Mayoral Referendums

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and John Leech

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) on securing this important debate.

I want to take part in the debate mainly because my home city of Manchester is one of the local authorities that will hold a referendum on local election day next week. I should start by laying my cards on the table and saying that I have never been a supporter of elected mayors, but if the people of Manchester vote for a mayor next week, I will not lose any sleep over it, because the issue is not massively important to me or people in Manchester. Indeed, apathy has been the big winner so far.

I certainly do not object to holding a referendum on whether local people want an elected mayor, but the nature of mayoral elections means they always end up being about personalities, rather than politics. London is a good example, and the debates going on at the moment clearly show that the issue is personalities, not politics. The debate is not about the merits or otherwise of the policies put forward by the two front-runners, but about whether people dislike the fact that Ken Livingstone has not paid his taxes or think that Boris Johnson should have come home early when the riots started. Transport and other issues that should be debated have fallen by the wayside while people look at the personalities of the two front-runners.

There is a question about whether we should force local authorities to have a referendum against their will, given that plenty are considering going down that route or have already gone down it. In Salford, for instance, local residents triggered a referendum, and an election is taking place next week for a mayor. That said, only 18.1% of the 171,000 eligible voters took part in the referendum. None the less, there was a comfortable majority in support of having a mayor. I rather suspect that the turnout in Manchester will be significantly higher than 18.1%, but only because the vote will be on the same day as the local elections. People will want to participate in the local election, rather than the referendum for an elected mayor, so I seriously doubt whether the higher turnout will mean there is more interest in the mayoral referendum or the idea of having an elected mayor; that will not be what pushes people to take part in next Thursday’s election. Certainly, in my experience of knocking on many doors during the election campaign of the past few weeks, I have not seen massive enthusiasm for the referendum. In fact, only one person has raised the issue with me on the doorstep, and that was someone who simply wanted to know my view. She had no particular view, and was not even sure whether she would vote in the referendum.

[Lilian Greenwood]

The hon. Gentleman’s experience is similar to mine. Does he think that part of the reason is, first, that the Government have not made it clear what extra powers are available, and secondly that they have not consulted local people about the geographic cover needed to reflect what the local community is, and have instead imposed a Whitehall-led model on our core cities?

[Mr Leech]

There are several reasons for lack of enthusiasm. I suspect that in Manchester it is partly to do with the fact that the political parties are concentrating more on the local elections than on trying to force people out to vote in the referendum. I shall come on to that, but I do not believe that we should have the referendum on the same day as the local election. I think that the crux of the problem is that we are not giving people the opportunity to debate the mayoral referendum, because there are other issues that they want to discuss. People are interested in who will be their local councillor—not in whether we shall have an elected mayor for the city of Manchester.

I understand the Government’s argument for holding the referendum on the same day as the local elections, because clearly that saves an awful lot of money.

Transport and the Economy

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and John Leech

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to debate the Select Committee’s report on transport and the economy. It has given many hon. Members the chance to raise constituency concerns, which I hope the Minister will respond to when he sums up.

I was going to say that it was noticeable that almost all the speakers in the debate were MPs representing towns, cities and rural areas in the north, but then we had contributions from the hon. Members for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) and for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), which broke the flow somewhat. None the less, I am sure the Minister will want to reflect on the implications for Government policy of the concerns expressed by northern MPs and the fact that good transport links are demanded by the north.

The Select Committee report looks at the big picture and asks some searching questions of the Government, which the Minister must answer. At the heart of the report is the Committee’s conclusion that Ministers have failed to explain how their decisions on investment in transport will deliver the economic growth and rebalancing they say are needed. Of course that could be a failure of communication, but I think it is a failure arising from the absence of any strategy or joined-up thinking from this Government.

People throughout the country know that the biggest and most pressing problem we face is the lack of jobs and growth. There are 2.7 million people on the dole—the highest number for 17 years—representing a huge cost to the economy in benefit payments and lost tax, a huge cost to the individuals affected and their families, and a cost to their local communities, many of which, especially in the north, are all too aware of the long-term scarring effects of unemployment. The Government should have a laser-like focus on using every aspect of policy to turn things around by creating jobs, supporting industry and getting our economy moving.

Transport should have a key role to play, but time and again we have seen this Government take decisions that send us in the opposite direction. It is not just that they have cut spending too far and too fast, but that they have made the wrong choices. Labour has not opposed £6 billion of difficult and painful cuts to the transport budget—two thirds of the cuts proposed by Ministers—but we would have made different decisions about how to spend the remaining money to protect passengers and deliver the maximum benefit to our economy. Labour would have protected additional investment in the rail and road network as part of a five-point plan for growth and jobs.

[Mr Leech]

From what the hon. Lady has said, a Labour Government would have been forced to cut capital spending even further.

[Lilian Greenwood]

No, I think the hon. Gentleman misunderstands me. As I said, we have not opposed £6 billion of difficult cuts to the transport budget, whether that is capital or revenue funding, but we would have maintained a further £3 billion and we would have spent it in different ways, as I will set out.

We would have protected £500 million for road schemes vital to economic growth, providing a much-needed boost to our construction industry. We would have made sure the £435 million needed for essential road maintenance went ahead, saving the taxpayer money in the long term, according to the National Audit Office. Labour would not have cut £759 million from the rail budget; we would have put passengers first and tackled affordability. We would not have allowed the private train operating companies to boost their profits with eye-watering fare rises of up to 11% this January, 5% more than the RPI plus 1% that the Government told passengers they could expect, which means that some people are spending more on their fare to work than they do on their mortgage or rent. That is not helping to make work pay; it is just adding to the cost-of-living crisis that households are already facing.

