Gambling Act Review White Paper

Debate between Lucy Frazer and Carolyn Harris

Thursday 27th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

As always, my hon. Friend makes an important point. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to discuss these issues with him, given his expertise and knowledge of this area. He mentions player protection checks, which will largely be seamless and frictionless background checks that affect only 20% of people, most of whom will not know they are taking place. These secret checks are important in ensuring that gambling companies are taking their responsibilities seriously.

My hon. Friend will know that the Government are working with companies to ensure there are protections on loot boxes, too.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling related harm, I welcome this long overdue White Paper. In the APPG’s 2019 interim report, we asked for affordability checks, parity between land-based and online stakes, an independent ombudsman, a curb on advertising and, most importantly, a statutory levy. Job done.

The APPG pushed for all the reforms the Secretary of State mentioned earlier against a strong backlash from the industry, not least on fixed-odds betting terminals, VIP schemes and credit cards. Today’s announcement shows progress. It may have taken eight years of campaigning, nine Secretaries of State for Culture, Media and Sport and ten changes in my hair colour, but it is progress none the less.

Today is a momentous occasion that many thought, and many wished, would never happen, but now the commitments need to be fulfilled. We do not need more consultation—we have had two and a half years since the review. We need swift action, immediate implementation of the proposals and urgent legislative change where necessary. After 18 years of the gambling industry’s dominance over this agenda, now is the time for levelling up. Will the Secretary of State commit today to ensuring that these changes are brought in as a priority, with no delaying tactics? Let us protect those whose lives have been affected by gambling-related harms and let us stop lining the pockets of an industry that has had it its own way for far too long.

[Lucy Frazer]

I thank the hon. Lady and commend her hugely for all her work. As she has highlighted, we have listened and taken action. I really do commend and thank her for her work.

I have been in post for two and a half months. I have brought this proposed legislation forward and she can be reassured that I, together with the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), will continue to ensure that action happens swiftly. As she will know, following a White Paper, various technical consultations need to take place. We will bring forward these measures largely through statutory instruments, and she has my utmost commitment that I will ensure that process is done as speedily as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lucy Frazer and Carolyn Harris

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

It is vital that we manage the backlog in the courts, and we are doing so across Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. I am looking closely at the youth estate because it is vital that we ensure that the youth—who are particularly vulnerable and who cannot do as many remote hearings as those in the adult estate—get justice and get it swiftly. We have opened up a number of youth courts and are working hard to ensure that youth justice continues.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

What steps he is taking to improve resettlement for women leaving prison.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

I am very pleased to have spoken regularly to the hon. Lady about residential women’s centres, which are a vital part of the female offender strategy. Her question is about the resettlement of women leaving prison. I hope she is aware that we invested an additional £22 million a year over the remaining life of the community rehabilitation company contracts to deliver an enhanced through-the-gate resettlement service. We also have specific funding for women—we are putting £5 million into community services that help female offenders to address the underlying causes of their criminality—and we recently invested a further £2.5 million to assist in further supporting female offenders. That is currently being distributed via a funding competition, which opened on 6 July.

[Carolyn Harris]

The independent monitoring board recently reported that almost 60% of female prisoners are leaving prison to homelessness, which overwhelmingly leads to reoffending. To give these women a chance in life we need an effective through-the-gate strategy, including community support and adequate housing, so can we expect the autumn statement to deliver extra resources to allow that to happen?

[Lucy Frazer]

Our statistics are that 4.2% of the female prison releases were to rough sleeping and 14% were released as “other homeless”, but the numbers, whatever they are, are too high. The hon. Lady rightly identifies that we are talking to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and that a spending review is coming up; Members will have heard the Lord Chancellor talking about our absolute commitment, and we will be looking at a number of things—education, employment and tackling homelessness on release.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lucy Frazer and Carolyn Harris

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

3. What plans his Department has to improve training for people working with perinatal women in custodial settings.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

I, too, welcome to your place, Mr Speaker.

