of the way families are offered support and funding for inquest costs, not least because there is now evidence that the process is out of control, with the most invasive questions being asked of families in order for them to prove they do not have the resources to help contest these cases? Finally, will the Minister tell us how many families have been asked to make a contribution since 2010? What is the total bill that families in this country are now paying for cases such as this?

When I asked my constituent what she wanted from tonight’s debate, her answer was as generous as she is compassionate. “Hopefully,” she said, “we can change this for other people so that they will not have to suffer what we have suffered.” When all is said and done, the question at the heart of this debate is simple. It is the story of a mother’s loss, a mother’s love and a mother’s search for justice. Will we, in this House, stand on a mother’s side, or will we stand against her? When we begin work in this House each day, we pray for strength and wisdom to make the right decisions. I hope that we can now call on that strength and wisdom and make the right decisions in the case of my constituent and her lost son.

Universal Credit and Welfare Reform

Debate between Liam Byrne and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

If the Minister is accusing Refuge and Women’s Aid of a smear, I am afraid that he has got his facts seriously wrong. This element was not in the original design. Yesterday we finally extracted from the Secretary of State a commitment to change; now we want to know how it, along with a host of other things, will work in practice.

Some of these issues are now bedevilling local authorities. There is a serious risk that direct payments of universal credit, which includes housing benefit going to the individual, will result in local councils’ arrears bills and eviction rates beginning to rise. We are still no clearer about what will happen to the 20,000 housing benefit staff who work for local councils and will no longer have to process housing benefit claims once the DWP takes over the task. Are they going to be sacked or made redundant? Who will pick up the bill? Is it yet another bill that will fall on the shoulders of hard-pressed council tax payers?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In my constituency, housing benefit applications are up by between 10% and 15% and extra staff have been employed. The waiting list for applications to be processed takes anything from six to eight, or even 10, weeks. Yesterday the manager of the housing benefit office told me that only six months into the scheme he is already cutting back on the moneys that are allocated to try to make them last until next April. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that in the case of housing benefit, chaos is knocking on the door?

[Mr Byrne]

I am afraid that that is absolutely right. That is the message that is coming back from local authorities all over the country. In fact, the Local Government Association told the Select Committee on Friday that there is

“a real risk that the central Government universal credit IT systems will not be ready on time”.

That was part of an array of evidence submitted about the mounting risks. The CBI said that the

“tight delivery timetable…is a risk to business”.

Citizens Advice said that universal credit

“risks causing difficulties to the 8.5 million people who have never used the internet”.

The Chartered Institute of Taxation said that for many people

“The proposed procedures for self-employed claimants…will be impossible to comply with.”

Shelter has said:

“Social landlords and their lenders have voiced considerable concern at the implications of direct payments for social tenants”.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services says that the abolition of severe disability premium is an

“apparent contradiction of the Government’s stated aim to protect the most vulnerable.”

Youth Unemployment

Debate between Liam Byrne and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point, which echoes that made by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart). We know that if people are out of work when they are young, they are more likely to be low paid in the course of their career, more likely to suffer ill health and more likely to be unemployed again. That is why the Prince’s Trust and others are right to focus their attention on the crisis of youth unemployment that is unfolding in our country.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Not only is there the spectre of unemployment and the prospect of no jobs, but many of the young people who are not in education, employment or training are under medical supervision. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that almost 30% of the young people who are unemployed are facing depression and are suicidal? Does he feel that we have to address that issue along with unemployment?

[Mr Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely valuable point, which I hope he will develop in the course of the debate.

When this Government were first in office, at a time when the economy was fragile, when the recovery was in its first stages, when they were launching the biggest programme of Government cuts for many years, and when there was a risk of rising unemployment, as was made obvious by the Office for Budget Responsibility, they chose, at huge expense, to take out the key back-to-work programmes that we had in place, which were keeping unemployment down. That will stand as one of the worst judgments made by this Administration.

I know that the Government will in a moment protest that they are taking action. The Secretary of State, who is not here today, reeled off a list of programmes at Question Time last month, when he said that there are

“work clubs, work experience, apprenticeship offers, sector-based work academies, the innovation fund, European social fund support,”—

it is nice to see the Secretary of State supporting Europe on something—

“the skills offer, the access to apprenticeships programme, Work Together, the Work programme, Work Choice, mandatory work activity and Jobcentre Plus.”—[Official Report, 24 October 2011; Vol. 534, c. 4.]

It is not clear how Jobcentre Plus is an innovation of this Government, but none the less it earned a place in his list.

The only problem is that none of these programmes is making a blind bit of difference, so let us take some of the key measures one by one. I want to start with the flagship package of measures launched last May. So important was it, so pregnant with opportunity, so sure was it to make a difference, that the Deputy Prime Minister himself was allowed to put out the press release. Those measures came replete with a total budget of £60 million over three years—a grand total of £20 for every unemployed young person. Or we could look at it as 5p a day to help—

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 9th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I am sure that the hon. Lady will have set out, with equal eloquence, the view of the Mayor of London that the measures might actually cost more taxpayers’ money than they will save.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Byrne]

I will take a couple more interventions in a moment.

I want to put on record my thanks to the scores of charities and campaign groups that have helped to brief us and offered to work with us to draw up amendments to improve the Bill in Committee. I am even more grateful to them for their commitment to mobilise their millions of members to help the Government understand why the Bill needs urgent reform. If the Government persist with the illusion that the Bill is immaculate, perfect and beyond improvement, and if they decline to hear the voices of those millions of members of charities and campaign groups that have worked with us, we will have no alternative but to vote against it on Third Reading.

In today’s debate, we will hear a lot of statistics; we will also hear about this record and that proposal. I just hope that the House will remember that behind every statistic is a person—one of our constituents. They are people like my constituent, Colin Hulme, who wrote to me at the end of last week. Mr Hulme suffers from Chiari malformation, a condition that affects about one in 1,000 people. It hit him in 2007, and he had to give up his job as an IT consultant and move home. He is a very brave man. He told me that his disability living allowance means that

“at least I can pay my household bills, my kids will have food on the table and clothes for school. More importantly, it means my wife can provide the care that I need.”

His view is that the Bill is about

“cutting costs and shifting responsibilities rather than improving the lives of sick and disabled people.”

It is a worry for him, and I think that the whole House will acknowledge that that worry is shared by millions of people up and down the country today.

My real point to the Secretary of State in this debate about principles is this: in the debate ahead, let us together put aside the politics of fear and division, and let us have the politics of hope—people’s hope for a job, the hope that they can get the help that they need, and the hope that they can get on and move up in work. That is what welfare reform should be about. That is the instinct expressed in our amendment, and I hope that the House will back it this afternoon.