Labour would put working people first by taking on the vested interests. We would not have given back to train companies the right to fiddle the fare cap, so that when we said that fare rises would be limited to inflation plus 1%, the public would know that that was the maximum rise they would face at the ticket office. We would also have been able to bring forward the much-needed electrification of the midland main line that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) and my neighbour, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), who is no longer in her place, pointed out, is so important to improving connectivity between London, Northamptonshire and four of the largest cities in the country: Derby, Leicester, Sheffield and, of course, my own city of Nottingham. We would have started the electrification of the great western main line, but we would have gone right through to Swansea, rather than stop at Cardiff.

Interpretation Services (Ministry of Justice)

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and John Leech

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leech]

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. That is a common issue that has been raised with me by interpreters around the country, in England and in Wales.

When one adds in the additional disincentives of no pension, holiday pay or sick pay, as well as no job security and no increase in interpreters’ rate of pay since 2007, it is unthinkable to assume that these proposed rates of pay and costs are suitable. It also seems perverse that the new framework agreement encourages the use of an interpreter’s car rather than public transport. Currently, standard-class fares are reimbursed in full, while the car mileage rate is 25p a mile. A higher rate of 45p a mile, which is more in line with the true cost of running a car per mile, along with parking costs, is payable only if the interpreter can show that there was no public transport option. However, under the new arrangements all calculations will be based on the use of a personal car and public transport costs will not be covered—not much of an incentive for interpreters to reduce their carbon emissions and travel on public transport.

One of the stated aims of the framework agreement is increasing the number of suitably qualified and vetted interpreters to meet the demand. There are currently around 2,300 interpreters registered with the national register of public service interpreters. Applied Language Solutions claims that 1,000 linguists have signed up to its Linguist Lounge recruitment website. That means a cut of around 1,300 qualified interpreters available to the courts system, assuming that all 1,000 are NRPSI-qualified. If they are not, the cut in qualified interpreters will be even greater. The failure of ALS to reach agreement with at least 1,300 qualified interpreters shows the level of opposition to the proposals, in spite of evidence to suggest that ALS has sought to pressurise interpreters into signing up, with thinly veiled threats that the registration is closing soon. Does the Minister think that that is appropriate behaviour for a company purporting to implement the legal interpreting and translation register, which surely must be consistently open to applicants as a public resource?

Does the Minister also think that closing the list when more than half the NRPSI-qualified interpreters have refused to sign up will increase the availability of suitably qualified and vetted interpreters? Of course it will not. We should look at the evidence from where outsourcing has already taken place and at its impact on the quality and availability of interpreters. The Ministry of Justice claimed on 6 July that “collaborative authorities” had

“concerns that NRPSI registration does not necessarily guarantee quality. The evidence for this is anecdotal, but has been consistent enough to warrant action.”

I would prefer to rely on hard evidence, and there is significant evidence that the outsourcing of interpreting services by police forces has resulted in the use of unqualified interpreters.

When Cheshire constabulary outsourced to ALS, only 34% of the interpreters provided by ALS were on the NRPSI. In Lincolnshire, outsourcing led to a reduction of registered interpreters from 68% to less than 30%. Where outsourcing has taken place there has been a significant reduction in the number of registered interpreters being used—clear evidence that the quality and availability of interpreters is reduced.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with my constituent Svetlana Clark who is a member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and a public service interpreter on the national register, that the potential cost to the judiciary of adjournments, mistrials, appeals and failed prosecutions as a result of inadequate interpreting cannot be overestimated and does not serve the interests of justice?

[Mr Leech]

I do agree with the hon. Lady’s constituent. There is lots of evidence to suggest that where unqualified interpreters have been used there have been delays in police and court action, resulting in additional costs. I have been handed pages and pages of examples of unqualified interpreters being sent to police stations and courts by agencies, or interpreters proficient in the wrong language. One example that made it into Private Eye was ALS providing a Czech-speaking interpreter for a Slovak-speaking suspect. ALS’s explanation was that

“it is fair to say that most people from Slovakia essentially speak Czech.”

Is this really the sort of organisation that we want in charge of ensuring that justice is done?

Other questions have been raised about the suitability of ALS to fulfil the role. The Minister has already assured me that the Department’s procurement specialists were satisfied by the company’s stability and probity, but the fact remains that more than 50% of qualified interpreters do not and will not work for it. The company has been found to be in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998 on three occasions since 2007. Can the Minister assure me that potentially highly sensitive data are safe and that is it appropriate for them to be handled in non-UK call centres?

Finally, will the Minister explain why foreign-language-speaking interpreters are being treated differently from British sign language interpreters, who will retain their existing terms and conditions? Surely that contravenes sections 13 and 19 of the Equality Act 2010, by providing less favourable terms to foreign-language interpreters? The Ministry of Justice also intends effectively to re-test foreign-language interpreters, but not British sign language interpreters. Surely it is a contradiction that the Ministry accepts BSL qualifications as valid but rejects foreign-language interpreters, even though they have the same level of accredited qualification.

These proposals have not been properly thought through. The MOJ has failed to look at the evidence from outsourcing, and failed to treat all interpreters equitably. I hope that it is not too late for the Government to take a step back and review this decision. If they cannot do that, I would at the very least strongly urge the Minister closely to monitor the performance of the service, paying close attention to the delays and additional costs that will undoubtedly occur when cases are delayed as a result of a lack of an available interpreter, or when mistakes are made when under-qualified interpreters are used.