I know that the hon. Lady is very interested in this very important area and chaired a roundtable that a former Justice Minister attended. It is absolutely right that pregnant women in custody should get the care that they deserve. I hope she will be reassured to know that there is a two-day programme that prison officers can attend to ensure that they get the appropriate training to deal with women in custody who are pregnant. However, we recognise that there are more things that we can do, and before the election was called we had already started a fundamental review of pregnant women in custody and the operation of our mother and baby units.

[Carolyn Harris]

The current review of the operational guidance for the mother and baby units is welcome, but guidance is not enough. Will the Minister agree to meet me and the charity Birth Companions to discuss the recommendations in its new birth charter toolkit and the need for mandatory standards, so that prisons are scrutinised and indeed held to account for perinatal care?

[Lucy Frazer]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Lady, who is very experienced in this issue. Last week I visited HMP Bronzefield where I spoke to people on the mother and baby unit. Birth Companions operates from that prison, but I would be very happy to meet the hon. Lady and take advantage of her expertise.

Legislation against Female Genital Mutilation

Debate between Lucy Frazer and Carolyn Harris

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I cannot give my hon. Friend a precise indication, as that is not within my power, but the Government intend to act very swiftly.

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) on raising this pressing issue.

Female genital mutilation is an abhorrent practice, which can have dreadful consequences for the women and young girls who fall victim to it. Since legislation in 1985, there has been only one—very recent—conviction, although the NHS reports that nearly 15,500 cases presented at hospitals with symptoms of FGM in the past two years. The absence of successful prosecutions in our country indicates the failure of the current procedures. It is essential that we recognise the secrecy and fear surrounding the practice and address the fact that it makes people unlikely to report suspicions or instances of FGM.

The Serious Crime Act 2015 provides for protection orders, which offer a legal means of protecting and safeguarding potential victims. Since 2015, more than 240 orders have been granted to help victims and those at risk, which demonstrates that such protections are effective and can be used as a means of proactive assistance.

The clear need for increased protections makes the actions of the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) even more shocking. His reputation for objecting to important Bills precedes him. Today, I am not using the term “honourable” when referring to our colleague, because “honourable” implies “principled”, and the Member for Christchurch displayed no such principle in the Chamber last Friday. His objection to the FGM Bill sank to new depths. However, the issue should never have been left to be dealt with through a private Member’s Bill.

The Bill will protect countless women and girls, and any delay in its passage puts them at unnecessary risk. The Government should have introduced legislation long before now. Relying on a private Members’ Bill was a risky strategy, given that, as we know, worthy Bills have been talked out or objected to on many such occasions. We cannot now leave this Bill on the sidelines. If the Member for Christchurch has done nothing else, his antiquated and appalling behaviour last Friday has exposed the Bill’s importance. I seek an assurance that it will be back before Members during Government time, and very shortly, so that we can pass an essential piece of legislation.

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Lady cares deeply about protecting vulnerable people, and I am pleased to have met her to discuss a number of matters in the family justice sphere. She makes a number of important points.

It is essential to protect women and girls, and since 2015, the Government have introduced a number of measures to ensure that they are protected. As I have said, the Bill will be dealt with in Government time, but let me clarify what it does. It is not the case that without it, women and girls do not have protection; we introduced protections in 2015. What the Bill will do is enable a judge to make a care order during the same proceedings.

The hon. Lady makes another important point about the number of protection orders. She said that more than 200 had been issued since September. In fact, the number has gone up to 296; so just under 300 protection orders have been granted since their introduction at the end of September 2018.

I want to make a final point because a number of Members rightly identified that not enough prosecutions are successful, and this is a very important point that we must tackle. We are tackling it in a number of ways, through funding for education and through the bringing of legislation, but these are very difficult cases to prosecute for a number of reasons: cultural taboos, lack of information from affected communities and the fact that the age of the vulnerable girls might prevent them from coming forward. The issue we have in this country is not isolated; there is a very low prosecution rate for these kinds of offences across Europe, but this Government are committed to doing whatever we can to protect these girls further from this terrible crime.